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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Lawsuit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lawsuit. Show all posts

Monday, November 6, 2023

Abuse Survivors ‘Disgusted’ by Southern Baptist Court Brief

Bob Smietana
Christianity Today
Originally published 26 OCT 23

Here is an excerpt:

Members of the Executive Committee, including Oklahoma pastor Mike Keahbone, expressed dismay at the brief, saying he and other members of the committee were blindsided by it. Keahbone, a member of a task force implementing abuse reforms in the SBC, said the brief undermined survivors such as Thigpen, Woodson, and Lively, who have supported the reforms.

“We’ve had survivors that have been faithful to give us a chance,” he told Religion News Service in a phone interview. “And we hurt them badly.”

The controversy over the amicus brief is the latest crisis for leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which has dealt with a revolving door of leaders and rising legal costs in the aftermath of a sexual abuse crisis in recent years.

The denomination passed abuse reforms in 2022 but has been slow to implement them, relying mostly on a volunteer task force charged with convincing the SBC’s 47,000 congregations and a host of state and national entities to put those reforms into practice. Those delays have led survivors to be skeptical that things would actually change.

Earlier this week, ­the Louisville Courier Journal reported that lawyers for the Executive Committee, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary—the denomination’s flagship seminary in Louisville—and Lifeway had filed the amicus brief earlier this year in a case brought by abuse survivor Samantha Killary.


Here is my summary: 

In October 2023, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) filed an amicus curiae brief in the Kentucky Supreme Court arguing that a new law extending the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims should not apply retroactively. This filing sparked outrage among abuse survivors and some SBC leaders, who accused the denomination of prioritizing its own legal interests over the needs of victims.

The SBC's brief was filed in response to a lawsuit filed by a woman who was sexually abused as a child by a Louisville police officer. The woman is seeking to sue the city of Louisville and the police department, arguing that they should be held liable for her abuse because they failed to protect her.

The SBC's brief argues that the new statute of limitations should not apply retroactively because it would create a "windfall" for abuse survivors who would not have been able to sue under the previous law. The brief also argues that applying the new law retroactively would be unfair to institutions like the SBC, which could be faced with a flood of lawsuits.

Abuse survivors and some SBC leaders have criticized the brief as being insensitive to the needs of victims. They argue that the SBC is more interested in protecting itself from lawsuits than in ensuring that victims of abuse are able to seek justice.

In a joint statement, three abuse survivors said they were "sickened and saddened to be burned yet again by the actions of the SBC against survivors." They accused the SBC of "proactively choosing to side against a survivor and with an abuser and the institution that enabled his abuse."

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Yale University settles lawsuit alleging it pressured students with mental health issues to withdraw

Associated Press
Originally posted 25 Aug 23

Yale University and a student group announced Friday that they've reached a settlement in a federal lawsuit that accused the Ivy League school of discriminating against students with mental health disabilities, including pressuring them to withdraw.

Under the agreement, Yale will modify its policies regarding medical leaves of absence, including streamlining the reinstatement process for students who return to campus. The student group, which also represents alumni, had argued the process was onerous, discouraging students for decades from taking medical leave when they needed it most.

The settlement is a “watershed moment” for the university and mental health patients, said 2019 graduate Rishi Mirchandani, a co-founder of Elis for Rachael, the group that sued. It was formed to help students with mental health issues in honor of a Yale student who took her own life.

“This historic settlement affirms that students with mental health needs truly belong," Mirchandani said.

A joint statement from Elis for Rachael and Yale, released on Friday, confirmed the agreement "to resolve a lawsuit filed last November in federal district court related to policies and practices impacting students with mental health disabilities.”

Under the agreement, Yale will allow students to study part-time if they have urgent medical needs. Elis for Rachael said it marks the first time the university has offered such an option. Students granted the accommodation at the beginning of a new term will receive a 50% reduction in tuition.

“Although Yale describes the circumstances for this accommodation as ‘rare,’ this change still represents a consequential departure from the traditional all-or-nothing attitude towards participation in academic life at Yale,” the group said in a statement.

The dean of Yale College, Pericles Lewis, said he was “pleased with today’s outcome.”


The potential good news: The lawsuit against Yale is a step towards ensuring that students with mental health disabilities have the same opportunities as other students. It is also a reminder that colleges and universities have a responsibility to create a supportive environment for all students, regardless of their mental health status.

