Tag: lawsuits

Colon cancer patient died after surgical robot burned hole in organs: lawsuit

A grieving widower is suing a medical manufacturer, claiming that its device burned a hole in his wife’s organs during a procedure to treat her colon cancer, eventually leading to her death.

Harvey Sultzer, husband of the late Sandra Sultzer, filed a lawsuit on Feb. 6 against Intuitive Surgical (IS) claiming his wife suffered health complications following a procedure completed by their surgical robot.

Sandra underwent an operation at Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital in September 2021 to treat her colon cancer using the da Vinci robot, a multi-armed, remote-controlled device, according to the lawsuit.

The device is advertised “to enable precision beyond the limits of the human hand,” being “designed to provide surgeons with natural dexterity while operating through small incisions,” allowing for minimally invasive procedures.

The lawsuit claims that the device burned a hole in her small intestine, which required Sandra to undergo additional medical interventions.

After the procedures, Sandra continued to suffer abdominal pain and had a fever until she died in February 2022 as “a direct and proximate result of the injuries she suffered,” the lawsuit claims.

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‘Cruel and unusual’: Daughter of inmate with bipolar disorder who killed self sues prison for failing to provide adequate mental health care

An inmate classified as among the most severely mentally ill killed himself in solitary confinement at a Wisconsin state prison after officials failed to provide adequate mental health care and medications, the man’s daughter alleges in a federal lawsuit filed this week.

Dean Henry Hoffmann, 60, died in June at Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI), a beleaguered facility with chronic inadequate staffing and inmate overcrowding, more than an hour northwest of Milwaukee.

“Every day I fight for some type of change within the system, and I’m hoping that this really drives that home, and something like this — holding them accountable — will lead to change,” Megan Hoffmann Kolb told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Prison officials declined to comment, citing a policy against commenting on pending litigation, the newspaper reported.

Court documents obtained by Law&Crime outline the events leading up to Hoffmann’s suicide after he was sentenced last February to 28 years in prison after his conviction for assaulting his ex-girlfriend.

Hoffmann had a history of mental illness that included bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, hypothyroidism, diabetes, and anti-social personality disorder, court documents said.

Before his trial, he had been deemed by mental health professionals and the court as being mentally ill but competent to stand trial, even though there was strenuous disagreement, the lawsuit said. In custody, he was categorized as “MH-2A,” the most severe category of mental illness, court documents said.

On April 10, Hoffmann was transferred to WCI with about 30 days of medication. When he went in, the facility had been locked down for safety reasons after some inmates had broken prison rules, court documents said. Because of lockdown restrictions, Hoffmann was never given a psychological exam and had received only some of his prescribed medications, the lawsuit alleges. He had only been able to use the phone twice in the first weeks. Guards unplugged the phone on him mid-conversation in one call.

He asked for medical treatment and showed serious symptoms of mental illness, including severe anxiety, paranoia, pressured speech, poor judgment, poor insight, loss of appetite, weight loss and insomnia, court documents said.

His frustrations mounted on June 20, when he refused to return to his cell after showering, citing “fear of his safety because of threats his cellmate made to him,” the lawsuit said.

When guards ordered him into his cell, he refused. He was handcuffed and escorted into the prison’s Restricted Housing Unit for “a minor incident despite Mr. Hoffmann expressing concerns for his safety.”

While in solitary, Hoffmann began to rapidly deteriorate mentally and physically.

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Alabama Cops ‘Violently’ Arrested Two Elderly Women For Taking Care of Feral Cats

In 2022, Wetumpka, Alabama, police violently arrested two elderly women and charged them with a litany of criminal offenses. Their crime? Taking care of stray cats. The pair has now sued the officers, arguing that their arrest and the resulting charges against them were unconstitutional and caused “significant physical and emotional injuries.”

According to the complaint, Mary Alston, who was 60 at the time, often worked with Beverly Roberts who was then 84, to “trap-neuter-return” (TNR) feral cats. TNR is a common strategy of limiting stray cat populations by safely capturing cats, having them spayed or neutered by a veterinary clinic, and releasing or putting them up for adoption. According to their complaint, Roberts and Alston took up this practice because “neither the Humane Society nor any other animal rights organization had the resources to conduct TNR in or around the City of Wetumpka.”

