Word: goodrich
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Attorney David Goodrich held an almost religious belief in playing by the rules. Certainly his deference to protocol and respect for others were plainly evident on the day in June 1992 when, in the middle of the courtroom, he toppled flat onto his back. Coughing up blood, the prosecutor from San Bernardino County, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, apologized profusely to the court for the delay. "David stood out" for his fairness and selflessness, says his former boss John Kochis. "You felt good when you were around David...
Shortly after his courtroom fall, Goodrich was told he had stomach cancer. It was then that he found himself launched upon a three-year ordeal of battling not just the disease that would ultimately kill him but also Aetna U.S. Health Care, the nation's largest health insurer. As required, he first approached doctors in his plan. Conceding that they didn't have the expertise to treat his rare form of cancer, leiomyosarcoma, they referred him to specialists outside the plan. He bounced back and forth between clinics and Aetna bureaucrats who challenged his use of out-of-plan doctors...
...Though Goodrich died in March 1995, at age 44, Aetna insists that it had approved all the necessary treatments and acted promptly and responsibly throughout. His widow Teresa felt otherwise and sued; Aetna, she said, in effect hastened her husband's death. In a decision with national resonance, a jury in San Bernardino County Superior Court agreed. Strenuously. In the stiffest such penalty ever imposed on an HMO, the jury two weeks ago awarded Goodrich's estate almost $750,000 in compensatory damages for medical costs and $3.8 million for "loss of companionship and support." In a separate decision last...
Although the award is likely to be trimmed on appeal, its significance remains. The Goodrich family found justice where few can. Under the 1974 Employment Retirement Income Security Act, more than 125 million Americans currently covered by their employer's HMO programs cannot sue their provider for punitive damages. It doesn't matter if the HMO manager is a bumbling idiot or a devious scrooge. It doesn't matter even if the patient dies or loses a limb to negligence...
ZIPPER Invented in 1913 by Swedish immigrant Gideon Sundback at Universal Fastener Co. in Pennsylvania. B.F. Goodrich first used the word to refer to a fastener on a pair of its galoshes; it was not used in clothes until the 1930s. By 1941 zippers beat the pants off buttons in the Battle...