Sunday, August 20, 2023

When Scholars Sue Their Accusers. Francesca Gino is the Latest. Such Litigation Rarely Succeeds.

Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally posted 18 AUG 23

Francesca Gino has made headlines twice since June: once when serious allegations of misconduct involving her work became public, and again when she filed a $25-million lawsuit against her accusers, including Harvard University, where she is a professor at the business school.

The suit itself met with a barrage of criticism from those who worried that, as one scientist put it, it would have a “chilling effect on fraud detection.” A smaller number of people supported the move, saying that Harvard and her accusers had abandoned due process and that they believed in Gino’s integrity.How the case will play out, of course, remains to be seen. But Gino is hardly the first researcher to sue her critics and her employer when faced with misconduct findings. As the founders of Retraction Watch, a website devoted to covering problems in the scientific literature, we’ve reported many of these kinds of cases since we launched our blog in 2010. Platintiffs tend to claim defamation, but sometimes sue over wrongful termination or employment discrimination, and these kinds of cases typically end up in federal courts. A look at how some other suits fared might yield recommendations for how to limit the pain they can cause.The first thing to know about defamation and employment suits is that most plaintiffs, but not all, lose. Mario Saad, a diabetes researcher at Brazil’s Unicamp, found that out when he sued the American Diabetes Association in the very same federal district court in Massachusetts where Gino filed her case.Saad was trying to prevent Diabetes, the flagship research journal of the American Diabetes Association, from publishing expressions of concern about four of his papers following allegations of image manipulation. He lost that effort in 2015, and has now had 18 papers retracted.

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Such cases can be extremely expensive — not only for the defense, whether the costs are borne by institutions or insurance companies, but also for the plaintiffs. Ask Carlo Croce and Mark Jacobson.

Croce, a cancer researcher at Ohio State University, has at various points sued The New York Times, a Purdue University biologist named David Sanders, and Ohio State. He has lost all of those cases, including on appeal. The suits against the Times and Sanders claimed that a front-page story in 2017 that quoted Sanders had defamed Croce. His suit against Ohio State alleged that he had been improperly removed as department chair.

Croce racked up some $2 million in legal bills — and was sued for nonpayment. A judge has now ordered Croce’s collection of old masters paintings to be seized and sold for the benefit of his lawyers, and has also garnished Croce’s bank accounts. Another judgment means that his lawyers may now foreclose on his house to recoup their costs. Ohio State has been garnishing his wages since March by about $15,600 each month, or about a quarter of his paycheck. He continues to earn more than $800,000 per year from the university, even after a professorship and the chair were taken away from him.

When two researchers published a critique of the work of Mark Jacobson, an energy researcher at Stanford University, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jacobson sued them along with the journal’s publisher for $10 million. He dropped the case just months after filing it.

But thanks to a so-called anti-SLAPP statute, “designed to provide for early dismissal of meritless lawsuits filed against people for the exercise of First Amendment rights,” a judge has ordered Jacobson to pay $500,000 in legal fees to the defendants. Jacobson wants Stanford to pay those costs, and California’s labor commissioner said the university had to pay at least some of them because protecting his reputation was part of Jacobson’s job. The fate of those fees, and who will pay them, is up in the air, with Jacobson once again appealing the judgment against him.

Sunday, August 6, 2023

Harvard professor accused of research fraud files defamation lawsuit against university, academics

Alex Koller
The Boston Globe
Originally posted 4 August 23

Here is an excerpt:

In the filing, Gino, a renowned behavioral scientist who studies the psychology of decisions, denied having ever falsified or fabricated data. She alleged that Harvard’s investigation into her work was unfair and biased.

The lawsuit alleges that the committee did not prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Gino “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” falsified or fabricated data, as Harvard policy required, and “ignored” exculpatory evidence. The suit also decries Data Colada’s posts as a “vicious, defamatory smear campaign.” The blog’s inquiries into Gino’s work initially sparked Harvard’s investigation.

In a statement posted to LinkedIn Wednesday, Gino refuted allegations against her and explained her decision to take legal action against Harvard and Data Colada.

