Nevada jury awards $500M in hepatitis case

LAS VEGAS (AP) ? A Nevada jury has ordered the state's largest health management organization to pay $500 million in punitive damages to three plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit stemming from a Las Vegas hepatitis outbreak.

The decision on Tuesday comes after a jury last week found the companies liable for $24 million in compensatory damages.

Plaintiffs' attorneys had asked Health Plan of Nevada and Sierra Health Services to pay almost $2.5 billion in the negligence lawsuit, saying it would warn health corporations against putting profits ahead of patient safety.

They argued the HMO knew a doctor operating an outpatient endoscopy clinic was dangerous but sent patients there anyway.

Attorneys for the two companies argued that a large punitive award would be unreasonable.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

With billions of dollars on the line, a Nevada jury was deliberating Tuesday whether the state's largest health management organization should pay punitive damages in a negligence lawsuit stemming from a Las Vegas hepatitis outbreak called the largest in U.S. history.

The Clark County District Court jury began deliberating the morning after plaintiffs' lawyer Robert Eglet asked them on Monday to order Health Plan of Nevada and Sierra Health Services to pay almost $2.5 billion in punitive damages in the civil lawsuit.

Eglet said the large amount was needed to send a message that corporations shouldn't put profits ahead of patient safety.

Attorney D. Lee Roberts Jr., representing the two companies, argued that such a large award would be unreasonable, disproportionate and ruinous.

Roberts said the jury of five women and three men already sent a message last week, when it found the companies liable for $24 million in compensatory damages to plaintiffs Helen Meyer and Bonnie and Carl Brunson.

Health Plan of Nevada and parent company Sierra Health Services ? subsidiaries of publicly traded UnitedHealth Group Inc. ? have already promised to appeal.

Legal experts couldn't predict Tuesday how long the jury would deliberate or whether it would agree to Eglet's stunning request for punitive damages of more than 1,000 times the compensatory amount awarded last week.

But they said any amount greater than $240 million ran the risk of being slashed.

"Even if the jury were to bless this outrageous request, it's likely the trial judge will reduce it significantly," said Darren McKinney, spokesman for the American Tort Reform Association in Washington, D.C. "And if the trial judge fails to do that, surely the state Supreme Court, in light of previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings, will reduce it."

John Kircher, a Marquette University law professor and author of the 2012 book, "Punitive Damages, Law and Practice," said the high court has essentially capped punitive damages at less than 10 percent of a compensatory damage award.

"It's not automatic," Kircher said. "But the U.S. Supreme Court has said it sees due process problems if the punitive award exceeds compensatory damages by more than a double-digit percentage."

Eglet said he calculated 15 percent of company profits to arrive at punitive damage figures of a little more than $1.9 billion from Health Plan of Nevada and about $590 million from Sierra Health Services.

The plaintiffs' lawyer argued that Health Plan of Nevada treated patients with the legal term "bad faith" when it hired outpatient clinic owner Dr. Dipak Desai to a low-bid contract even though company administrators were warned in advance that Desai was speeding through procedures and pinching pennies so much that patients were at risk of contracting blood-borne diseases.

Roberts argued that Desai was responsible for the hepatitis outbreak, not the companies.

Defense attorneys also argued that they were blocked from showing the jury during the six-week trial that company executives didn't know Desai employed unsafe endoscopy practices while boasting that he performed the fastest colonoscopies in the country.

After the hepatitis outbreak became public in early 2008, the Southern Nevada Health District in Las Vegas notified more than 50,000 people that they were at risk for blood-borne diseases including AIDS and should be tested.

Investigators traced hepatitis C infections of nine people to procedures conducted in 2007 at Desai endoscopy clinics. Health officials said that although hepatitis C was found in another 105 Desai patients, the cases weren't conclusively linked to procedures at his clinics.

Desai, once a powerful member of the state Board of Medical Examiners, wasn't named in the civil lawsuit involving Meyer and the Brunsons.

