In Ontario, Canada, Big Tobacco is currently under attack. Ontario claims that, among other things, Big Tobacco misrepresented the dangers of smoking and the addictiveness of nicotine to the public for decades. Ontario also claims that Big Tobacco caused or contributed to an additional $50 billion in health care costs.

Sounding familiar? No one should be surprised that Big Tobacco has felt at liberty to conduct themselves in other countries as they have in the United States. In fact, the findings in Ontario sound very much like the findings by courts and juries across Florida and in other parts of this country:

• Manufacturing, selling and promoting the sale of cigarettes while knowing that cigarettes are addictive, cause serious diseases and that second hand smoke also causes diseases;
• Manipulating the level of nicotine in cigarettes;
• Suppressing information, scientific information and medical data about the risks of smoking and of second hand smoke;
• Misrepresenting to the public and government that filters reduce the risks of smoking and that “light” cigarettes were safer than other cigarettes;
• Misrepresenting that the defendants were aware of no credible research establishing a link between smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke to disease;
• Failing to adequately warn the public that cigarettes are addictive and cause disease;
• Promotional activities with the primary intent to neutralize the effectiveness of the warnings on cigarette packaging;
• Targeting children and adolescents in advertising, promotional and marketing activities for the purpose of inducing them to start or continue to smoke.
• Orchestrate public relations programs with the objects of promoting cigarettes, protecting cigarettes from attack based on health risks and reassuring the public that smoking was not hazardous.

My guess is that the tone of arguments will become increasingly severe as our brethren to the north continue their review of the documents generated by the tobacco industry in previous litigation.

In the United States, one judge who has been perhaps the most exposed to the tobacco documents is United States District Court Judge Gladys Kessler. Judge Kessler has issued a few scathing findings against the tobacco companies and disclosed startling information she found in her review of evidence presented to her.

Her findings and comments have included:

“The evidence spelled out above is simply overwhelming that Defendants knew that smoking is addictive and knew that nicotine is the agent creating and sustaining that addiction. There is also overwhelming evidence that even though Defendants have known internally about addiction for decades, they have endeavored to keep the extensive research and data they had accumulated out of the public domain and out of the hands of the public health community by denying that such data existed, by refusing to disclose it, and by shutting down or censoring laboratories and research projects which were investigating the mechanisms of nicotine.

If, in fact, “everybody knew” that smoking and nicotine were addictive, then why were Defendants publicly, vehemently, and repeatedly denying it?

In short, after reassuring the smoker that smoking was not bad for her health, and was not addictive, Defendants then blamed her for being unable to stop using the product they had so successfully marketed with false information.

Based on the extensive individual Findings of Fact set forth in this Section, the Court finds that Defendants have known for decades that cigarette smoking was addictive, and that nicotine is the addicting element in smoking behavior. Defendants’ false and misleading statements relating to addiction continue even today.

Moreover, Defendants deliberately and intentionally hid this information from the public and closed down research laboratories and on-going projects in order to ensure secrecy. Time and time again, Defendants falsely denied these facts to smokers and potential smokers, to government regulatory authorities, to the public health community and to the American public.”

Our own Florida Supreme Court has found:

• That cigarettes cause a whole bunch of diseases, including: aortic aneurysm, bladder cancer, cerebrovascular disease, cervical cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary heart disease, esophageal cancer, kidney cancer, laryngeal cancer, lung cancer (specifically, adenocarinoma, large cell carcinoma, small cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma), complications of pregnancy, oral cavity/tongue cancer, pancreatic cancer, peripheral vascular disease, pharyngeal cancer, and stomach cancer).
• That cigarettes are addictive.
• That the Tobacco Companies knowingly marketed cigarettes that were defective and unreasonably dangerous.
• That the Tobacco Companies concealed or failed to disclose important information about cigarettes that was not able to be known by the public.
• That Tobacco Companies misled the public about the dangers of smoking cigarettes.
• That the Tobacco Companies, acting together, concealed information regarding the negative health effects of cigarettes.
• That the Tobacco Companies, acting together, concealed the addictive nature of nicotine in cigarettes.
• That the Cigarette Companies sold products that were defective.
• That all the Tobacco Companies were negligent.

