There are many times consumers are asked to sign a release of liability before using a product or service. These releases of liability are then thrown back at the consumer when the consumer is injured because of the negligence of the business, its employees or other agents. Often the releases provide for a release of
Wrongful discharge or wrongful termination is an employee’s claim that his former employer fired him or here for discriminatory purposes or otherwise in violation of public policy, or some Federal or State law. Many times, the employee is constructively rather than directly discharged. In short, the employer makes the employee’s work life so miserable that
New Mexico leads the nation in terms of the proportion of its prison inmates who are housed by private prison contracting companies—a jaw-dropping 42 percent! The national average for state prisoners is 8%. There are eleven prisons which house state inmates in New Mexico, five of those are administered by private prison contracting companies. The
Recent news stories reiterate the link between routine emergency room visits and rapid deterioration in the health of the elderly that often follows. The connection between the two is frequently obscured due to the fact that the actual health condition leading to the ER visit is not necessarily the sole cause of the deterioration. For
OxyContin has generated $35 billion in revenue for Purdue Pharma. The drug was marketed as non-addictive despite clear evidence to the contrary. The evidence is not subtle. According to the CDC, there have been 183,000 prescription opioid deaths since 1999. The drug was first approved by the FDA in 1996 so the warnings came very
According to Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC), there have been thousands of sexual assaults in ICE Detention facilities have gone uninvestigated between 2010 and 2016. In April of 2017, the organization filed a Federal Civil Rights Complaint noting that of the 33,126 reported incidents of physical and sexual abuse only 570 have
The New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) is a very good tool for gathering information on the facts and circumstances surrounding legal claims against governmental entities. In fact, a great deal of information can often be gathered through an IPRA Request. The scope of IPRA is very broad in recognition of the fact
A recent article in U.S. News & World Report cited a recently released study by the non-partisan, Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Institute which noted that New Mexico had the highest rate of inmates in county jails in the nation. Using the latest available data from Federal sources (2013) the per capita rate stood at 340.8 per
Opiate Use in the Veteran’s Administration System According to the Veteran Administration over 440,000 veterans using the VA system were being prescribed an opioid-based medication in 2013 and over 55,000 had an opiate abuse disorder. The Veteran’s Administration serves approximately one third of the nation’s veterans per year—the remainder relying on private or other healthcare provider
In May, 2017 the United States Drug Enforcement Agency announced that Albuquerque would become the seventh city in the nation to participate in its 360 Strategy Program which began in 2015 as an effort to meld community outreach and law enforcement efforts to fight against drug cartels and trafficking activities. Among other activities, the community