He has denied wrongdoing, declared bankruptcy and surrendered his medical license, but faces trial in state court later this month and federal court next month on separate criminal charges stemming from the outbreak.

Desai's lawyers have fought for years to prove that he is so incapacitated by strokes and other physical ailments that he is unfit for trial.

_____

Find Ken Ritter on Twitter: http://twitter.com/krttr

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2013-04-09-US-Hepatitis-Exposure-Insurers/id-cf7b0c3ba9894b898c4d90bb7b9a860e

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Microsoft Responds to Facebook's Android OS Overlay Announcement

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Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson scholar, dies at 91

Robert V. Remini, an award-winning scholar of Andrew Jackson and 19th century politics who viewed Washington firsthand in the 21st century when he became the official historian for the U.S. House of Representatives, has died. He was 91.

Remini, who retired from the House in 2010, died March 28 at Evanston Hospital after suffering a stroke, the University of Illinois at Chicago announced in a news release. Remini was a professor emeritus at the school.

Learned, readable and productive, Remini wrote and co-authored more than 20 books, starting in 1959 with "Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party." On Jackson alone, he completed at least 10 books, including an influential trilogy of which the finale won the National Book Award in 1984. Benjamin Walker, star of the Broadway musical "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson," has said he read Remini as part of his research.

Rep. Dennis Hastert, a fellow Illinois resident and then-Speaker, appointed Remini historian of the House in 2005. Three years earlier, Remini had been asked by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington to write a Congressional history, "The House," for which Remini interviewed legislators and sat in on Congressional proceedings, was published in 2006.

Remini also wrote biographies of President John Quincy Adams, the celebrated orator Daniel Webster and Mormon founder Joseph Smith. He was openly unhappy with the recent divisions in Congress and wrote often about the days when deals among enemies could be reached, including the pre-Civil War history "At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise that Saved the Union," published in 2010.

Remini himself was willing to take sides. In "A Short History of the United States," which came out in 2008, he wrote that the Bush administration had been "itching to start a war with Iraq" and faulted the conflict as futile, poorly managed and expensive. Remini also criticized Bush as indifferent to civil liberties and for successfully pushing through tax cuts that favored the rich.

A steady admirer of Jackson, who was among the country's most idolized and divisive presidents, Remini celebrated him as a self-made man, patriot and populist who opened up American society and government and resisted his fellow Southerners' desire to secede. Remini noted Jackson's harsh positions on slavery and the treatment of Indians, but still found that Jackson "profoundly assisted" the country's "rise to greatness" and "proved for all time the reality and splendor of the American dream."

Historian Andrew R.L. Cayton would declare that Remini was "as tenacious a champion as any president could ever hope to have." Remini came of age when scholars followed the "great man" theory of history, history as determined by individuals with power. He was tougher on Jackson than previous biographers, notably Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., but was still criticized on occasion as too close to his subject.

"He has mastered in all their complex detail the many issues and events of Jackson's private and public life, but in doing so he has come to see the world too much from Jackson's point of view," historian John William Ward wrote in The New York Times in 1981 as he reviewed the trilogy's second volume.

"If ... we want to know more about Andrew Jackson, there is no better place to turn than this book. If, however, we wish to know more about the shaping of our society, which has entered into the shaping of ourselves, then we will have to turn somewhere else."

A native of New York, Remini was born in 1921. He grew up during the Great Depression, but thanks to his winning a scholarship from the Mothers Club of Long Island, he became the first of his family to attend college. He was an undergraduate at Fordham University, received a master's and Ph.D from Columbia University and spent much of his academic career in the history department of the University of Illinois in Chicago.

During World War II, he served in the Navy. He had planned to become a lawyer, but found himself reading history during idle times at sea. At Columbia after the war, he studied for his master's degree under Richard Hofstadter, then a new faculty member, but eventually an influential and popular historian who helped set Remini's scholarly path.