“I want to be very clear: I have never, ever falsified data or engaged in research misconduct of any kind,” she wrote. “Today I had no choice but to file a lawsuit against Harvard University and members of the Data Colada group, who worked together to destroy my career and reputation despite admitting they have no evidence proving their allegations.”

She added that the university and authors “reached outrageous conclusions based entirely on inference, assumption, and implausible leaps of logic.”

The lawsuit accuses all of the defendants of defamation, and also accuses Harvard of gender discrimination, breach of contract, and bad faith and unfair dealing with Gino, who has been a tenured professor of business administration at Harvard since 2014.

Gino was first notified by Harvard of fraud allegations against her work in October 2021, according to the suit. She then learned that the university would conduct its own investigation in April 2022.

The filing alleges that Harvard’s investigation committee interviewed six of Gino’s collaborators and two research assistants, all of whom defended the integrity of Gino’s practices and said they had no evidence Gino had ever pressured anyone to produce a specific result.

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

UnitedHealthcare Tried to Deny Coverage to a Chronically Ill Patient. He Fought Back, Exposing the Insurer’s Inner Workings.

By D. Armstron, R. Rucker, & M. Miller
ProPublica.org
Originally published 2 FEB 23

Here is an excerpt:

Insurers have wide discretion in crafting what is covered by their policies, beyond some basic services mandated by federal and state law. They often deny claims for services that they deem not “medically necessary.”

When United refused to pay for McNaughton's treatment for that reason, his family did something unusual. They fought back with a lawsuit, which uncovered a trove of materials, including internal emails and tape-recorded exchanges among company employees. Those records offer an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at how one of America's leading health care insurers relentlessly fought to reduce spending on care, even as its profits rose to record levels.

As United reviewed McNaughton’s treatment, he and his family were often in the dark about what was happening or their rights. Meanwhile, United employees misrepresented critical findings and ignored warnings from doctors about the risks of altering McNaughton’s drug plan.

At one point, court records show, United inaccurately reported to Penn State and the family that McNaughton’s doctor had agreed to lower the doses of his medication. Another time, a doctor paid by United concluded that denying payments for McNaughton’s treatment could put his health at risk, but the company buried his report and did not consider its findings. The insurer did, however, consider a report submitted by a company doctor who rubber-stamped the recommendation of a United nurse to reject paying for the treatment.

United declined to answer specific questions about the case, even after McNaughton signed a release provided by the insurer to allow it to discuss details of his interactions with the company. United noted that it ultimately paid for all of McNaughton’s treatments. In a written response, United spokesperson Maria Gordon Shydlo wrote that the company’s guiding concern was McNaughton’s well-being.

“Mr. McNaughton’s treatment involves medication dosages that far exceed FDA guidelines,” the statement said. “In cases like this, we review treatment plans based on current clinical guidelines to help ensure patient safety.”

But the records reviewed by ProPublica show that United had another, equally urgent goal in dealing with McNaughton. In emails, officials calculated what McNaughton was costing them to keep his crippling disease at bay and how much they would save if they forced him to undergo a cheaper treatment that had already failed him. As the family pressed the company to back down, first through Penn State and then through a lawsuit, the United officials handling the case bristled.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Psychiatry wars: the lawsuit that put psychoanalysis on trial

Rachel Aviv
The Guardian
Originally posted 11 OCT 22

Here is an excerpt:

In the lawsuit, the 20th century’s two dominant explanations for mental distress collided. No psychiatric malpractice lawsuit has attracted more prominent expert witnesses than Ray’s, according to Alan Stone, the former president of the APA. The case became “the organising nidus” around which leading biological psychiatrists “pushed their agenda”, he told me.

At a hearing before an arbitration panel, which would determine whether the case could proceed to trial, the Lodge presented Ray’s attempt to medicalise his depression as an abdication of responsibility. In a written report, one of the Lodge’s expert witnesses, Thomas Gutheil, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard, observed that the language of the lawsuit, much of which Ray had drafted himself, exemplified Ray’s struggle with “‘externalisation’ – that is, the tendency to blame one’s problems on others”. Gutheil concluded that Ray’s “insistence on the biological nature of his problem is not only disproportionate but seems to me to be yet another attempt to move the problem away from himself: it is not I, it’s my biology.”

