Category: Legal News

This past week Attorney James Sabatini argued a case before the Connecticut Supreme Court.  The case involved a failure to obtain informed consent claim brought by the firm on behalf of our client against an oral surgeon.  Our client alleged that he suffered nerve damage as result of a tooth implant procedure and that prior to the procedure the doctor failed to disclose the material risk of nerve damage to him.  The issue before the CT Supreme Court was whether a failure to obtain informed consent cause of action required a written opinion letter pursuant to C.G.S. Section 52-190a to be attached to the lawsuit.  Attorney Sabatini argued that the statute did not apply to failure to obtain informed consent claims since such a claim is judged on a lay standard versus an expert standard.

Chris Henry, the Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver who died in a traffic accident last year, had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a form of degenerative brain damage caused by multiple hits to the head — at the time of his death, according to scientists at the Brain Injury Research Institute, a research center affiliated with West Virginia University. Researchers have now discovered CTE in the brains of more than 50 deceased former athletes, including more than a dozen NFL and college players, pro wrestler Chris Benoit and NHL player Reggie Fleming. Repeated blows to the head are the only known cause of CTE, researchers say. Concussive hits can trigger a buildup of toxic tau protein within the brain, which in turn can create damaging tangles and threads in the neural fibers that connect brain tissue. Victims can lose control of their impulses, suffer depression and memory loss, and ultimately develop dementia.

Almost one year ago, an Air France jetliner crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.  Flight AF447  crashed on June 1, 2009 killing all 228 people onboard.  Efforts to locate the flight-data and cockpit voice recorders commenced shortly after the crash; however, to date, have not been discovered.  The digital devices do not float and are presumed to be resting somewhere in the ocean floor.  The digital devices do emit a signal, but the signal dies about 30 days after activation.  Lat year as the French Navy was looking for the black boxes, signals were detected by one of its submarines.  However, the French navy at that time could not determine whether the signals came from the black boxes.  Recently, the improved software was developed to better analyze the data and now it is believed that the signals detected do come from the black boxes.  This should prove to be a significant step in locating the black boxes.  It narrows the search area to roughly the size of Paris.  Locating and retrieving the black boxes is crucial to determine what caused this terrible aviation disaster.