Remini had wanted to write his thesis on John Purroy Mitchell, a New York City mayor in the early 20th century. But Hofstadter told him that Mitchell's papers were not available and suggested Remini try Van Buren ? a 19th century New Yorker, the country's eighth president and an architect of the modern party system. Hofstadter's idea was not spontaneous: Columbia had received a grant to acquire microfilm copies of New York history documents, Van Buren's papers would be obtained first and the school needed a graduate student to review them.

Throughout his research on Van Buren, Remini was drawn to Jackson, a close ally of Van Buren's whose life was "demanding" the attention of the young scholar. After his Van Buren book was published, Remini wrote his first Jackson biography, "The Election of Andrew Jackson," and continued his research through the decades.

By the 1990s, he was sure he knew everything of worth about Jackson only to learn that a document had been discovered in Italy revealing that as a young man Jackson had sworn allegiance to the King of Spain.

"That information came as quite a blow," Remini wrote. "I was staggered. I couldn't believe it. But the facts were indisputable."

Remini married Ruth T. Kuhner in 1948. They had three children.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/robert-remini-andrew-jackson-scholar-dies-91-052218216.html

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GOP dismayed governor doesn't like education bill

SEATTLE (AP) ? Although he endorsed the idea during his campaign, Gov. Jay Inslee is now saying a Republican legislative proposal to give letter grades to public schools is flawed and he doesn't support it.

The Seattle Times (http://is.gd/X6Zhci ) reports the Democratic governor's opposition to Senate Bill 5328 has surprised and disappointed Republican leaders.

But a spokesman for the governor says they shouldn't be surprised. Jaime Smith reports the governor's chief of staff met with Sen. Steve Litzow earlier in the legislative session to express concerns about the school grading bill.

Smith says Inslee is still interested in setting up an A-F grading system for schools. But the details are important. He wants to make sure Washington uses the right criteria, gets stakeholder input and gives schools enough time to prepare.

___

Information from: The Seattle Times, http://www.seattletimes.com

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Source: http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2013/apr/05/gop-dismayed-governor-doesnt-like-education-bill/

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Obama seeks deal, proposes cuts to Social Security

President Barack Obama speaks at the Denver Police Academy in Denver, Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Ratcheting up pressure for Congress to limit access to guns, Obama said that steps taken recently by Colorado to tighten its gun laws show "there doesn't have to be a conflict" between keeping citizens safe and protecting Second Amendment rights to gun ownership. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President Barack Obama speaks at the Denver Police Academy in Denver, Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Ratcheting up pressure for Congress to limit access to guns, Obama said that steps taken recently by Colorado to tighten its gun laws show "there doesn't have to be a conflict" between keeping citizens safe and protecting Second Amendment rights to gun ownership. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama's proposed budget will call for reductions in the growth of Social Security and other benefit programs while still insisting on more taxes from the wealthy in a renewed attempt to strike a broad deficit-cutting deal with Republicans.

The proposal aims for a compromise on the fiscal 2014 budget by combining the president's demand for higher taxes with GOP insistence on reductions in entitlement programs. But the plan was already encountering negative reviews from top Republicans for its insistence on revenue and from liberals and labor for its effect on the social safety net.

Obama would reduce the federal government deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, according to a summary from the Obama administration provided Friday. The president's budget, the first of his second term, incorporates elements from his last offer to House Speaker John Boehner in December. Congressional Republicans rejected that proposal because of its demand for more than a $1 trillion in tax revenue.

"It's not the president's ideal approach to our budget challenges, but it is a serious compromise proposition that demonstrates that he wants to get things done, that he believes we ought to do the business of the American people," said White House press secretary Jay Carney.

Congress and the administration have already secured $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years through budget reductions and with the end-of-year tax increase on the rich. Obama's plan would bring that total to $4.3 trillion over 10 years.