The Lodge’s experts attributed Ray’s recovery at Silver Hill at least in part to his romantic entanglement with a female patient, which gave him a jolt of self-esteem.

“It’s a demeaning comment,” Ray responded when he testified. “And it just speaks to the whole total disbelief in the legitimacy of the symptomatology and the disease.”

The Lodge lawyers tried to chip away at Ray’s description of depression, arguing that he had shown moments of pleasure at the Lodge, such as when he had played piano.

“The sheer mechanical banging of ragtime rhythms on that dilapidated old piano on the ward was almost an act of agitation rather than a creative pleasurable act,” Ray responded. “Just because I played ping-pong, or had a piece of pizza, or smiled, or may have made a joke, or made googly eyes at a good-looking girl, it did not mean that I was capable of truly sustaining pleasurable feelings.” He went on, “I would say to myself: ‘I am living, but I am not alive.’”

Manuel Ross, Ray’s analyst from the Lodge, testified for more than eight hours. He had read a draft of Ray’s memoir and he rejected the possibility that Ray had been cured by antidepressants. He was not a recovered man, because he was still holding on to the past. (“That’s what I call melancholia as used in the 1917 article,” he said, referring to Freud’s essay Mourning and Melancholia.)

Ross said that he had hoped Ray would develop insight at the Lodge. “That’s the true support,” he said, “if one understands what is going on in one’s life.” He wanted Ray to let go of his need to be a star doctor, the richest and most powerful in his field, and to accept a life in which he was one of the “ordinary mortals who labour in the medical vineyard”.

Ray’s lawyer, Philip Hirschkop, one of the most prominent civil rights attorneys in the country, asked Ross: “As an analyst, do you have to sometimes look inside yourself to make sure you’re not reacting to your own feelings about someone?”

“Oh yes,” Ross said. “Oh yes.”

“You who’ve locked yourself into one position for 19 years with no advancement in position other than salary, might you be a little resentful of this man who makes so much more money, and now he’s here as your patient?” Hirschkop asked.

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Prominent psychiatrist accused of sexually exploiting patients

Michael Rezendes
The Boston Globe
Originally posted February 21, 2019

A prominent North Shore psychiatrist is facing lawsuits from three female patients who say he lured them into degrading sexual relationships, including beatings, conversations about bondage, and, in one case, getting a tattoo of the doctor’s initials to show his “ownership” of her, according to court documents.

The women allege that Dr. Keith Ablow, an author who was a contributor to Fox News network until 2017, abused his position while treating them for acute depression, leaving them unable to trust authority figures and plagued with feelings of shame and self-recrimination.

“He began to hit me when we engaged in sexual activities,” wrote one plaintiff, a New York woman, in a sworn affidavit filed with her lawsuit. “He would have me on my knees and begin to beat me with his hands on my breasts,” she wrote, “occasionally saying, ‘I own you,’ or ‘You are my slave.’”

The malpractice lawsuits, two of them filed on Thursday in Essex Superior Court and a third filed last year, paint a picture of a therapist who encouraged women to trust and rely on him, then coaxed them into humiliating sexual activities, often during treatment sessions for which they were charged.

When the New York woman had trouble paying her therapy bills, she said, Ablow advised her to work as an escort or stripper because the work was lucrative.

Although the women used their real names in their lawsuits, the Globe is withholding their identities at their request.  The Globe does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse without their consent.

The info is here.

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Court awards $1.5 million to Anniston couple who lost custody of child

Tim Lockette
The Anniston Star
Originally posted December 13, 2018

A Calhoun County jury ordered a psychologist to pay $1.5 million in damages to a couple who lost custody of their child following the psychologist’s evaluation of them.

John and Farrah Lynn were Anniston residents in 2014, when the Department of Human Resources placed their infant son Oliver in foster care. Oliver Lynn, who had been born with a birth defect, died a little more than a month later.

“Everybody, even DHR, said there was nothing wrong with this family,” said the couple’s lawyer, George Monk. “Only the psychologist objected.”

According to court documents, Oliver Lynn’s birth defect required surgery at Children’s Hospital in Birmingham. The hospital contacted DHR before the infant was released back to the Lynns, setting up an in-home visit to determine whether the Lynns were able to care for the child while he was recovering from surgery.