On June 25, 2022, Alston was setting up a trap for a feral cat on local public property when she saw Wetumpka Mayor Jerry Willis drive past, followed by police vehicles. However, within minutes the three police officers who had been trailing Willis turned around and approached Alston. 

According to the complaint, Willis later admitted that after observing Alston, he ordered the police to approach her. Further, the lawsuit alleges that “Willis was angry that Ms. Roberts and Ms. Alston frequently complained, both publicly and to officials at Wetumpka City Hall, that. Willis was failing to enforce laws and ordinances prohibiting the ‘chaining’ of dogs.”

Body camera footage shows one officer telling Alston that someone called about a person feeding feral cats.

“Ya’ll got three cop cars because I’m feeding cats?” Alston said to the officer. “Wow, it’s unbelievable.”

The officers demanded that Alston leave the public property, and then left the scene. However, Shortly after this encounter, Roberts joined Alston. The pair were on public property, and sitting calmly, waiting for a cat they were hoping to trap to arrive. However, the three officers soon returned. This time, the complaint states that they informed Roberts that she would be arrested. When the officers handcuffed Roberts, Alston got out of her car and attempted to speak with the officers.

“The officers ordered Ms. Alston to quit talking and to get in her vehicle. Ms. Alston complied with the officers’ demand to get back into her vehicle but continued to try to speak to the officers,” the complaint states. In response, one of the officers, Brenden Foster responded by grabbing Ms. Alston, jerking her out of her vehicle by force, and then handcuffing her.”

The pair were then taken to a local jail, where they were mistreated further. While in jail, Roberts lost consciousness and hit her head. However, the complaint alleges that an officer who witnessed this did nothing, and she was not given any medical help. When Roberts later asked to make a phone call, she was allegedly told that a call is a “privilege, not a right,” which is in violation of Alabama law.

Ultimately, the pair was charged with “criminal trespass, obstructing governmental operations and disorderly conduct,” according to the complaint. In December 2022, a municipal Judge found the pair guilty and sentenced them to “10 days in jail, suspended, two years supervised probation, and a $50 fine on each charge,” though the charges were later dismissed on appeal.

While their charges were ultimately dismissed, the pair is still suing, arguing that the officers and mayor “directed the unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution of Ms. Roberts and Ms. Alston to retaliate against them for exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble on public property, engage in expressive conduct…and engage in peaceful political speech.”

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Texas Cops Held a Terrified Couple at Gunpoint After Raiding the Wrong House

Tyler Harrington and his wife were asleep in their beds when four Harris County, Texas, Constable Officers burst into their home and held the terrified couple at gunpoint. While the cops eventually realized they were in the wrong house, they didn’t leave without admonishing the couple for keeping their door unlocked.

Harrington has now filed a lawsuit, arguing that the officers’ invasion of his home was an unconstitutional breach of his Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

On September 24, 2022, Officer James Lancaster responded to a call from a woman, named “Mrs. H” in the complaint, who said that she heard a knock at her back door. Lancaster spoke to Mrs. H and examined the outside of her property, finding nothing suspicious. 

Mrs. H also told Lancaster that her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend would arrive to check out the house themselves. Mrs. H then decided to “get in her car and drive around until others came home.” When Mrs. H’s daughter and her boyfriend arrived, another neighbor, named “Mr. S,” called the police to report their truck as suspicious. When talking to dispatchers, Mr. S accidentally gave the wrong address for Mrs. H’s house, reporting Harrington’s address instead.

Soon, two more officers arrived. According to the complaint, Lancaster clearly should have known that dispatch had been given the wrong address. While pointing to Mrs. H’s house, he told the other officers, “That’s the house with the person knocking on the back door, that was the house earlier….I checked the one across the street.” In reference to Harrington’s address, he said he had “never been to this house.”

But the officers decided to enter the Harrington’s home anyway, testing both the front and back doors and finding them unlocked. A fourth officer arrived, and according to the suit, Lancaster told him that they were “waiting on the owner,” despite knowing that it was a different house than the one owned by Mrs. H, where the owner had left and was to return shortly.

Around midnight, two of the officers burst into the Harrington’s home with their guns drawn, shouting “Constable’s Office, come up with your hands out!” Harrington’s wife, whose full name wasn’t identified in the suit, was woken up by the officer’s shouting. She confirmed that she lived at the house, and one of the officers, Jared Lindsay ordered her to get her ID and come to the door.

