Ex-Delaware pediatrician guilty of child sex abuse
Recent Cases
A former Delaware pediatrician who decorated his office with Disney characters and miniature amusement park rides was found guilty Thursday of sexually abusing scores of his young patients.
Earl Bradley, 58, recorded homemade videos of the abuse, said prosecutors, who presented the judge with more than 13 hours of videos showing sex crimes against more than 80 victims, most of whom were toddlers.
Superior Court Judge William Carpenter Jr. announced the verdict in business-like fashion, avoiding any personal remarks about Bradley. An indictment against Bradley initially contained 470 counts, but attorneys agreed before the trial to consolidate them into 24 counts.
Bradley was found guilty on 14 counts of first-degree rape and five counts each of second-degree assault and sexual exploitation of a child.
Bradley, who will be sentenced on Aug. 26, faces up to life in prison on each rape charge.
He showed no reaction when the verdict was announced, but some of the spectators cried.
Carpenter presided over a one-day trial in which prosecutors called two witnesses and presented the judge with an external hard drive containing the videos, recorded from December 1998 to Dec. 13, 2009. Bradley was arrested after a 2-year-old girl told her mother the doctor hurt her after an office visit, an accusation that came just days before the last video was recorded.
In a footnote to his verdict, the judge wrote that he was unable to discern the video activity for one alleged victim and there was no video for another.
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Workers’ Compensation Subrogation of Administrative Fees and Costs
When a worker covered by workers’ compensation makes a claim against a third party, the workers’ compensation insurance retains the right to subrogate against any recovery from that third party for all benefits paid to or on behalf of a claimant injured at work. When subrogating for more than basic medical and indemnity benefits, the Texas workers’ compensation subrogation statute provides that “the net amount recovered by a claimant in a third‑party action shall be used to reimburse the carrier for benefits, including medical benefits that have been paid for the compensable injury.” TX Labor Code § 417.002.
In fact, all 50 states provide for similar subrogation. However, none of them precisely outlines which payments or costs paid by a compensation carrier constitute “compensation” and can be recovered. The result is industry-wide confusion and an ongoing debate and argument with claimants’ attorneys over what can and can’t be included in a carrier’s lien for recovery purposes.
In addition to medical expenses, death benefits, funeral costs and/or indemnity benefits for lost wages and loss of earning capacity resulting from a compensable injury, workers’ compensation insurance carriers also expend considerable dollars for case management costs, medical bill audit fees, rehabilitation benefits, nurse case worker fees, and other similar fees. They also incur other expenses in conjunction with the handling and adjusting of workers’ compensation claims. Workers’ compensation carriers typically assert, of course, that, they are entitled to reimbursement for such expenditures when it recovers its workers’ compensation lien. Injured workers and their attorneys disagree.