Nine different judges. Three different parts of North America. It seems time to believe that the tobacco industry has been lying and deceiving people all over the world about the dangers of cigarettes. The deception started in the early 20^th century while Big Tobacco was literally handing out cigarettes on street corners.

Of course, when tobacco needs to defend itself in court, they like to argue that “everybody” knew about how addictive and dangerous cigarettes were by the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Yet, as late as 1994, the CEO’s of all the Big Tobacco companies swore under oath that cigarettes were not dangerous and nicotine was not addictive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQUNk5meJHs

All of those ads you’ve seen on television warning about the dangers of transvaginal mesh do not appear to be scaring away women from the controversial procedure.

Presented at the recent American Urological Association meeting in San Diego, of a survey of 99 women taken at Louisiana State University and Medical University of South Carolina urology clinics, three-quarters of women  said they would still consider mesh as an option to treat stress urinary incontinence (SUI) or pelvic organ prolapse (POP).

Dr. Michelle Koski presented the findings to the May gathering of the American Urological Association meeting in San Diego. She says most of the women cited personal injury law firms as their source of information about surgical mesh.

“It’s a vulnerable population and they are getting all of this misinformation.”

Misinformation? It is sad, but true, that consumers often receive information about product defects from the field of lawyers and usually it is, sadly, after hundreds or thousands of consumers are injured or killed. But, the fact is what trial lawyers frequently convey in those ads is nothing that the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t said.

In 2008, the FDA issued a Safety Communication that mesh complications such as mesh erosion, infection and debilitating pain are complications that are “rare.”  By July 2011, the FDA revisited the issue saying, “serious complications associated with surgical mesh for transvaginal repair of pelvic organ prolapse are not rare.”

The FDA added that “transvaginally placed mesh in pelvic organ prolapse repair does not conclusively improve clinical outcomes over traditional nonmesh repair.”

Doesn’t exactly sound like a rousing endorsement for treatments using mesh.  Yet, polypropylene mesh implants are still being permanently implanted in women despite the fact that there are nearly 22-thousand lawsuits consolidated in one court in the Southern District of West Virginia and thousands more filed in state courts around the country by women with life-altering injuries, some of them permanent.

These are product liability lawsuits that claim synthetic mesh is defectively designed and should never be implanted in anyone.

Fortunately there are law firms that are getting the word out to women because the media seems to be largely absent from the controversy, unless there is a major win by a plaintiff in court.

There have been two to date – one $5.5 million jury award naming C.R. Bard in a California state court. That action on behalf of Christine Scott and her husband also named her implanting doctor accusing him of medical malpractice. The other case that received headlines was the February jury award of $11.1 million to South Dakota resident Linda Gross, who remains disabled and bedridden after hundreds of procedures to try and remove the pelvic floor mesh or mitigate the severe pain, erosion and complications she continues to suffer.

Both Johnson & Johnson (Linda Gross case) and Bard have announced they will appeal the jury verdicts.

The information concerning complications of mesh use in patients has increasingly developed over the years, but one must wonder where physicians are in the chain of information. Shouldn’t physicians have been giving patients information about ALL the potential complications; rather than, in some cases, downplaying the complications and characterizing the use of mesh as some sort of magic bullet for the patient? What does it say about physician-patient communication if Dr. K’s statistics are to be believed and 57% of patients heard about problems with surgical mesh from legal advertising and only 9% from the medical community?

Perhaps with a relatively miniscule 99 patient interview group, Dr. K should rethink her statement about “misinformation” or direct it to the actual parties that are responsible for the misinformation being disseminated about this risky and controversial procedure. In the alternative, perhaps she should interview the thousands of patients in varying degrees of what people like Linda Gross have endured.

In the case relating to the Biomet Hip Implant Litigation (In Re Biomet M2a Magnum Hip Implant ProductsLiability Litigation). The case involves over 19 million documents and is a great example for why plaintiffs must get involved early in document discovery.

The defendants applied a combination of keyword searches and predictive coding to arrive at a collection under three million documents from the over 19 million with which they started. It sounds as if the methods of search and culling were not agreed upon (or discussed) by the parties. The defendant did, however, offer to the plaintiffs to provide additional keyword search criteria (after the search had already been performed) and invited them to review samples of the output sampling from the predictive coding.