While the budget would not affect current automatic spending cuts that took effect in March, it would replace $1.2 trillion in across-the-board reductions that would have been scheduled to kick over the next nine years.

A key feature of the plan Obama is submitting for the federal budget year beginning Oct. 1 is a revised inflation adjustment called "chained CPI." This new formula would effectively curb annual increases in a broad swath of government programs but would have its biggest impact on Social Security. By encompassing Obama's offer to Boehner, R-Ohio, the plan will also include reductions in Medicare spending, much of it by targeting payments to health care providers and drug companies. The Medicare proposal also would require wealthier recipients to pay higher premiums or co-pays.

Obama's budget proposal also calls for additional tax revenue, including a proposal to place limits on tax-preferred retirement accounts for wealthy taxpayers. Obama has called for limits on tax deductions by the wealthy, a proposal that could generate about $580 billion in revenue over 10 years.

Boehner, in a statement, said House Republicans made clear to Obama last month that he should not make savings in entitlements that both sides agree on contingent on more tax increases.

"If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there's no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes," Boehner said. "That's no way to lead and move the country forward."

The inflation adjustment would reduce federal spending over 10 years by about $130 billion, according to White House estimates. Because it also affects how tax brackets are adjusted, it would also generate about $100 billion in higher taxes and affect even middle income taxpayers.

The reductions in the growth of benefit programs, which would affect veterans, the poor and the older Americans, is sure to anger many Democrats. Labor groups and liberals have long been critical of Obama's offer to Boehner for including such a plan.

The White House has said the cost-of-living adjustments would include protections for "vulnerable" recipients.

"The president should drop these misguided cuts in benefits and focus instead on building support in Congress for investing in jobs." AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare said seniors have averaged a cost-of-living increase of 1.3 percent over four years.

"Arguing that is too generous shows how out of touch Washington is with the real-world economic realities facing average Americans," the organization's president and CEO, Max Richtman, said in a statement. "Adopting the chained CPI is nothing more than a political sleight of hand targeting our nation's middle class and poor."

Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization in Washington, D.C., called the proposal "bad policy and even worse bargaining strategy."

While Obama has proposed the slower cost of living adjustment plan during fiscal negotiations with Republican leaders, placing it in the budget would put the administration's official imprint on the plan and mark a full shift from Obama's stand in 2008 when he campaigned against Republican Party nominee John McCain.

In a Sept. 6, 2008, speech to AARP, Obama said: "John McCain's campaign has suggested that the best answer for the growing pressures on Social Security might be to cut cost-of-living adjustments or raise the retirement age. Let me be clear: I will not do either."

Administration officials insist Obama would only agree to the reductions in benefit programs if they are accompanied by increases in revenue, a difficult demand given the strong anti-tax sentiment of House Republicans.

That Obama would include such a plan in his budget is hardly surprising. White House aides have said for weeks that the president's offer to Boehner in December remained on the table. Not including it in the budget would have constituted a remarkable retreat from his bargaining position.

Obama's budget, to be released next Wednesday, comes after the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-run Senate passed separate and markedly different budget proposals. House Republicans achieved long-term deficit reductions by targeting safety net programs; Democrats instead protected those programs and called for $1 trillion in tax increases.

But Obama has been making a concerted effort to win Republican support, especially in the Senate. He has even scheduled a dinner with Republican lawmakers on the evening that his budget is released next week.

House Republicans, however, have been adamant in their opposition to increases in taxes, noting that Congress already increased taxes on the wealthy in the first days of January to avoid a so-called fiscal cliff, or automatic, across the board tax increases and spending cuts.

As described by the administration official, the budget proposal would also end a loophole that permits people to obtain unemployment insurance and disability benefits at the same time.

Obama's proposal, however, includes calls for increased spending. It calls for $50 billion in spending on public works projects. It also would make preschool available to more children by increasing the tax on tobacco.

