Accident and Injury Lawyer Blog

Maryland Accident Lawyer Blog has a practice tip on coordinating workers' compensation and PIP claims in Maryland accident cases.

High on the list of people who scare me are people unrelated to a lawsuit or criminal charge sitting though the entire trial. This New York Times article has a this phenomenon. Typically, even in very serious personal injury cases, no one is watching the trial other than people who are somehow involved in this case. If we get a sitter, all of the lawyers perk up and start wondering who it is.

A Yamaha Rhino lawsuit in death alleging the wrongful death of a 13 year old boy in a Yamaha Rhino accident is proceeding to trial, according to a report in the Southeast Texas Record. This lawsuit alleges design defects and insufficient safety features caused the boy's death after a rollover accident.

According to a report by the Southeast Texas Record, Yamaha has been trying to force the parents to arbitrate the case based on an agreement signed with the dealer when the Rhino was first purchased. However, a motion to compel arbitration was not filed until June 1, and the parents argued that Yamaha had waived their right by not asserting the provision earlier in the litigation.

There are scores of Yamaha Rhino rollover lawsuit now pending in the MDL, which is class action lawsuit only for the purpose of discovery.

For more information on the Yamaha Rhino rollover case, click here.

A drilling company in Texas paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of a woman killed by gas well equipment that fell from a company truck. The settlement was reached after the Pioneer Drilling truck driver admitted that he had given conflicting testimony in the case. The driver also admitted - and I'm sure this added millions to the case - that he and Pioneer officials attempted to falsify documents following the accident.

Our Yasmin/Yaz lawyers are investigating potential Yasmin/Yaz lawsuits throughout the country for women who have taken this birth control medication and now suffer from deep vein thrombosis (blood clot), pulmonary embolism, and/or strokes.

Yasmin/Yaz lawsuits allege, among other things, that Bayer knew or should have known that Yaz/Yasmin caused risks and did not adequately warn doctors about the risk.

Click on the link to find out more about the Yaz/Yasmin lawsuits.

A Jury Verdict Research found that the median money damages award for personal injury lawsuits that go to trial in Illinois is $26,624. Plaintiffs receive damages in 51 percent of cases that go to trial. These are the statistics from 2002-2008.

Unlike average jury verdict statistics, median jury verdict data blunts larger cases, including the approximately 8% of jury verdicts in Illinois that were over $1 million.

• How to Determine the Value of a Personal Injury Case
• More on Illinois Accident Verdicts (data from 2002-2007)

Is there a rampant legal malpractice problem in New Mexico? Jonathan Miller's article in the New Mexico Examiner about a malpractice pandemic in New Mexico certainly gives cause for concern.

Our firm reviews serious auto accident, medical malpractice, and products liability (Seroquel, Byetta, Nuvaring, Chantix, Reglan, shoulder pain pump, denture cream, Zimmer hip replacement, and Fleet Phospho-soda) claims. If you need a lawyer in New Mexico for a serious injury claim, call 800-553-8082 or click here for a free consultation.

There is a suggestion that malpractice lawyers in Tennessee for a woman and her four year old daughter told the woman not to pursue custody of the child because it could impact her medical malpractice lawsuit.

Interesting allegation that made by the Associated Press in exactly 123 words. This article raises a serious issue but the AP really seems to give it no mind.

Medical malpractice payouts continued to fall across the country last year and account for a only .6% of our nation's health care costs, according to malpractice statistics complied by the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen.

Using data from the government's National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) - which has mandatory reporting requirements - the group found the number of payouts declined for the third straight year. The 11,037 payments recorded in 2008 were 31% fewer than the average number of payments recorded by the NPDB in all previous years.

The FDA announced that Xolair, an asthma drug, may increase the risk of patients developing a host of cardiovascular problems. Data gathered from clinic trials showed that Xolair users were disproportionately more likely to suffer from blood clots, stroke, heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias and heart enlargement. However, the FDA said causal link between the Xolair and heart problems has not yet been established. Certainly, the potential causal relationship between Xolari and heart problems with be looked at closely in the months to come.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has found that a child lead based paint cannot sue the manufacturers for defectively designing a key ingredient.

The majority found that:

Lead is a characteristic ingredient of white lead carbonate pigment. By definition, white lead carbonate pigment contains lead. Removing lead from white lead carbonate pigment would transform it into a different product. Under these circumstances, we conclude that the design of white lead carbonate pigment is not defective.