Here is the problem, as I see it, from the plaintiffs’ perspective. If they had knowledge, they should have objected to the methods being used before the culling began. Once Biomet had conducted all the keyword isolation and predictive coding, they had already expended a large amount of money and resources.

The problem with Biomet’s approach is two-fold. Keyword searching is only as good as the keywords and search phrases used. The fact that the plaintiffs were not involved in the keyword selection is a significant detriment to the plaintiffs. Being involved should have allowed them the ability to evaluate the way in which Biomet did business when it came to their hip implants and it should have allowed the plaintiffs to learn about corporate structure, terminology and other important details of the hip manufacturing section.

To have performed keyword searching before predictive culling may have narrowed the document group too much. The fact that keyword searching reduced the document collection from over 19 million to three million is telling, I think, in terms of how severely keyword searching must have been applied.

Predictive coding/culling is a process in which cross section collections of documents are used by humans; who review the documents and code the relevant field data from the documents (document type, dates, authors, etc). Once a sufficient number of documents have been reviewed and coded, the predictive software itself is tested to see if it can proceed with additional culling of the documents. The predictive coding software has been watching and (hopefully) learning from the data coded by the humans and at some point it reaches a point at which the software is competent to proceed with the same actions the human coders were performing. This learning process requires test batches and evaluation of the error rates in those test batches.

The predictive coding process provides for an opportunity for all parties to be involved in more detail with the culling of production documents without disclosing the specific details of confidentiality. So, all the parties should be able to reach a point at which they are satisfied with proceeding with the discovery and production process.

The research seems clear that when done properly, predictive coding is significantly more reliable than keyword searching or even human review. In this case, the judge has allowed use of a system that can be fraught with flaws (keyword searching) to arrive at a group to apply predictive coding. The defendants are then left with a much smaller selection and testing group than otherwise and incorrectly selecting the keywording could allow them to manipulate the ultimate grouping to which predictive coding would be applied.

Simply, the judge may have unknowingly allowed the defendants success in digital concealment of discoverable documents, but the plaintiffs sound like they sat on their haunches instead of actively participating…until it was too late..

How do you find a lawyer and what information do you want to know before deciding on the lawyer you ultimately hire?

We have written several articles discussing this subject:

Picking the Best Attorney — Picking Just the “Right” Lawyer

What are “lawyer referral services”?

When Should You Hire an Attorney? How Do You Decide?

But, I still get questions like: can any attorney handle an auto accident?

No. Certainly there are organizations, such as the Florida Bar, that maintain any attorney who has passed the Florida Bar Exam can handle any legal matter in Florida. That is an unsophisticated, uninformed answer.

Do you want a real estate lawyer handling your auto accident case in which you have suffered personal injuries? No more than I would want a skilled personal injury lawyer handling my real estate closing.

Can any personal injury lawyer handle an auto accident case? Yes.

Can any personal injury lawyer handle an auto accident case and do a superior job? No.

It does not differ from any other professional: some doctors are more skilled than others; some architects design better houses than others; and some auto accident attorneys are better than others.

Read the rest of this entry »

When insurance fraud was on the rise in the 1970’s, insurance companies, law enforcement and state governments got together and did things like launched joint task forces to investigate fraud and formed insurance exchanges to help manage the problem. Their first reactions were not to; in effect, legally defraud the consumer.

Fast forward to the 21^st century and the Florida legislators have approached similar fraud a different way: punish consumers. I suggest that the below conversation never took place, but you can certainly imagine it could, given informed consumers who were active in supervising the people we send to Tallahassee “on our behalf”

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Florida Legislators: Wow, we have a really big problem with all this fraud going on in the Personal Injury Protection insurance (PIP). We need to do something.

Consumers: How do you know there is a big problem?

Florida Legislators: Extensive studies have been conducted by really, really smart people and they told us.

Consumers: Who are these people developing and providing the statistics.

Florida Legislators: The best experts in the land and we know this because they all had badges that had “insurance company paid fraud expert” on them.

Consumers: Okay, so what should we do about it? Shouldn’t we involve law enforcement?

Florida Legislators: Now, don’t you bother your little head about it, we will take care of you; don’t worry.