Social workers found no problem at the Lynns’ Anniston home, Monk said, but did request a psychological assessment of both parents. Dennis Sizelove, a clinical psychologist and owner of Faith-Based Psychological Associates in Sheffield, examined both John and Farrah Lynn.

Sizelove recommended removing the child from the home, citing “occupational, social, and emotional functioning” that put the infant at risk of harm. Sizelove also noted a “self-reported inability to read” on behalf of both the parents.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Dartmouth Allowed 3 Professors to Sexually Harass and Assault Students, Lawsuit Charges

Nell Gluckman
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published November 15, 2018

Seven current and former students sued Dartmouth College on Thursday, saying it had failed to protect them from three psychology and brain-science professors who sexually harassed and assaulted them. In the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in New Hampshire, they say that when they and others reported horrific treatment, the college did nothing, allowing the professors’ behavior to continue until last spring, when one retired and the other two resigned.

The 72-page complaint, which seeks class-action status, describes an academic department where heavy drinking, misogyny, and sexual harassment were normalized. It says that the three professors — Todd F. Heatherton, William M. Kelley, and Paul J. Whalen — “leered at, groped, sexted,” and “intoxicated” students. One former student alleges she was raped by Kelley, and a current student alleges she was raped by Whalen. Dartmouth ended a Title IX investigation after the professors left, and, as far as the complainants could tell, did not attempt to examine how the abuse occurred or how it could be prevented it from happening again, according to the complaint.

In a written statement, a Dartmouth spokesman said that college officials “respectfully but strongly disagree with the characterizations of Dartmouth’s actions in the complaint and will respond through our own court filings.”

The info is here.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Horrific deaths, brutal treatment: Mental illness in America’s jails

Gary A. Harki
The Virginian-Pilot
Originally published August 23, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

“We are arresting people who have no idea what the laws are or the rules are because they're off their medications,” said Nashville Sheriff Daron Hall, a vice president of the National Sheriffs’ Association. “You'd never arrest someone for a heart attack, but you're comfortable arresting someone who is diagnosed mentally ill. No other country in the world is doing it this way.”

In addition to causing pain and suffering for people with mental illness, the practice is costing municipalities millions.

At least 53 percent of the deaths examined have resulted in a lawsuit. Combined, the cases have cost municipalities at least $145 million. The true cost is much higher – in many cases, lawsuits are still pending and in others the settlement amount is secret. The figures also do not take into account lawyers’ fees.

The article is here.

There are a series of articles related to mental health issues in prison.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Wells Fargo's ethics hotline calls are on the rise

Matt Egan
CNN.com
Originally posted June 19, 2018

A top Wells Fargo (WFC) executive said on Tuesday that employees are increasingly using the bank's confidential hotline to report bad behavior.

"Our volumes increased on our ethics line. We're glad they did. People raised their hand," said Theresa LaPlaca, who leads a conduct office that Wells Fargo created last year.

"That is success for me," LaPlaca said at the ACFE Global Fraud Conference in Las Vegas.

Reassuring Wells Fargo workers to trust the bank's ethics hotline is no easy task. Nearly half a dozen workers told CNNMoney in 2016 that they were fired by Wells Fargo after calling the hotline to try to stop the bank's fake-account problem.

Last year, Wells Fargo was ordered to re-hire and pay $5.4 million to a whistleblower who was fired after calling the ethics hotline to report suspected fraud. Wells Fargo faces multiple lawsuits from employees who say they protested sales misconduct. The bank said in a filing that it also faces state law whistleblower actions filed with the Labor Department alleging retaliation.

The information is here.

Monday, April 16, 2018

The Seth Rich lawsuit matters more than the Stormy Daniels case

Jill Abramson
The Guardian
Originally published March 20, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

I’ve previously written about Fox News’ shameless coverage of the 2016 unsolved murder of a young former Democratic National Committee staffer named Seth Rich. Last week, ABC News reported that his family has filed a lawsuit against Fox, charging that several of its journalists fabricated a vile story attempting to link the hacked emails from Democratic National Committee computers to Rich, who worked there.

After the fabricated story ran on the Fox website, it was retracted, but not before various on-air stars, especially Trump mouthpiece Sean Hannity, flogged the bogus conspiracy theory suggesting Rich had something to do with the hacked messages.