___

AP writer Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

Follow Jim Kuhnhenn on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jkuhnhenn

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-05-Obama-Budget/id-0820e072b2e441cf957f898b583b79ae

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Sri Lanka: 5,000 Tamils marching in London reject LLRC, demand Tamil Eelam

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Is this a limited edition BlackBerry Z10 in blue or just a very nice custom paint job?

Red might be the limited edition color of choice for the BlackBerry Z10, but how would you feel about a blue one? That's exactly what rapper (and avid BB10 fan) Lil 'E has flourished to his Twitter followers. Looking just as bright as the developer-only red version, we can't quite make out whether we're dealing with an (admittedly eye-catching) customized handset or a special gift to one of the company's biggest fans. We've reached out to BlackBerry to check, but until we hear back, there's another fuzzy shot to ogle after the break.

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Afghan teenager fatally stabs US soldier

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Senior U.S. military officials say an Afghan teenager has killed an American soldier in eastern Afghanistan by stabbing him in the neck.

Two officials said Monday that Sgt. Michael Cable, 26, was guarding a meeting of Afghan and U.S. officials in Nangarhar province when the stabbing occurred.

One of the officials estimated the attacker was 16 years old, but he escaped so the age couldn't be verified.

The official says the youth was not believed to be from the Afghan security forces so the Wednesday stabbing is not being classified as an insider attack.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

The Pentagon said in a statement last week that Cable died from injuries sustained when his unit was attacked by enemy forces.

___

Associated Press writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-01-Afghanistan/id-e3ebf8d2873a48c590282c0c50158182

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Texas district attorney, wife found dead at home

KAUFMAN, Texas (AP) ? A central Texas prosecutor and his wife were found killed in their house two months after one of his assistants was gunned down near their office, authorities said.

Investigators found the bodies of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, on Saturday, Kaufman County sheriff's Lt. Justin Lewis said. Police, FBI agents, Texas Rangers and deputies were part of the investigation.

Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was shot to death in a parking lot a block from his office on Jan. 31. No arrests have been made in his death.

Lewis declined to say how the couple died or whether authorities believe their deaths are linked to Hasse's. He wouldn't provide further details. Kaufman County is 33 miles southeast of Dallas.

Kaufman Police Chief Chris Aulbaugh told The Dallas Morning News that the McLellands had been shot in their home and although investigators didn't know if their deaths were related to Hasse's killing, they couldn't discount it.

"It is a shock," Aulbaugh told the newspaper. "It was a shock with Mark Hasse, and now you can just imagine the double shock and until we know what happened, I really can't confirm that it's related but you always have to assume until it's proven otherwise."

Sam Rosander, who lives in the same unincorporated area of Kaufman County as the McLellands, told The Associated Press on Saturday that sheriff's deputies were parked in the district attorney's driveway for about a month after Hasse was killed.

Aulbaugh said recently that the FBI was checking to see if Hasse's killing could be related to the March 19 killing of Colorado Department of Corrections head Tom Clements, who was gunned down after answering the doorbell at his home.

Evan Spencer Ebel, a former Colorado inmate and white supremacist who authorities believe killed Clements and a pizza deliveryman two days earlier, was killed in a March 21 shootout with Texas deputies about 100 miles from Kaufman.

Hasse was chief of the organized crime unit when he was an assistant prosecutor in Dallas County in the 1980s, and he handled similar cases in Kaufman County. After Hasse was killed, McLelland had said Hasse was one of 12 attorneys on his staff, all of whom handle hundreds of cases at a time.

"Anything anybody can think of, we're looking through," McLelland said after Hasse's death.

McLelland graduated from the University of Texas before a 23-year career in the Army, according to the website for the district attorney's office. He later earned his law degree from the Texas Wesleyan School of Law.

He and his wife have two daughters and three sons. One son is a police officer in Dallas.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/texas-district-attorney-wife-found-dead-home-045407488.html

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