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Florida Legislators to Consumers: Okay, so we have a really, really great solution to the fraud problem. Let’s see if we can explain it in terms you might understand, because it’s real complicated:

First, we pass a law that allows consumers to keep $10,000 in PIP coverage and allows insurance companies to charge for $10,000 in PIP coverage. But, we are really only going to force insurance companies to provide $2,500 in PIP coverage; unless consumers can comply with some tricky statutes and contract provisions – you know, to prove they are not committing fraud.

Consumers: Well, but, how is that fair? We pay for $10,000, but only get $2,500…

Florida Legislators: Now don’t you worry, we have you covered. If you go to an emergency room within 14 days of your accident and an emergency/trauma doctor diagnoses you with an “emergency medical condition”, you are golden! You get the full amount of coverage you paid for; but, well, you can not go to massage therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists or maybe some other treatments.

Consumers: What about injuries that do not develop until after 14 days? Everyone has some bumps and bruises from an auto accident, but you would not go to an emergency room for that. What about a bad back injury, for example a herniated disc that does not really begin showing symptoms for a few weeks.

Florida Legislators: Never happens. All the best studies given to us clearly show that 14 days is the magic number. Any injuries you claim to have developed after 14 days are just fraud – pure and simple.

Consumers: But, if the injuries are actually proved to be real and from the accident, we get the full coverage, right?

Florida Legislators: Hmmm, probably not, because you are faking. So, you can sue the insurance company and 3 or 4 years later you may win because some “activist judge” decides he thinks you should get $10,000 in coverage simply because you paid for that amount.

Consumers: How is this law in our best interest?

Florida Legislators: Our insurance company backers, er, friends, er “expert advisors” have told us that insurance companies are going to leave Florida if we do not do something about all this fraud in PIP insurance.

Consumers: Well, rather than punish us, why doesn’t the insurance industry and law enforcement get together and fight the fraud?

Florida Legislators: But, they said they would leave and stuff; and they mentioned political contributions; and then they told us this was the way to go.

Consumers: Do you think you acted in our best interests when you cut the deal with insurance companies and passed this law?

Florida Legislators: See, we knew you would get all emotional about it. This is business and it’s in your best interests. Our friends told us so. Besides, you need to look at it in the “bigger picture”. Plus, Governor Scott signed the law, so it must be about creating jobs and lofty things like that.

Wrigley, the gum company, will stop the production of chewing gum that includes a caffeine jolt until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) figures out to how regulate caffeine-enhanced consumer items.

The new gum was marketed as Alert Energy Caffeine Gum and it contains about 40 milligrams of caffeine, reports Reuters, about the same amount as a half cup of coffee.  Chewing the pack would be the equivalent of four cups of coffee, according to the FDA website.

The announcement from Wrigley comes less than a week after the FDA announced it would take a “fresh look” at the issue of caffeinated products, the gum just the latest in an array of products largely aimed at a young consumer.

Alert gum has a slightly bitter taste and is not marketed at children, but at adults age 25 and older. Other similar products include Stride Spark Gum with vitamins B6 and B12 and Trident Vitality Gum with ingredients such as Vitamin C, green tea and ginseng.

FDA is increasingly concerned with how to regulate the growing field of caffeinated products especially in light of the adverse events reported such as heart attacks suffered by some young users of energy drinks. In November, the agency received reports of 18 deaths and 150 injuries linked to caffeinated products.

Historically this is not entirely a new problem. In the 1950s, the FDA approved the use of caffeine in cola drinks. Since then there have been a plethora of caffeine-fuelled products. Leading the pack are energy drinks with names like Monster and Jolt.  Monster Beverage Corp skirts FDA regulations by calling its product a dietary supplement. The FDA does not regulate dietary supplements and allows the industry to self-regulate.

The central concern is the effect of too much caffeine on developing youngsters, particularly the neurologic and cardiovascular effects.   Fox News reports that major medical associations fear children may not be able to process caffeine as well as adults.

The American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend caffeine or caffeine-containing products for children.

Make no doubt about it. Caffeine profiteers see children and adolescents as a potential market. Food manufacturers have jumped into the trend such as Arma Energy Snx which contains caffeine. Recently Jelly Belly “Extreme Sport Beans” have been launched with 50 milligrams of caffeine, according to Fox News, in every 100-calorie pack.

An FDA spokesman, Michael Taylor, noted that “some in the food industry are on a dubious and potentially dangerous path,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

The FDA is finally poised to establish some guidelines and boundaries which could include a designation as a food additive. The amount of caffeine added to consumer products could then be restricted.

