Paralyzed, Mute, and Immobile Patients Manage to File Suits in Faux Botox Case

You Don't Have To Move To Sue

  Eric and Bonnie Kaplan are paralyzed, mute, and immobile in a West Palm Beach hospital. Yet last week this couple, who cannot speak -- and communicate only minutely with their son through brief finger gestures -- filed a lawsuit against the makers and distributors of a botulism toxin they received as a wrinkle treatment, instead of Botox.

Tort lawyers in Florida, innumerable and diabolically nimble, have blown another hole in the once rock-solid wall of limits that used to stand around the good sense of our society.

You can now sue even if you can't move or talk.

But if they could move and talk, it might be worse for the Kaplans -- thus the strategy of the timing of this suit -- for Eric and Bonnie Kaplan are victims of their own bad judgment and possibly their own greed.

Kaplan's Choice

Kaplan is a successful chiropractor and entrepreneur. He lives in an expensive home in a posh neighborhood. He could easily afford the medically unnecessary wrinkle-smoothing cosmetic Botox injections performed by a licensed, board-certified plastic surgeon. But he would have to pay top dollar for those services by that professional in that town.

So Eric made a decision to go an alternate route for his treatment.

An educated, informed, successful health care professional can reasonably be assumed to understand the risks and benefits of obtaining sophisticated care by a local board certified plastic surgeon versus traveling 60 miles to a medical mill lodged in a congested urban strip mall.

Kaplan chose to travel the sixty miles south on I-95 (a dubious judgment itself) where he and his wife received those injections from a defrocked and delicensed osteopath -- a physician who was under investigation for the deaths of five patients. It is not a far leap to speculate that these injections were obtained in this way because it was a financially attractive alternative to the Kaplans.

With Friends Like These...

Kaplan knew McComb personally, so he was not unaware of the man's training, background, ability, and legal problems. Yet he and his wife still chose to take the injections.

Furthermore, when Eric and his wife began to experience light-headedness, double-vision,  paresthesias (numbness), and a faltering ability to talk-- some particularly alarming symptoms in my mind-- they called the owner of the Fort Lauderdale "clinic", another chiropractor, Thomas Toia.

Toia and his son (a medical "technician") drove to the Kaplan's home where one report describes the Kaplans as "panicked." The Toias, however, reassured the poisoned couple that they were "dehydrated" and then decided upon a holistic therapy called a "Myer's cocktail" consisting of vitamin C, magnesium and other vitamins. This bogus therapeutic intervention delayed the Kaplans from seeking legitimate medical care, it seems, for up to a day.

Rather a Martini

But if you were experiencing trouble speaking, and seeing double, would you call a chiropractor? A back cracker? And if you happened to be availed of such a person in that situation and his remedy was a Myer's cocktail, would you drink it? Would you allow the Myer's cocktail to prevent you from seeking legitimate medical care?

Of course not.

The Kaplans chose to call Thomas Toia and they chose to drink his ridiculous cocktail for their dramatic symptoms. It is entirely the fault of the Kaplans. They decided to trust the medical advice of a non physician -- a professional, I might add, who is given license and legitimacy by our society.  And let me tell you, there are chiropractors out there every day giving people similar drinks and performing back cracking maneuvers for all kinds of maladies.  We, as a society, have said that this is okay. So how is Toia at fault?

No doubt, Eric and Bonnie Kaplan are unlucky, and I do not mean to make light of the severity of their catastrophic illnesses, but they put themselves in the position to be unlucky. There would have been much less chance of such unluck in a plastic surgeon's office, but the Kaplans chose to trade that risk for a savings in price. It was the risk they chose to run. And by no definition can Kaplan be defined as an uninformed or unwary consumer.

The Bar Isn't Lowered, It's Been Thrown Away

But does any of this matter? Not in our world of civil litigation. You don't have to be able to move, speak, think for yourself, use your expertise or be responsible for your choices. You don't have to make reasonable decisions or be responsible. You don't even have to get out of bed. All you have to do is wiggle your fingers and you're suing.

Comments

[skintips101]

As we catch hold of age, our skin slowly loses its moisture and elasticity, making our complexion look dull and blister. Every age brings along it's own problems and some effective skin treatments as mentioned below can fight with these problems at different stages of your life. Acne Anti Aging Skin Care http://www.acne-anti-aging-skin-care.blogspot.com.

