Toxic Tort

A mother in Kansas City has won a victory in a medical malpractice case involving the death of her infant child. While most medical malpractice cases are settled out of court, this grieving mother took it all the way and won.

According to records, Johnna Hughes was 35 weeks pregnant when she began to experience pain in her right side. She called her doctor and was told that she had probably pulled a muscle. Just days later, she was in such pain that her mother drove her to the hospital.

Hughes, 38, was concerned about her baby when she arrived at the hospital. It was ultimately determined that she would be see in the E.R. instead of in labor and delivery. Doctors ran tests and determined that Hughes had a hematoma in her abdomen and gallstones. What happened next is what landed Hughes and the hospital in court.

One of the biggest news stories in the past year has been the water debacle in Flint, Michigan. In 2014, Michigan governor Rick Snyder switched the water source for the city of Flint from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River. While the Detroit water source had been treated with corrosion inhibitors, Flint River had not. That allowed for the old lead water pipe to corrode, leaching lead into the water source.

What resulted was eventually the biggest health crisis in America, once the story hit mainstream media. Children and adults alike were poisoned, and water from the tap came out brown. While the logical step would be to buy water filters, the problem is that filters do not remove lead at these levels. That has left residents using bottled water for everything from cooking to showering. As of now, no real solution has been put in place.

What the Flint River Crisis has done, however, is expose the risk of lead water pipes all over the country. About 10 million homes in America receive water that passes through lead pipes at one point or another. That includes homes in New York, where the number of lead pipes simply isn’t known. There are too many water pipes all over the city to give any accurate number of dangerous ones. Unfortunately, many of those pipes also deliver water to schools across the state, and that has become a hot issue in recent months.

Articles Posted in Toxic Tort

Mother Victorious in Medical Malpractice Case

Lead Water Pipes Poisoning New York Schools?