They are called “legal” drugs, but for the thousands of fatalities that result from their use the comparison with illegal drugs is a distinction without a difference.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that the number of deaths attributed to prescription painkillers now exceeds those attributed to illegal street drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

PBS recently talked to the family of Oklahoma Sooners Linebacker, Austin Box, who died in 2011 from a combination of five pain medications and an anti-anxiety drug that stopped his heart at the age of 22. No one had any idea that this young man was addicted to prescription painkillers.

The CDC reports the number of deaths attributed to prescription drugs had quadrupled in the U.S rising from 4,030 fatalities in 1999 to 16,651 in 2010. OxyContin, Vicodin, Opana and methadone are believed to be responsible for about 125,000 U.S. lives over the last decade and the CDC reports that is just part of the picture.

For every fatality there are 32 emergency room visits, 10 drug treatment admissions and 130 other users who are addicted.

The CDC reports on the Top 10 things you should know about Prescription Drug Abuse:

1. More Americans are killed by drug overdoses than car crashes – about 105 deaths every day.
2. There were enough painkillers prescribed in 2010 to medicate all U.S. adults every four hours for one month.
3. Prescription drugs deaths increased four times from 1999 to 2010.
4. Non-medical use of painkillers for a “high” is sought by one in 20 Americans.
5. It is suggested you hide or lock up prescription painkillers or dispose of them properly.
6. Community and state policies are being employed to prevent painkiller drug overdoses.
7. The Patient Review and Restriction Program and Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs can coordinate care for patients.
8. State laws can address doctor shopping and pill mills.
9. Substance abuse programs can intervene and help save lives by reducing overdoses among addicts. 
10. Prescribers should turn to painkillers as a last resort, prescribe only what is necessary and monitor patients for substance abuse.

The problem isn’t just with teenagers but of adult Americans as well. The CDC estimates about 12 million adults and teens used prescription painkillers to get a “high” while emergency room visits have doubled to nearly a half million.

Even if you are not a statistic, the CDC estimates the painkiller epidemic is costing all Americans more than $72.5 billion annually in related healthcare costs.

In the United States most hospitals operate for profit so it’s a bit disturbing when a report says that complications actually work to increase the profits of a hospital. In other words, as complications increase, profits increase.

Not that anyone is intentionally increasing the complication rate, but the Boston Consulting Group reports that patients on Medicare or private insurance who experience complications after surgery may provide higher profits for that hospital.

Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers from Harvard Medical School found when a patient experiences a blood clot, stroke, septic shock or cardiac arrest the hospital’s profit margin jumps 330 percent higher when compared to a patient with no complications.

That translates to $56,000 for a privately insured patient compared to $17,000 when the outcome is complication-free. For a Medicare patient hospitals will receive $3,600 for a patient with complications versus $1,800 for a complication-free surgery.

When a hospital has fixed costs for patients covered by Medicaid or the patient covers their own care, the hospital will make less money if it has to cover the costs of a complication.

One co-author believes the incentive process is backward.  Instead of rewarding a hospital with fewer complications, those with the most problems actually make more money on patients who have to stay in the hospital longer and receive additional care.

The Boston Consulting Group analyzed data from more than 34,000 surgeries performed at the 12-hospital system of Texas Health Resources. Among those 5.3 percent of patients or 1,820 experience some type of types of complications.

While it’s always been known there is no incentive system for quality hospitals it was never understood before just how badly things had swung in the opposite direction. An investment in reducing risk may not help underwrite hospital costs but it goes a long way in improving patient confidence and outcomes and underscores the need to focus on payment reform in conjunction with healthcare reform.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed tightening regulations over heart defibrillators after dozens of recalls, failures and deaths attributed to the malfunctioning medical device. There are about 2.4 million automated external defibrillators (AED) in public places in the U.S. They are found in newsrooms, airports, casinos, even churches.  Using paddles that deliver an electrical jolt to the chest, an AED can re-establish a normal heart beat during a potentially fatal cardiac arrhythmia which, according to the American Heart Association, kills about 400,000 a year.

