Negligence claim

Companies should therefore respond with great care to requests for unlicensed products from practitioners, bearing in mind that there is no legal obligation to comply with such requests. If they do not act with caution, those companies risk becoming involved in a negligence claim, or in a product liability action under the Consumer Protection Act 1987 for suppl)dng a... 

Negligence claims against ophthalmologists involving the use of therapeutic agents may be grouped into three categories ... 

Systemic steroids are also the cause of numerous negligence claims.These drugs have side effects that can result in serious injury, even death, and consequently must be used conservatively. Systemically administered drugs, with their risk of systemic complications, should not be used if a topical route of administration suffices, and practitioners must be prepared to justify the selection of a systemic route of administration when complications result and a topical route of administration initially was not used. Whenever systemic steroids are prescribed, practitioners must warn patients of side effects, monitor patients adequately so that preventable injuries can be detected, and document the care rendered. 

The use of strong miotics in myopic patients has been the cause of negligence claims when therapy has resulted in retinal detachment. Patients who are at risk for detachment should not be treated with miotic agents initially. To comply with the doctrine of informed consent, the use of miotics should be preceded by a discussion with patients of the risks and benefits of the drug chosen. When miotics are used for treatment, patients should be examined carefully to rule out the presence of risk factors (e.g., lattice degeneration) that may increase the likelihood of a retinal detachment. 

The ophthalmic drugs that have been the most frequent causes of product liability and negligence claims are antiglaucoma drugs (i.e., acetazolamide, echothio-phate iodide) and steroids (i.e., hydrocortisone, dexa-methasone sodium phosphate, and prednisolone acetate). 

Product liability could increase R D costs and lengthen the R D process as firms perform defensive studies to help protect themselves from subsequent negligence claims and as they absorb the costs of liability for a drug administered during the clinical R D phase. 

Supervision It is not unusual for lack of supervision or inadequate supervision to be cited in a negligence claim. Teachers supervisory duties include the effective and efficient management of pupils to minimise the potential for negligent actions. 

In Chester v. Afshar, a clinical negligence claim, a surgeon failed to warn his patient of a 1% to 2% risk associated with the procedure that she was to rmdergo. She was, in fact, predisposed to that risk and the House of Lords said that she was entitled to compensation even tirough she was imable to prove that she would not have gone ahead with tire operation had the surgeon warned her of tiraf risk beforehand. 

The growth of codes of conduct (i.e. ethics) over the past few years, which you may be subject to by your employer or organizations to which you belong, also warrants special attention. These codes may be used as evidence in negligence claims that someone may have violated a standard of care for their job or practice of their trade or profession. Don t glaze over codes of conduct dl... 

In order to prevail in a products liability action under a negligence theory, a plaintiff must prove all of the four elements listed and discussed below. Negligence claims are civil actions based on the law of torts. In such actions, the presumption is that the accused party is not liable and the plaintiff has the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence. Preponderance of the evidence is the standard of proof required in ordinary civil actions and refers to proof which leads the finder/trier of fact to find that the existence of the fact is more probable than not. Preponderance of the evidence is a lower standard of proof as compared to the standards of clear and convincing and beyond a reasonable doubt. 

In short, the abolition of privity opened manufacturers to HabiUty for negligence. Plaintiffs, however, could not estabUsh claims merely by proving that they were harmed by defective products from a manufacturer. The requirement that classic fault be estabUshed often stood as a formal barrier to a successhil tort action. 

We have already encountered the ir, a, and p quantities. The 8h term is inserted to account for the cavity effect. Equation (8-80) is a 12-parameter equation for which considerable generality is claimed, in that it is said to be applicable to chemical rates and equilibria, spectra, solubilities, partition coefficients, and even biological responses. Usually, of course, by judicious selection of solvents, it is possible to reduce the number of parameters by ensuring that some terms are negligible.An example requiring most of the parameters in Eq. (8-80) is the solvolysis/dehydrohalogenation of r-butyl chloride in 21 HBD and non-HBD solvents, for which this correlation was found ... 

An inventor claims to have devised a CO. compressor that requires no shaft work. The device operates at steady state by transferring heat from a feed stream of 2 lb,/s of CO. at 150 psia and 100°F. The CO is compressed to a final pressure of 500 psia and a temperature of 40°F. Kinetic and potential energy effects are negligible. A cold source at -140°F drives the device at a heat transfer rate of 60 Btu/sec. Check the validity of the inventor s claim. 

It is the duty of the consulting engineer to make a recommendation to the client as to the type of supervision required, and the client must not refuse a reasonable request by him for on-site supervision. Where a client refuses a reasonable request for on-site supervision, the consulting engineer should warn him of the possible consequences, otherwise he might face a claim for negligence later. 

An obvious solution would be to undervalue the work done, in order to avoid a claim from the client. The case of Lubenham Fidelities and Investment Co v. South Pembrokeshire District Council (1986) took care of any tendency to undervalue. In that case, the Court of Appeal ruled that the contractor might sue the architect in tort for any damages suffered by him because of the negligent valuation. 

Gustafsson et al. measured the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of molten NaNOs KNO3. The approximate dimension of the foil used for NaNO, was platinum measuring 0.010 X 40 X 86 mm The foil was heated by a constant electric current and the measurements were completed within 10 s. Errors due to radiation were considered to be negligible. The accuracy was claimed to be +2.6% for thermal conductivity and 3% for thermal diffusivity, but the effect of current leak from the metallic foil to the molten salts was neglected. 

Other decarboxylations reported by Takahashi have proved irrep-roducible. The reaction between 2,2 -biphenyldicarboxylic acid anhydride in alkali and mercuric oxide in acetic acid was claimed to give 2 -mercurio-2-biphenylcarboxylate by hemidecarboxylation [Eq. (84)] (97) but yielded instead mercuric 2,2 -biphenyldicarboxylate and negligible decarboxylation [Eq. (85)] (98). Similarly, the reaction between sodium 2,3-pyridinedicarboxylate and mercuric oxide in acetic acid, reported to give... 

Recent developments for reactive C02 sorbents include sterically hindered amines such as 2-amino-2-methyl-l-propanol (AMP) and 1,8-p-methanediamine (MDA) and 2-piperidine ethanol (PE), which are claimed to have good reversible C02 capacity (Veawab et al., 1998) and low-temperature molten salts called ionic liquids (Bates et al., 2002). Ionic liquids are attractive due to their negligible vapor pressure up to their decomposition at... 

A recently filed case in Pennsylvania illustrates a possible new face for liability (Cassidy v. SmithKline Beecham, 1999). The plaintiff claims that the manufacturer of a vaccine for Lyme disease should have warned physicians and patients in its advertisements that 30% of the population ran the risk of developing "treatment-resistant Lyme arthritis" because their particular genotype interacted adversely with the vaccine. This duty to warn is based not in product liability doctrine, but on negligence. 

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