Birmingham Injury Blog

U.S News has posted an article about a study that showed which states have the worst drivers. The National Drivers Test was given to 5,000 drivers from all 50 states. It "measures basic knowledge of driving laws."

New Jersey had the lowest score last year, but has since moved up to 49th place. New York takes last place making it (officially) the state with the worst drivers. Georgia, California and Hawaii are the rest of the bottom five.

In a press release, GMAC explains, "Results from the 2009 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test released today found that 20.1 percent of licensed Americans - amounting to roughly 41 million drivers on the road - would not pass a written drivers test exam if taken today." Most of us have trouble, according to the results, with "questions about yellow lights and safe following distances."

Idaho and Wisconsin tied for 1st place, followed by Montana, Kansas and South Dakota.

Alabama ranks exactly in the middle, tied with Nevada for 25th and 26th place.

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Posted In: Interesting News

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The Alabama Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article about a native Alabama trucker who caused a crash in Missouri that killed 3 people last July.

The driver, Jeffery Knight, reached to get his cell phone, flipped it open quickly and looked back up to see a car stopped in front of him without brake lights or flashers.

highway patrol report quotes Knight as saying, "I reached across the dash to get my cell phone. I flipped the phone open, looked back at traffic, and I was there right at the last car (in the line of cars stuck in traffic). I didn't see any brake lights or emergency flashers. After I hit the first car, I just remember holding the steering wheel and seeing cars going to my left and right."

He collided with a line of 10 cars stopped because of traffic, killing 3 and injuring 15. Knight, who previously had a clean driving record, was convicted on April 8 with 3 counts of second degree involuntary manslaughter

...which alleges that the deaths resulted from "criminal negligence." According to authorities, each count is punishable by up to four years in prison.

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Posted In: Truck Wreck

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The Alabama Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article about a May 14 school bus crash that happened in Montgomery, AL.

One school bus rear ended another school bus and created a chain reaction that ultimately involved two other vehicles and the buses. Injuries appear to have been minor, considering 15 students were on each bus.

According to police, three individuals were taken to local hospitals with minor injuries. Two Montgomery County Public School students and a third person from one of the passenger vehicles were transported by ambulance. The personal injuries included one student’s hand, while a second student suffered from injuries to the neck and shoulders. There was no immediate information on the third victim.

A police investigation is underway to determine the exact cause of the crash.

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Posted In: Car Wreck

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The Florida Personal Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article about the "myth" of huge settlements from medical malpractice lawsuits.

Expecting to receive millons of dollars in compensation, in most cases, isn't realistic.
According to the article, less than 10% of malpractice suits in Maine, Florida, Nevada, and Missouri had payouts of $1 million or more.

...multi-million dollar verdicts in these cases are not as prevalent as believed. Not only is the investigatory process expensive due to all of the medical records that need to be compiled and all of the expert witness testimony required, but more often than not, it takes years to get one of these cases to trial. Finally, once the case gets to trial, juries are many times very reluctant to award large damage amounts because they have heard all the erroneous stories about the huge jury awards in some cases.

The typical payout is $278,000-$350,000 for long-term and life-altering injuries or ailments. For "temporary or emotional injuries" the average payout is $5,000-$79,000. However, the article does warn that most medical malpractice suits end without the person seeking compensation receiving any.

Actually, only one in eight preventable medical errors committed in hospitals results in a malpractice claim and punitive damages are awarded in less than 1 percent of medical malpractice cases.

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Posted In: Medical Malpractice

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The Chicago Personal Injury Blog has posted an article that discusses the use an Engine Control Module (ECM), or "black box", can play in determining the details of a truck wreck.

ECMs typically monitor engine performance, evidence of hard braking and clutch use, but some of the newer models can monitor things like driver fatigue and keep track of vehicles that may be in a driver's blind spot.

However, because not all trucks have the same type of information it is important to find out what sort of data is available. In order to determine whether or not a truck is equipped with an ECM, refer to the vehicle’s “line sheet” or “build sheets” which identify all the equipment on the tractor when it was delivered from its manufacturer.

