Negligence

Mardi Gras 2006: Daisy Johnson Palmer, a retired teacher, was watching the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club parade pass the corner of Canal and Dauphine streets when she was struck in the head by a flying object that she believes was a coconut. That coconut, if that's indeed what it was, sparked a negligence suit and an only-in-Louisiana legal drama that continues to this day — one that has commanded the attention of two district judges, an appellate court panel, and now, possibly, the Louisiana Supreme Court.

A federal jury has found that two Los Angeles Police Department detectives were negligent and violated a teenage girl's constitutional rights when -- as part of a ruse -- they falsely told a gang member that she had implicated him in a murder. After the detectives' ploy, the suspect arranged to have the girl killed, according to police records and a lawsuit filed by girl's family. Jurors this week found that LAPD Dets. Martin Pinner and Juan Rodriguez acted maliciously and recklessly but also determined that the 16-year-old girl, Martha Puebla, and her parents were also at fault.

The mother of a boy who collapsed at an unsupervised high school party and later died has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the hosts, their parents and a teenager who purchased alcohol with false identification. Marianne Payne, mother of Joe Loudon, 16, said in the lawsuit that his death last April was caused by negligence on the part of the students who provided alcohol and of the hosts' mother and stepfather, Isabel and Scott Hamilton, who were out of town when the party was held without their permission.

In the six months since Mitrice Richardson vanished in rugged Malibu Canyon, detectives have tracked reported sightings of her. Searchers have combed a total of 40 square miles looking for any sign of her -- alive or dead. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D- Los Angeles) called for the FBI's involvement, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas asked the Sheriff's Department to review the policies that led to the release of the Cal State Fullerton graduate from the custody of the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff's Station shortly after midnight Sept.

The Medical Board of California has accused a Beverly Hills fertility doctor of a pattern of gross negligence that led to the birth of Nadya Suleman's 14 children, including the world's longest-surviving octuplets, and created a "stockpile" of unused frozen embryos which serve "no clinical purpose." The 13-page accusation filed in December against Dr. Michael Kamrava paints a picture of 11 years of medical care in which Suleman returned to Kamrava's office again and again to undergo fertility treatments.

The Beverly Hills fertility doctor who helped Nadya Suleman give birth to 14 children, including octuplets, has been accused by the California Medical Board of repeated gross negligence. Both Suleman and Dr. Michael Kamrava made international headlines last January, after the Southern California woman gave birth to only the second set of octuplets ever delivered in the United States. Her babies, who will turn 1 on Jan. 28, are the longest-surviving set. Suleman is a single mother who was unemployed and living with her parents.

Firms that supply temporary nurses to the nation's hospitals are taking perilous shortcuts in their screening and supervision, sometimes putting seriously ill patients in the hands of incompetent or impaired caregivers. Emboldened by a chronic nursing shortage and scant regulation, the firms vie for their share of a free-wheeling, $4-billion industry. Some have become havens for nurses who hopscotch from place to place to avoid the consequences of their misconduct. An investigation by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times found dozens of instances in which staffing agencies skimped on background checks or ignored warnings from hospitals about sub-par nurses on their payrolls.

Kaiser Permanente, the state's largest nonprofit HMO, has been ordered to pay a former Valencia middle school administrator $5 million after its physicians misinterpreted signs of an impending stroke that left him partially paralyzed and disabled for life. An infection related to his subsequent treatment led to the amputation of both his legs. A panel of three arbitrators ruled Nov. 18 in favor of Timothy Howard, who said Kaiser physicians were negligent for failing to properly diagnose the cause of his episodic blindness, headaches and other complaints.

In a ruling that could leave the government open to billions of dollars in claims from Hurricane Katrina victims, a federal judge said late Wednesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had displayed "gross negligence" in failing to maintain a navigation channel -- resulting in levee breaches that flooded large swaths of greater New Orleans. U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval peppered his 156-page decision, issued in New Orleans, with harsh criticism of the Army corps, at one point citing its "insouciance, myopia and shortsightedness" in failing to maintain the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, known locally as MRGO.