Heparin Wrongful Death Case in Illinois

Melissa Scott, a dialysis patient, a wife, a mother. Melissa Scott waiting for a transplant, trained by the University of Iowa Hospitals to do her dialysis at home in Davenport, IA. Suddenly in the wee hours of the morning, while doing her nocturnal dialysis, she cries out. By the time her husband gets to her, she is unconscious, laying on the floor, unhooked from the machine.

It is November 30, 2007. No one knows anything about the contamination of Baxter's heparin, beginning at least as early as September of 2007. Though there have been serious adverse reactions in St. Louis earlier that month, no call for caution has been raised, no notification to her doctors or the medical examiner that this could be a suspicious death. No autopsy is performed. The Medical Examiner chooses an old standby: "Air Embolism" to put on the death certificate.

Mark Scott, Melissa's husband, is always suspicious. For days before the fatal attack, she had been getting sicker and sicker while on the dialysis machine. Later in January of 2008 when the FDA announced the Heparin recall, the word Heparin jumped out at him, his wife had been getting heparin. What else that jumped out at Mark Scott was that the symptoms she had been having the days before the attack, were the same symptoms the FDA recall warned about:

• 1) generalized or localized sensations of warmth;
• 2) numbness or tingling of the extremities;
• 3) difficulty swallowing;
• 4) shortness of breath, audible wheezing, or chest tightness;
• 5) low blood pressure/tachycardia; or
• 6) nausea or vomiting.

As the news mounted daily, Mark became progressively disturbed. Mark chose to call the Nolan Law Group, a firm with a track record in mass torts, including the recent $165 million settlement of the Air Philippines crash. Our advice: only a law suit could provide access to all of the documents, all of the expert witnesses to force accountability for this and all of the suspicious deaths and adverse reactions from those who were on heparin during this fateful period.

On April 1st, 2008, in Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago, the Nolan Law Group filed the first wrongful death case in Illinois against Baxter. Baxter is based in nearby Deerfield, IL and the courts of the State of Illinois are the appropriate courts to efficiently deal with the complex and long process of proving not only what killed Melissa Scott, but the why of this catastrophe and how many others were effected.

Next: Reports of serious drug reactions hit record

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TOPICS:

• Reports of serious drug reactions hit record
• Heparin - Misdiagnoses of HIT
• Heparin-bonded Catheters
• Adverse Heparin Reactions: Symptoms and Side Effects
• Drug Stayed on hospital shelves despite recall
• Regulator says hospitals need strict heparin rules
• The New England Journal of Medicine: MIT Study
• FDA: Heparin Warning
• Contaminated Heparin Can Do More than Kill
• Heparin Lawsuit: Areas of Inquiry
• FDA Press Releases
• Scott v. Baxter Lawsuit
• Reporting Heparin Problems
• Understated Adverse Reactions
• Baxter Widens Heparin Recall
• FDA Intercepting Heparin
• FDA Plans For Full-Time Staff in China
• Heparin Purity - China Doesn't Seem to Care
• Baxter Didn't Know About Absence of Inspection
• German Heparin Also Contaminated
• Heparin Contaminant Identified
• Heparin Recall Timeline
• Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2008