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The gruesome chaos wreaked by Biomedical Tissue Services continues to mount as medical officials and police investigators assemble their case against the New Jersey-based tissue supply company. The crimes committed by BTS and its main partners Michael Mastromarino and Joseph Nicelli are almost beyond human comprehension. The two are accused of using their company to steal heart valves, skin tissues, tendons, and bone samples from cadavers at their funeral homes, often without permission and without proper screening for diseases such as Hepatitis, Syphilis, AIDS, and HIV.

Further adding to the macabre allegations against BTS is that many of the tissues gathered from victims were done so without proper documentation or any documentation whatsoever. In order to legitimately harvest tissues from donors, tissue banks must provide copies of the death certificates demonstrating that the victims died from causes that would not cause harm to the recipient, and that person or their family gave permission to remove tissues.

Regulations established by the Food and Drug Administration mandate that all tissues samples must be accompanied by a blood sample from the donor, in order to be tested for any communicable diseases. BTS allegedly not only substituted blood samples for tissues from tainted sources, but even used the same blood for multiple tissues. Any prescreening for diseases is therefore unreliable.

BTS went to extreme lengths to steal tissues to sell on the billion-dollar a year tissue industry. Workers at BTS allegedly took tissues from cadavers of less-than-viable donors, and forged or obscured the death certificates in order to make it appear the tissues came from safe sources. Furthermore, they blatantly stole a wide variety of tissues from unknowing donors, and even went so far as to replace stolen bones with PVC pipe, and organs and tissues were replaced with bags of screws or surgical gloves in order to provide a proper appearance in open casket funerals.

Not only was Biomedical Tissue Services profiting from illegally obtained from innocent cadavers, they also exposed tens of thousands of people to not only serious infections diseases, but also to fungal and bacterial infections as well. BTS shipped their potentially tainted tissues to several distribution sites throughout the nation including Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas, Tutogen Medical, Regeneration Technologies, Lost Mountain Tissue Bank, and Life Cell Corporation. By November 2005, Medical giant Medtronic alone received 13,000 grafts from BTS, and implanted over 8,000 of them.

All told, there are potentially 25,000 tainted tissue samples distributed throughout the United States between June 2002, and October 2005. Virtually anyone that received a tissue transplant between these months is at risk of developing serious and potentially life-threatening complications.

To learn more about tainted tissue lawyers or infected tissue lawsuits please visit our website at http://www.sddefenselawyers.com/tainted-tissue/ This article may be freely reprinted as long as this resource box is included and all links stay intact as hyperlinks.

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In a unanimous ruling, 9-0 the Supreme Court held that all but “trivial” actions taken against an employee filing a discrimination claim are unlawful retaliation. The Court adopted a broadly worded and employee-friendly definition of the type of retaliation that is prohibited by the basic federal law against discrimination in employment, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Title VII prohibits discrimination and prohibits employers from retaliating against workers who complain about discrimination. But the statute does not define what constitutes retaliation, leading to various different standards among the circuit courts, and uncertainty for employers and employees alike. Under the standard that had been applied by many courts, it had been very difficult for an employee to win a retaliation claim unless the retaliation had resulted in termination. By contrast, the standard adopted by the Supreme Court in Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Company v. White, in an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, any “materially adverse” employment action that “might have dissuaded a reasonable worker” from complaining about discrimination will count as prohibited retaliation. Depending upon the context, retaliation might be found in an unfavorable annual evaluation, an unwelcome schedule change or job transfer, or other action well short of termination.

As a practical matter, employers can expect to see a huge upsurge in the number of retaliation lawsuits. Taken to its extreme, an employee could complain about discrimination on his first day of employment and then anything that ever happened to him thereafter could be claimed to be retaliation for his initial complaint. Of course, the employee must still prove that there was some connection between his complaint and the retaliation, and the more time that has passed the more difficult it will be for him to prove.

As a consequence of this decision, employers must redouble their efforts to prevent harassment in the workplace in all forms, sexual, racial etc. They must provide harassment prevention training to their supervisors, and most importantly in the light of the Burlington case, they must investigate all harassment claims promptly and thoroughly, and, if a violation is found, take prompt and effective remedial action. Significantly, they must emphasize to all supervisors that there can be no retaliation taken against the complaining employee whatsoever, because even if the underlying complaint turns out to have not merit, the employee can still bring a retaliation claim.

I am an attorney in private practice in Beverly Hills, California. I represent employers in all aspects of labor and employment law, including cases involving wrongful discharge litigation, employment discrimination, sexual harassment, wage and hour laws, independent contractor status, employee handbooks and personnel practices, NLRB representation elections, union contract negotiation and grievance/arbitration, ERISA and Pension Trust Fund matters, construction labor law, entertainment labor law and immigration law. I received my B.A. Magna Cum Laude from U.C.L.A. in 1973 and my J.D. in 1976 from Loyola Law School. I was a Trial Attorney at Region 21 of the National Labor Relations Board from 1976-1980. Since 1981, I have been in private practice in Beverly Hills, specializing in Labor and Employment Law. I have lectured at U.C.L.A. Extension; at the U.C.L.A. Institute of Industrial Relations, and at numerous continuing education programs on employment related topics. I have conducted numerous seminars on Sexual Harassment Prevention Training.

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A civil action that is initiated in a court of law to restore a privilege of an individual or procure compensation for an injury is called a lawsuit. A lawsuit is commonly engaged in the resolution of dispute between individuals, business organizations or non-profit entities.

A large number of lawsuits are resolved without much difficulty and do not ever go to trial, but they can occasionally be involved in a very complex procedure. This generally applies to centralized systems in which a central court may take recourse to state law, or the other way around. The legal tangle can be compounded when one state makes use of the law of another, and is vague about which court in reality has authority over the defendant.

Usually the lawsuit commences when the claimant files an objection with the court. This objection generally mentions that the claimant is looking for compensation from a declared defendant. The summons is then issued by the clerk of the court to the defendant, to inform him that legal action is being taken against him and give him an account of the type of the claims. After the defendant obtains this announcement, he is given a cut-off date to file a reply clearing up his defenses to the plaintiff’s demand.

Discovery comprises the initial phases of the lawsuit. This is the structured exchange of declarations and proofs. Discovery is aimed at removing the element of shock, and elucidates the nature of the lawsuit. This also affords the party the opportunity to decide whether they should resolve or withdraw the case without unnecessarily draining the court’s resources.

Lawsuits provides detailed information on Lawsuits, Mesothelioma Lawsuits, Frivolous Lawsuits, Medical Malpractice Lawsuits and more. Lawsuits is affiliated with Lawsuit Funding Companies.

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