Briefly

Nevada

Lawmakers set cap on malpractice awards

Trying to end a health-care crisis triggered by soaring malpractice insurance rates, lawmakers on Thursday capped pain-and-suffering awards at $350,000 in most lawsuits.

The vote ended after 4 a.m. in Carson City, following several hours of negotiations to resolve differences between rival Assembly and Senate measures that developed after the collapse of an early deal announced at the start of a special legislative session Monday.

The crisis has led some doctors to limit their practices or even leave the state. Nevada’s top trauma center, located in Las Vegas, shut down for 10 days last month, while Las Vegas obstetrician Dr. Gloria Martin closed shop rather than absorb a bump in premiums last month from $23,000 to $80,000 a year.

Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn said the approved plan would help keep doctors in the state because rates would be expected to fall in a few years.

Georgia

Billboard collapse kills 3 construction workers

A 35,000-pound billboard collapsed at a suburban Atlanta shopping center Thursday, killing three construction workers who were crushed by the falling steel.

A fourth worker was pulled from the wreckage and hospitalized in good condition, authorities said.

“We heard this big crash, so we looked over and we saw this huge sign just fall,” witness Truly Scott told WAGA-TV. “There was blood everywhere. It was awful to see.”

The billboard, roughly 30 by 60 feet, was under construction when it collapsed just before noon at the shopping center in Snellville. It crashed onto two cars and into the side of a one-story building below. No one else was hurt.

The workers who died fell 40 feet as the sign buckled; they were not immediately identified.

Boston

Judge asked to make church deal binding

Attorneys who say their clients should be paid millions by the Boston Archdiocese for sexual abuse by priests asked a judge Thursday to make a settlement deal binding.

The settlement agreement, reached in March, is worth up to $30 million. But the archdiocese pulled out of the deal in May after its finance council said it was too expensive in light of other pending and anticipated lawsuits over clergy abuse.

Church leaders say settlement papers don’t prove a deal was completed and note that only three of the 17 defendants signed the agreement. They also say the church should not be held financially responsible because it was not specifically named as a defendant.

Miami

Former Cuban nurse guilty of lying to INS

A former psychiatric nurse in Cuba was convicted Thursday of illegally obtaining U.S. citizenship by concealing his role in electroshocks given to Cuban dissidents in the 1960s and ’70s.

Eriberto Mederos, 79, had no reaction as the verdict was read, although attorney David Rothman said later his client “is physically, mentally and emotionally devastated.”

A dozen federal marshals, an unusually large number, were present in case of any outburst from spectators, who included ex-prisoners and Cuban human rights advocates who accused Mederos of torture.

Mederos faces a possible five-year prison sentence and deportation at his Oct. 16 sentencing.

Prosecutor Frank Tamen called Mederos, who obtained a U.S. visa in 1984 and became a citizen in 1993, an evil servant of communist tyranny. He said Mederos who took sadistic pleasure in sending terrified inmates at the Mazorra hospital near Havana into convulsions from 1968 to 1978.