To be useful, the ECM information must be accessed as soon as after the crash as possible so that

...the data found on the ECM can be used by experts to reconstruct the accident, the scene, and different versions of the trucking crash as given by the different drivers and witnesses.

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Posted In: Truck Wreck

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The Chicago Personal Injury Blog has posted an article about unqualified drivers obtaining licenses to drive trucks, buses, and other large vehicles.

Testing methods to get licenses to operate large vehicles vary in different states. Some states have more rigorous procedures than others. For example, Illinois is just 1 of 12 states that require the driver to test in the type of vehicle they will be operating.

The Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1986 (CMVSA) was designed to keep drivers from having a commercial license in more than one state. At least this would keep unqualified drivers confined to the state that their license was issued.

The CMVSA is also cracking down on the past practice among some unqualified drivers who had multiple licenses from different states to spread around their traffic convictions using different licenses from different states. A new system allows states to exchange information on traffic violations, making it easier to remove problem drivers from the road. In addition, truck drivers who violate the law are subject to tougher penalties.

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Posted In: Truck Wreck

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The Kentucky Injury Law Blog has posted an article about another case of nursing home mistreatment.

Bluegrass Care and Rehabilitation Center received a Type A Citation, the most severe citation, because some of its employees were using their cell phones to take pictures of the residents without their consent. The pictures were then sent to other nursing home employees with sexual song lyrics attached. No one reported the incidents because it happened often and was not seen as a type of abuse.

Apparently, the nursing home ever directly told employees that kind of behavior was unacceptable...although certainly it should have been automatically understood. The nursing home also failed to enforce the rule that prohibited employees from carrying cell phones on residential floors.

The administrator for the nursing home said that the facility had conducted a complete investigation and a number of employees had been let go.

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Posted In: Nursing Home

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The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article that discusses if courts should force doctors to admit malpractice to their patients.

University of Baltimore law professor Richard W. Bourne wrote an article published this year in the Arkansas Law Review articulating the theory that there should be an independent tort claim when a doctor destroys evidence or when a doctor fails to disclose to the patient that there has been a breach of the appropriate standard of care that causes injury. Professor Bourne would limit this tort to cases where (1) the wrong is serious, and (2) the failure to reveal is intentional.

Ironically, many times when doctors destroy documents to cover their own tracks, they come across as worse to the jury and therefore are more harshly treated than if they had just been honest in the first place.

...a lot of Maryland doctors who want to rid the medical profession of dishonest doctors would also support a tort to punish doctors who deliberately destroy evidence and/or do not reveal to the patient that serious medical malpractice has been committed.

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Posted In: Medical Malpractice

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The Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article about a wrongful death lawsuit against a nursing home in Missouri.

In 2003, the resident, Dorothy Lawrence, began living at Beverly Manor Nursing Home in St. Joseph, Missouri. At the time Lawrence's daughter, Phyllis Skoglund, had power of attorney for her mother and signed the contract with the nursing home on behalf of the resident. This contract included an arbitration clause that stated that "any and all claims, disputes and controversies [regarding the nursing home's care and treatment of Lawrence] shall be resolved exclusively by binding arbitration.

However, Lawrence died shortly after entering the nursing home. Her daughter filed a wrongful death suit, claiming that being dropped by the nursing home staff attributed to her death. The trial court said that the case could proceed even in spite of the arbitration clause in the nursing home contract.

The Missouri Supreme Court found that the wrongful death claim was not derivative from any claims the resident might have had. Further, that the arbitration agreement cannot prevent parties from filing a wrongful death suit. The Supreme Court's reasoning for this was that “the only signature to the agreement is in her capacity as her mother’s agent”.

The defendant nursing home had argued that because the resident and her daughter could only bring one wrongful death suit they were both bound by that contract. However, the Supreme Court disagreed with this line of reasoning because it "require[d] this court to find that by signing on behalf of her mother, Skoglund also is signing on her own behalf and on behalf of the wrongful death plaintiffs.” Yet the court felt that Skoglund was only signing in the capacity of her mother's power of attorney and not on her own behalf, or did she sign it as a representative of the potential wrongful death beneficiaries. Therefore, the wrongful death claim was not barred because of the signed contract.