This shameful episode demonstrated, once again, that Rupert Murdoch’s favorite network, and Trump’s, has no ethical compass and had no hesitation about what grief this manufactured story caused to the 26-year-old murder victim’s family. It’s good to see them striking back, since that is the only tactic that the Murdochs and Trumps of the world will respect or, perhaps, will force them to temper the calumny they spread on a daily basis.

Of course, the Rich lawsuit does not have the sex appeal of the Stormy case. The rightwing echo chamber will brazenly ignore its self-inflicted wounds. And, for the rest of the cable pundit brigades, the DNC emails and Rich are old news.

The article is here.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

The Squishy Ethics of Sex With Robots

Adam Rogers
Wired.com
Originally published February 2, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Most of the world is ready to accept algorithm-enabled, internet-connected, virtual-reality-optimized sex machines with open arms (arms! I said arms!). The technology is evolving fast, which means two inbound waves of problems. Privacy and security, sure, but even solving those won’t answer two very hard questions: Can a robot consent to having sex with you? Can you consent to sex with it?

One thing that is unquestionable: There is a market. Either through licensing the teledildonics patent or risking lawsuits, several companies have tried to build sex technology that takes advantage of Bluetooth and the internet. “Remote connectivity allows people on opposite ends of the world to control each other’s dildo or sleeve device,” says Maxine Lynn, a patent attorney who writes the blog Unzipped: Sex, Tech, and the Law. “Then there’s also bidirectional control, which is going to be huge in the future. That’s when one sex toy controls the other sex toy and vice versa.”

Vibease, for example, makes a wearable that pulsates in time to synchronized digital books or a partner controlling an app. We-vibe makes vibrators that a partner can control, or set preset patterns. And so on.

The article is here.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

State Supreme Court Establishes Right To Sue Over Medical Record Breaches

Edmund H. Mahony
Hartford Courant
Originally published January 10, 2018

The state Supreme Court established Thursday that patients in Connecticut have the right to sue doctors and other health care providers for the unauthorized and negligent disclosure of their confidential medical records.

The majority decision creates new state law and adds Connecticut to a growing number of states that allow patients to sue for damages over the release of private records by their physicians. Courts in Connecticut have held previously — as have courts elsewhere — that private suits were blocked by federal law under the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA law.

HIPAA laws establish procedures to protect medical records and empower government to impose civil and criminal penalties for violation. But HIPAA does not permit private suits to collect damages for unauthorized disclosures.

“Finally we have a remedy in Connecticut that recognizes that there is a duty of confidentiality, the breach of which can lead to compensation for damages,” said attorney Bruce L. Elstein of Trumbull, whose client, Emily Byrne, sued over an unauthorized release of her medical history.

The article is here.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Psychologists are facing consequences for helping with torture. It’s not enough.

Roy Eidelson
The Washington Post
Originally posted October 13, 2017

In August, two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, settled a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three former CIA detainees. The psychologists were accused of designing, implementing and overseeing the CIA’s experimental program of torture and abuse (for which their consulting firm received tens of millions of dollars). The evidence against them was compelling: a detailed Senate report, multiple depositions, newly declassified documents and even Mitchell’s memoir . Prior to settling, Mitchell and Jessen denied any legal responsibility, and their attorneys argued their inculpability by comparing them to the low-level technicians whose employers provided lethal gas for Hitler’s extermination camps.

As a psychologist who has spent the past decade working with colleagues and other human rights advocates to reset my profession’s moral compass against torture, I recognize this settlement as an achievement, even if it’s not the damning finding of liability I would have preferred. The case marks the first instance of legal accountability of any kind for psychologists who abandoned ethical standards — and basic decency — while claiming they were merely following government orders on torture. Getting to this point was an uphill battle. And there’s still a long way to go before psychologists’ participation in torture is ended for good.

The article is here.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Lawsuit Over a Suicide Points to a Risk of Antidepressants

Roni Caryn Rabin
The New York Times
Originally published September 11, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

The case is a rare instance in which a lawsuit over a suicide involving antidepressants actually went to trial; many such cases are either dismissed or settled out of court, said Brent Wisner, of the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman, which represented Ms. Dolin.