Around the same time, Lancaster entered the home with his gun drawn, shouting the Spanish phrase for “hands up,” and began searching the home. As the officers held his wife at gunpoint, Tyler Harrington woke up and walked out of the bedroom, at which point the officers began pointing their guns at him as well, shouting questions at the couple. 

Eventually, the officers realized they were at the wrong house but still led the couple back into their own home at gunpoint. After releasing the couple, Lindsay told them that “someone had reported people searching the front and back doors of this house,” adding that the caller had told them the owner was gone. 

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Congress pushes bill to let Americans SUE if fake porn images of them are published after Taylor Swift deep fake scandal

A group of lawmakers are stepping in to try and take down Taylor Swift ‘deep fake’ perpetrators with a bill that would allow Americans to sue if fake porn images of them are published. 

Popstar Taylor Swift became the latest target of nonconsensual deepfakes after artificial intelligence generated sexually explicit images of her flooded the internet this week. 

The dozens of graphic images showed Swift in a series of sexual acts while dressed in Kansas City Chief memorabilia after she became a regular at football games to support of her boyfriend Travis Kelce. 

Swift is now considering legal action against the deepfake porn website that posted the images amid calls from fans and even the White House for legislative action to combat the growing issue. 

Lawmakers decided to step in to combat the rise of nonconsensual deepfakes with a new bill that allows victims to take action against fake porn made in their likeness.

The DEFIANCE Act of 2024 was introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Ranking Member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Senator Amy Klobuchar, R-Minn.

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Osage Nation’s Victorious War Cry After Judge Rules Wind Farm on Tribal Land Must Be Dismantled: ‘This Is Our Homeland’

The Osage Nation in Oklahoma won a great victory for American property rights last week after a judge ordered the dismantling of a renewable energy wind farm that was erected without permission on their tribal lands.

One of the main reasons the Native American council opposed the wind farm was to protect their mineral rights, not to mention their ability to control their own ancestral homeland.

But the battle has been raging in court for a decade already, as the Osage Nation and its Mineral Council worked to eliminate the facilitates of Osage Wind LLC, Enel Kansas LLC and Enel Green Power North America Inc.

The victory was total. U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled in the case in Tulsa last week that the Osage Nation was awarded injunctive relief via “ejectment of the wind turbine farm for continuing trespass,” according to Tulsa World.

The judge ruled that the wind turbine facility constituted “mining” and required a lease from the Osage Nation’s Minerals Council, something the wind farm companies neglected to do when erecting their turbines.

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Reddit must share IP addresses of piracy-discussing users, film studios say

For the third time in less than a year, film studios with copyright infringement complaints against a cable Internet provider are trying to force Reddit to share information about users who have discussed piracy on the site.

In 2023, film companies lost two attempts to have Reddit unmask its users. In the first instance, US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech meant Reddit didn’t have to disclose the names, email addresses, and other account registration information for nine Reddit users. Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a copyright infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 movie titles, including Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Last Blood, and Tesla.

In the second instance, the same companies sued Astound Broadband-owned ISP Grande, again for alleged copyright infringement occurring over the ISP’s network. The studios subpoenaed Reddit for user account information, including “IP address registration and logs from 1/1/2016 to present, name, email address, and other account registration information” for six Reddit users, per a July 2023 court filing.

In August, a federal court again quashed that subpoena, citing First Amendment rights. In her ruling, Beeler noted that while the First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, the film producers had already received the names of 118 Grande subscribers. She also said the film producers had failed to prove that “the identifying information is directly or materially relevant or unavailable from another source.”

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Inmate who identifies as a trans Muslim woman sues NYC for $22 MILLION after being placed in a men’s detention center while waiting for domestic abuse trial

A transgender woman is suing the City of New York after they were placed in a  men’s detention center while awaiting transfer to another state on domestic violence charges. 

Ali Miles, who also goes by Dylan Miles, was born a biological male but is in ‘the process of transitioning into a woman’, wears women’s clothing and is undergoing hormone therapy. 

Miles, a self-identified Muslim woman, is now seeking more than $22,000,000 in compensation, claiming she was discriminated based on gender identity.

Miles was held at the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island from June to July 2022 before being transferred to Yavapai County Jail in Arizona. 

Subsequently, she was convicted of aggravated harassment, disorderly conduct, harassment, threatening or intimidating, and false reporting to a law enforcement agency.