[Buy Nexium Online]

He had lain in his icy tomb on an Maple Story mesoAlpine glacier in northern Italy for 5,300 years, a perfectly preserved Stone Age warrior, complete with fur robes, leather shoes and bow and arrow. Maple Story Mesos
But since being Maple Story Mesosfound 14 years ago, five of the people who came in close contact with Buy Allegra Online Oetzi the Iceman have died, leading to the inevitable question: is the mummy cursed?
wow goldworld of warcraft goldEverQuest 2 goldeq2 platLOTRO GoldLOTR GoldLOTRO Gold　
Konrad Spindler, head of the Iceman investigation team at Innsbruck University, died on Monday, Maple Story mesoapparently from complications arising from multiple sclerosis. But that has not stopped his name being linked to a string of strange deaths related to the mummy. Lineage 1 adenabuy Lineage 1 adenarunescape moneycheap rs goldrunescape gold
He had spent years studying the remains of the frozen warrior, who was discovered in the melting silkroad online goldSimilaun glacier, on the border between Italy and Austria in 1991. The 66-year-old scientist had been aware of curse theories, built around the supposition that the Iceman was angry at having been disturbed after 53 centuries, and used to joke: "The next victim could be me." runescape moneycheap rs goldrs goldSilkroad Buy Tramadol Online goldsilkroad online goldSRO goldwow goldwow gold Lineage 1 adenaThe other "victims" of the mummy include the forensic expert Dr Rainer Henn, who placed the cadaver in a body bag with his bare hands, and who died in a road accident on his way to a conference to discuss his famous subject. eq2 plat
　　The Alpine guide Kurt Fritz Buy Glucophage Online organised the transportation by helicopter of the mummified remains, maple story mesoand was killed by a snowslide in an accident in the mountains, in an area he http://canadian-online-medicine.com/pills_online/glucophage.html knew well. He was the only one of a party of climbers to die. Granado Espada gold
　　EverQuest 2 goldThen there was journalist Rainer Hoelz, who filmed the recovery of the Iceman, and who died of a brain tumour. buy Lineage 1 Buy Flomax Online adena
　　The fourth death was that http://canadian-online-medicine.com/pills_online/flomax.html of Helmut Simon, wow power leveling the German tourist who spotted the Iceman in 1991 while on a walking trip with his wife. He became bitter that he was not recognised or financially compensated for his discovery.
　　runescape power levelingLast http://canadian-online-medicine.com/pills_online/premarin.html October he failed to return from a mountain Buy Premarin Online hike and was found dead eight days later, the victim of a 300ft fall. Local newspapers recorded that his body was found frozen, under a sheet of snow and ice. rs gold
　　A possible sixth victim has also been named, L1 adenathat of Dieter Warnecke, the man who helped find the missing 69-year-old and who died of a Buy Prilosec Online http://canadian-online-medicine.com/pills_online/prilosec.html heart attack after attending his funeral.
Like all good curse theories, maplestory mesos maple story mesos natural death, accidents and sheer bad luck have been compressed into a single sinister hypothesis and with all this doom and gloom, there is only one piece of good news. LOTR Gold　Visitors to the museum in the Italian town of Bolzano specially constructed for the Iceman, where he is on display in a hi-tech refrigerated Buy Nexium Online casket chilled to a glacial -6C, runescape goldare expecting an increase in curious visitors.

[NikkyBlond]

Enjoyed your site very much! Thank you! Keep up a good work! :-))

[Irshad]

Such problems has been a common problems of skin. I think among all skin care problems the most serious is pigmentation and million of peoples are suffering from it.

http://depigmentationofskin.wordpress.com/

[ctjea gkdl]

xvcrzsid tmkovjal ywxsz tpvhida mtuzw pnkzhlb dimz

Une commission se réunit ce lundi pour examiner les résultats...

[viktoror]

http://drugs-ed.com drugs for ED

Once you begin to move beyond basic background information, you begin to realize that there's more to this than you may have first thought. - William B. Doyle, http://www.wbdoyle.com/tsfls/