SUB-HEADING: "'Take Care of Maya' teen Maya Kowalski was seen partying in pictures after her lawyer said she was in too much pain for court. Her family is suing a Florida hospital for malpractice."
SUB-HEADING: "Maya Kowalski is suing a Florida hospital for malpractice."
GIST: "Maya Kowalski was spotted out and about just days after she avoided appearing at a malpractice trial in which her attorneys said she was too pain-ridden.
Her Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), attorneys said, was made worse by the stresses of the $220 million malpractice trial against Johns Hopkins All Medical Center in Florida.
CRPS is a condition in which pain continues after the expected time for tissue to heal and Kowalski is suing the hospital claiming she was wrongly separated from her mom Beata - she also says hospital staff did not pay enough attention to he complaints when she was under their care.
According to Court TV, lawyer Gregory Anderson said: "It’s been horrible... Maya has CRPS lesions reappearing. It’s not good."
But hospital attorney Ethen Shapiro said the social media pictures of Homecoming and Halloween that emerged over the weekend show Kowalski - famous for the 'Take Care of Maya' Netflix documentary - was in a good and healthy condition.
"This is the life of Maya Kowalski today," he told the judge. "We did not aggravate a preexisting condition. She’s at her prom, she’s out in heels, has friends — it’s in complete contradiction to her testimony." Maya's lawyers said the photos should not be entered into evidence, but allowed two of them to be. The photo of Maya at Halloween was not admitted.
On the witness stand, Maya said :“I got my dress the day before Homecoming, because I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to go. That was dependent on my physical condition and my mental condition."
The case centers around Kowalski's late mother Beata, who doctors believed was suffering from Munchausen by Proxy syndrome, a condition in which mothers claim their child is ill so they receive attention.
She admitted Maya to hospital in 2015, claiming she needed risky treatments involving the use of ketamine to help ease her pain - doctors feared this treatment amounted to child abuse.
A doctor who had previously prescribed the treatment testified it was medically sound, but Dr Elliott Krane, Emeritus Professor of Anesthesiology and Chief of Pain Management at Stanford School of Medicine, told jurors it was dangerous and not used in the US.
Maya, then 10, was separated from her mother after Florida's child welfare authorities were contacted and barred the two from seeing each other. Beata Kowalski killed herself in the garage of the family home in January 2017.
Now, the Kowalski family claims they were victims of malpractice in a massive suit and Maya Kowalski testified she still suffers from the condition. The trial continues."
The entire story can be read at:
teen-suing-hospital-seen-partying-31343955
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
http://www.smithforensic.blogspot.com
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