TRAVERSE CITY, MI — Life has become a lot more challenging for Theresa Hall.
Since receiving a contaminated steroid injection last September, Hall has been in and out of the hospital, battling Fungal Meningitis.
“My life, as I knew it, went straight down the tubes,” says Theresa. “My medications alone are $12,000 a month…its like $200,000 that we have paid out,”
The CDC reports 17 people from the state have died, including three who received treatment in Indiana.
Theresa and others have hired attorneys to represent them.
A Traverse City based firm, Dingeman, Dancer and Christopherson, is handling 40 cases.
“They went to a doctor seeking treatment that was supposed to help their pain. What they got was basically poison injected into them,” said attorney, Dan Myers.
The so called “poison” was a steroid manufactured by New England Compounding Center in Boston.
The company placed a voluntary recall on their products in September.
Since then, the company has filed for bankruptcy.
“What is happening is, because all these cases are related, they will be ultimately coordinated in some fashion. The entity that is going to do that coordination is the federal court out of Boston. Why is that? Because the New England Compounding Center filed bankruptcy there, they are based there,” said attorney, Mark Dancer.
Dancer says millions of dollars of the company’s assets have already been frozen.
Stephen B. Goethel is a partner at Goethel Engelhardt, PLLC in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For more than 45 years, he has focused his practice on personal injury and medical malpractice litigation. Admitted to the State Bar of Michigan in 1979, he earned his J.D. from Detroit College of Law and his B.A. in Business from Michigan State University. Mr. Goethel has been consistently recognized by Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers and has received numerous professional awards for his advocacy in medical malpractice cases.