The verdict is also unusual because Glaxo, which has asked the court to overturn the verdict or to grant a new trial, no longer sells Paxil in the United States and did not manufacture the generic form of the medication Mr. Dolin was taking. The company argues that it should not be held liable for a pill it did not make.

Concerns about safety have long dogged antidepressants, though many doctors and patients consider the medications lifesavers.

Ever since they were linked to an increase in suicidal behaviors in young people more than a decade ago, all antidepressants, including Paxil, have carried a “black box” warning label, reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration, saying that they increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, teens and young adults under age 25.

The warning labels also stipulate that the suicide risk has not been seen in short-term studies in anyone over age 24, but urges close monitoring of all patients initiating drug treatment.

The article is here.

Saturday, August 19, 2017

CIA Psychologists Settle Torture Case Acknowledging Abuses

Peter Blumberg and Pamela Maclean
Bloomberg News
Originally published August 17, 2017

Two U.S. psychologists who helped design an overseas CIA interrogation program agreed to settle claims they were responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case.

The ACLU called the accord “historic” because it’s the first CIA-linked torture case of its kind that wasn’t dismissed, but said in a statement the terms of the settlement are confidential.

The case, which was set for a U.S. trial starting Sept. 5, focused on alleged abuses in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at secret “black-site” facilities that operated under President George W. Bush. The lawsuit followed the 2014 release of a congressional report on Central Intelligence Agency interrogation techniques.

The claims against the psychologists, who worked as government contractors, were filed on behalf of two suspected enemy combatants who were later released and a third who died in custody as a result of hypothermia during his captivity. All three men were interrogated at a site in Afghanistan, according to the ACLU.

ACLU lawyer Dror Ladin has said the case was a novel attempt to use the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act to fix blame on U.S. citizens for human-rights violations committed abroad, unlike previous cases brought against foreigners.

The article is here.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Responding to whistleblower’s claims, Duke admits research data falsification

Ray Gronberg
The Herald-Sun
Originally published July 2, 2017

In-house investigators at Duke University believe a former lab tech falsified or fabricated data that went into 29 medical research reports, lawyers for the university say in their answer to a federal whistleblower lawsuit against it.

Duke’s admissions concern the work of Erin Potts-Kant, and a probe it began in 2013 when she was implicated in an otherwise-unrelated embezzlement. The lawsuit, from former lab analyst Joseph Thomas, contends Duke and some of its professors used the phony data to fraudulently obtain federal research grants. He also alleges they ignored warning signs about Potts-Kants’ work, and tried to cover up the fraud.

The university’s lawyers have tried to get the case dismissed, but in April, a federal judge said it can go ahead. The latest filings thus represent Duke’s first answer to the substance of Thomas’ allegations.

Up front, it said Potts-Kant told a Duke investigating committee that she’d faked data that wound up being “included in various publications and grant applications.”

The article is here.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Judge Grants Torture Victims Their First Chance to Pursue Justice

Jenna McLaughlin
The Intercept
Originally published April 22, 2016

A civil suit against the architects of the CIA’s torture program, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, will be allowed to proceed, a federal judge in Spokane, Washington, decided on Friday.

District Judge Justin Quackenbush denied the pair’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit launched against them on behalf of three victims, one dead, of the brutal tactics they designed.

“This is amazing, this is unprecedented,” Steven Watt, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union representing the plaintiffs, told The Intercept after the hearing. “This is the first step towards accountability.”

The article is here.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

When Bad Doctors Happen to Good Patients

By Thomas Moore and Steve Cohen
The New York Times
Originally published August 31, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

That Lavern’s Law wasn’t allowed to come up for a final vote is Albany’s shame. The greater shame is that hospitals don’t put more emphasis on patient safety. As the Lavern’s Law travesty makes clear, we need better solutions. Don’t limit what injured people may collect, and don’t make it more difficult for victims to get their cases heard. Even better for all concerned, keep the negligent act from ever happening in the first place. And there are practical ways to do that.

Doctors and hospitals must do a better job of policing themselves. Six percent of all doctors were estimated to be responsible for 58 percent of all malpractice payments between 1991 and 2005. State licensing agencies must do a much better job of keeping those worst of the worst out of hospitals. The threshold for state medical licensing agencies to initiate reviews should be reduced; in New York it takes six malpractice judgments or settlements. It should be three at most.

The entire article is here.