In October of 2022, she was placed on supervised probation for a period of three years and sentenced to 312 days in jail.

The lawsuit, filed on August 24, 2023, states that despite expressing a female gender identity and allegedly having a court order for her to be placed in a female unit, Miles was housed in a male facility at Rikers. 

The filing contends that Miles faced discrimination, assault, and human rights violations during this time despite ‘wearing women’s clothing and in all appearance expresses as a person of the female gender.’

Following her arrest, Miles informed a judge about being transgender and the need for special housing, with the court purportedly agreeing.

However, Miles alleges that after being placed in a male jail, she suffered ‘shock and distress.’ 

‘As Miles approached the inside of the building, Miles realized it was a male jail which caused shock, panic and fright to Miles,’ the suit reads. 

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Feds Will Release Marijuana Rescheduling Memo And Related Documents ‘In Their Entirety’ In Response To Lawsuit

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has agreed to release documents related to its recommendation to federally reschedule marijuana “in their entirety” amid litigation over a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was filed by a lawyer last year.

“Good afternoon and thank you for your patience,” a Department of Justice attorney handling the case said in an email to attorney Matt Zorn on Thursday. “The agency has advised that it will release the letter and its enclosures in their entirety.”

Zorn posted a screenshot of the email on his blog, noting that the release could mean that “rescheduling is imminent—or not.”

When the government announces a marijuana rescheduling through a Federal Register notice, he pointed out, it would “attach the letter and its enclosures” to that posting.

Zorn last month obtained more than 250 pages of the rescheduling advisory letter and supporting documents sent by HHS to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) last year, though the vast majority were released only in highly redacted form.

In a phone interview with Marijuana Moment, Zorn said the new development comes after a “little scuffle” with the federal government over the timeline in his FOIA lawsuit. The Justice Department had filed a motion to vacate a deadline for summary judgement that was set for January 18, and while Zorn said he would typically accept such a request, he instead filed an opposing brief and the judge ultimately denied the government’s motion.

He added that, “realistically, the lawsuit could have accelerated” the timing of the government’s scheduling announcement, though it’s also possible that just the letter will be released without DEA immediately announcing a decision in the ongoing scheduling review.

In October, HHS released a highly redacted version of the one-page letter from the health agency to DEA in response to public records requests by news organizations such as Marijuana Moment and lawyers, including Zorn.

Shane Pennington, a lawyer who co-writes the On Drugs blog with Zorn, applauded his colleague’s work in pushing for the documents to be released.

“Matt has demonstrated once again that litigation is a powerful tool for unlocking doors, solving problems, and doing the ‘impossible,’” he told Marijuana Moment in an email. “I’m proud to work with him on On Drugs and so many other projects.”

Broadly, the documents are believed to discuss new scientific information that’s come to light in recent years, which HHS suggests might necessitate rescheduling marijuana.

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Landmark Case Means Americans Can Now Sue Big Pharma for Vaccine Injuries

Up until now, the drug companies have been shielded from liability for all the COVID vaccine injuries and deaths that they have caused. They’re protected by something called the PREP Act, which stands for Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness. A judge in a landmark Michigan case, however, has now ruled that the PREP Act does not shield the Big Pharma companies from liability if their medicines are contaminated.

That’s it. The floodgates are finally open. If you were hurt by a COVID shot or if one of your loved ones died from it, you can now sue the Big Pharma companies.

The Michigan case was brought by Dan Nowacki, an elderly man who was hospitalized with COVID. Mr. Nowacki was treated with Remdesivir, which is a COVID treatment drug made by pharmaceutical company Gilead. Remdesivir is a relatively new treatment, so it’s shielded under the PREP Act.

Mr. Nowacki was treated with Remdesivir intravenously. His attorneys just proved in court that at least two of the vials that Mr. Nowacki was administered were contaminated with shards of glass. It caused him to have two catastrophic strokes in the hospital. He’s now permanently bedridden. About 55,000 vials of Remdesivir were recalled in November of 2021 due to glass contamination.

The judge ruled that the pharmaceutical companies’ liability shielding does not protect them in the case of contamination. If the Big Pharma companies are being protected from being sued, then they still have to meet basic safety standards. They can’t just inject their medicines into people if they know that those medicines are contaminated with shards of glass, arsenic, or… just to name one possible contaminant off the top of our head… cancer-causing monkey viruses.

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