No one knows how many patients have died due to the malfunctioning devices, but the New York Times reports in one case a nurse was trying to help a patient in cardiac arrest when the defibrillator read “memory full” and it shut down. The patient died. In another instance the software showed an “equipment disabled” message. That patient also died.

The FDA reports that there have been 45,000 failures of defibrillator hardware and software since 2005, and manufacturers have had to recall AEDs 88 times. In order to improve that dismal record, the proposed order will require manufacturers to make available designs of the AEDs. The agency would also be given tighter controls on buying defibrillator components overseas.  Dr. William Maisel with the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) announced plants could also be inspected, although historically the FDA has not had the personnel to inspect plants overseas.
The FDA could have downgraded AEDs to a lower or moderate risk device (Class I or II), but an expert panel convened in October 2011 recommended AEDs remain Class III (highest-risk medical device) and required pre-market approval (PMA),  higher degree of scrutiny than the current notification process.

One application for PMA approval would cost about $248,000 according to Dr. Maisel, but that would cover all models of AEDs made by the company. Dr. Maisel says the safety data has already been conducted by the companies so most will not have to do any additional clinical studies.   The revamp of FDA safety oversight should be completed by 2014.

AEDs are known as “pre-amendment devices” which means that they were already in the marketplace before 1976 when the FDA began regulating medical devices.  At that time there were 170 devices called Class III that were approved through the 510(k) notification process that were never required to submit PMAs.  The FDA’s website says 19 medical devices are still waiting to be reclassified, including the high-risk metal hip joints with uncemented acetabular components as well as cemented acetabular components.

How do we know they are safe and effective?

The simple answer, which would surprise most patients and physicians, is that we do not know if the medical devices are safe and effective. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2011 found nearly three-quarters of medical devices that caused injury or death from 2005 to 2009 had entered the market through the 510(k) process.   Any changes in the 510(k) process, however, would also need to address the false notion that the PMA process leads to safer medical devices.  That is not necessarily the case, with the Birmingham metal-on-metal hip implant marketed by Smith & Nephew being a prime example of a PMA-approved medical devices that has injured untold thousands of patients who have had to undergo revision surgeries and suffered other bone and tissue damage and disability as a result of cobalt and chromium poisoning and premature failure of the devices.

When I was a kid, I knew we were poor. What I did not know and my mother saved us from ever experiencing was being homeless. But, I have had homeless relatives and homeless friends with whom I went through with them the struggle to come out .

In Palm Beach County there are over 750 homeless families and over 1600 homeless children at any given time.

I know a guy who gives me a ration of criticism for giving money to people along the road. His response is they are all drug addicts, criminals or just plain lazy. He says the solution to homelessness is to make everyone get a job and “learn how to support themselves”.

I can tell you from experience and from learning about it that being poor or being homeless has a lot less do with laziness and a great deal more to do with a few missteps and a lot of bad luck. In our present economy, those of us in the middle class may be simply the loss of a job away from homelessness.

Have you ever begged for money? Panhandled along the busy streets? Begged for food? It is a sad and difficult skill to learn. First, you have to overcome the fear and shame you find yourself in a position of having to do it. You have to harden yourself against the people who look at you with disdain and judgment written all over their faces. You have to prepare yourself for the taunts, insults and, sometimes, the food thrown at you.

One of my bosses here at the law firm, Jack Scarola, has spent the better part of his adult life working with a worthy organization called “The Lord’s Place”. Jack is a past chairman and a regular at what The Lord’s Place calls the “Sleep Out”. If it is like nearly every year, Jack’s beautiful wife Anita will be with him as will many of his friends and family. They will all gather at the Meyer Amphitheater at 6:00 PM and sleep outside all night long.

The Lord’s Place is not a place for a hand out as much as a leg up. It is an organization that will help individuals and families find a place to sleep, a place to eat and will help them get back into the job market. My wife is a principal and many of her students would not have been at school today but for The Lord’s Place helping their family. Sadly, I know about families right now living in their cars, but still trying to get their kids to school and themselves to a job.

Jack Scarola and all the volunteers will not just be sleeping out under the stars in the torrential downpour or through the onslaught of mosquitoes; they are also raising funds to help the Lord’s Place help the homeless by giving them just a little leg up.

So, if you believe as I do; that in a country like America no one and certainly no children should have to be homeless or hungry reach into your pocket and support this worthy organization. It is only a click away right here!