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Posted In: Nursing Home , Wrongful Death

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The Tennessee Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article about a shopkeeper's liability in slip and fall incidents. While this pertains to Tennessee law and not Alabama, they still offer valuable insight.

Store owners are generally not insurers of their customers' safety, as this would "unfairly expose an otherwise diligent shopkeeper to unlimited liability." For a legitimate slip and fall suit to be brought against a store owner, it must be proved that he had knowledge of a hazardous situation.

Trying to figure out what somebody actually knew, however, can be an impossible task. It can also be difficult to find evidence that the defendant had constructive knowledge. To prove the defendant should have known of a hazard, the plaintiff often has to show how long the slippery condition had existed prior to injury or the proximity of an employee to the hazard.

The owner's previous behavior could also help in proving whether or not they had previous knowledge of the situation. For example, if they allow trucks with oil leaks to unload at the front of the store and are aware of the slippery area, they may be showing negligence.

Just because no one was there to see you fall doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. A shopkeeper has a duty to exercise reasonable care under all the circumstances. If the shopkeeper knows that other customers or employees have created risks that are preventable, he may indeed be liable to you for your injuries.

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Posted In: Slip and Fall

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The Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article that discusses how defense doctors may be an unreliable source and give biased information in court.

Defense doctors are often paid handsomely by insurance companies and/or defense lawyers to side with them. This article suggests using a subpoena to obtain the doctor's tax records of the past year and see how much he was previously paid for his testimony.

The doctors do not like this very much. Usually the response we receive is a Motion for Protective order from the doctor’s attorney asking that the records not be produced. If the court orders that the financial records be produced, usually that is the last you see of the DME doctor. Doctors will generally refuse to testify before producing these records.

The doctor's refusal to testify validates the assumption that his opinions are probably being swayed in the form of a check.

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Posted In: General Case Tips

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The Tennessee Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article with suggestions on how to go about proving a negligent auto repair is to blame for an accident.

The majority of accidents are due to driver error but some are caused by faulty repairs. If the mechanic's failure caused the accident, they can be held liable for sustained injuries.

In an action for negligent repair, the plaintiff must plead and prove 1) the mechanic had a duty to the plaintiff to exercise ordinary and reasonable care, 2) the mechanic was negligent in making the repairs, and 3) the negligence caused the injuries to the plaintiff.

The plaintiff must show that the mechanic didn't meet the standard for the thorough repair of their automobile. The type of repair is also important. For instance, the mechanic should always be more careful when working on something like "brakes or wheel work."

The plaintiff has to prove that the bad repair was either the cause of, or was a large contributor, to the wreck.

It is not necessary, however, for the plaintiff to prove that the defendant's negligence was the sole cause of the injury or loss.

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Posted In: Car Wreck

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Michael E. Grossman's Personal Injury Blog, has posted an article about a Vermont woman's lawsuit over side effects from a drug.

In 2000, she received a shot of the migraine medicine Phenergan and contracted gangrene shortly thereafter. The medicine's FDA warning label didn't list gangrene being a possible side effect.

The woman's attorney filed a suit against Wyeth, makers of the medicine, stating that "the company was responsible for meeting The State of Vermont's own drug warning label laws." She was awarded $6.7 million from a jury.

Wyeth's attorneys appealed the decision taking it to the Supreme Court. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict sending a strong message regarding the power of state liability laws. Prior to this significant outcome, many held to the belief that state liability laws were overridden by the FDA's standards. If a drug's warning label met the federal requirements, an opposing or differing law at the state level was thought to be less relevant. The outcome will likely prompt many pending drug injury cases to move forward where a potential roadblock once kept such cases at a stand still.

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Posted In: Drug Cases

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The Alabama Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article about a new proposistion that would restrict teenage drivers.

The Alabama House of Representatives has voted on a curfew bill that says drivers ages 16-17 must be off the road by 10pm on weeknights and 11pm on weekends.

The purpose of this is to make the roads safer.

According to the sponsor of the bill, Mac Gipson of Prattville, teen drivers make up fifteen percent of all highways deaths but only six percent of drivers are teens. Thus, teen drivers account for a disproportionate amount of fatal accidents on Alabama highways.

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Posted In: Car Wreck

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