A Shelby County, Tennessee jury awarded a $24 million verdict yesterday, one of the largest medical malpractice verdicts in Tennessee history, for a doctor's failure to diagnose Stage I breast cancer.

According to the medical malpractice lawsuit filed by Plaintiff's medical malpractice lawyers, the Plaintiff was just 23 when she went to her Memphis OB-GYN. Her doctor told her simply not to worry about it. The Plaintiff noticed the lump was larger and more painful 18 months later and was immediately diagnosed with cancer after a mammogram and biopsy.

Certainly, it is incredibly unlikely that a 23 year-old with a lump on her breast has breast cancer. But, as this Tennessee jury found, the OB-GYN should have done something to find out what the etiology of the lump was because, as unlikely as it is for a 23 year-old to have breast cancer, it is entirely possible. Pretty much anything would be better than telling the patient not to worry about it with no follow-up.

• Sampling of Cancer Misdiagnosis Verdicts (case summaries and verdicts)
• Breast Cancer Misdiagnosis (generally)
• Malpractice Lawyer Blog (blog directed to medical malpractice lawyers

An Oatmeal recall is not something anyone would expect. But here we are. There is an oatmeal recall for some oatmeal products made with instant nonfat dried milk, whey protein, fruit stabilizers, and gums (thickening agents) manufactured by Plainview Milk Products Cooperative. The fear is that these recallled oatmeal products might be contaminated with salmonella.

In addition to Malt-O-Meal Hearty Traditions Maple & Brown Sugar Instant Oatmeal and other brands of instant oatmeal, other recall oatmeal products include some brands of non-fat dried milk powder, other drink mix products, and butter flavored toppings from Kroger. If you have any of these recalled products, get rid of them.

They oatmeal at issue comes in 13.8-ounce boxes with 10 instant oatmeal packets. It was distributed in stores in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

Our lawyers are not handling oatmeal recall cases. Although obviously it is early, our lawyers do not think a lot of lawsuits are going to come out of this oatmeal recall.

The Maryland Accident Lawyer has a post on bad intersections and the balance between human life and the convenience of the automobile.

The Maryland Court of Appeals decided Pittway v. Collins last month, a tragic case involving a lawsuit that arose out of a fire that took two lives in Montgomery County in 1998. The fire was caused by a burning candle in the basement, where the children – guests of the tenants of the house - were sleeping. The children lit the candle during an electrical outage caused by thunderstorms and the HVAC powered smoke detector that had no backup was not operational. Making the problem worse, the basement was a windowless basement bedroom that did not have proper egress.

Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against a chain of defendants on the failure to supply an adequate fire alarm: the builder, the landlord, the electrical subcontractor, the city rental inspector, and the home improvement company that renovated the basement four years earlier.

After settlements and summary judgment, everyone got out of the case except for the builder and the manufacturer. Both filed motions for summary judgment, before the discovery deadline, that intervening negligent acts superseded the claims against them. The trial court granted the motions. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals reversed.

The Maryland Court of Appeals agreed with the narrow CSA opinion that the motion to dismiss before discovery was premature. The court provides a detailed history of Maryland law on proximate cause, superseding cause, and foreseeability.

The New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner defends a $110 million transfer from New Hampshire's Medical Malpractice Joint Underwriting Association in the Nashua Telegraph. The Commissioner is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by three health care providers regarding this $110 million transfer.

The Michigan Supreme Court is banning all electronic communications by jurors during trial, including the nearly essential for human life "tweets" on Twitter, text messages and Google searches. This will require Michigan judges for the first time to instruct jurors not to use any handheld device, such as iPhones or Blackberrys, while in the jury box or during deliberations.

The National Law Journal reports that In Florida, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Scott Silverman in declared a mistrial in a civil case after discovering a witness -- a company executive -- was texting his boss on the stand during a side bar conference. "I never had this happen before," Judge Silverman stated. "This is completely outrageous."

I appreciate the problem. Logistically, taking away cell phones from people in 2009 is going to be a problem. A good number of jurors - usually a minority, but still - are angry about spending the time required to serve in the first place. This is not going to help matters. I'm am in the minority of injury lawyers who think that the existing rules that already incorporate all of the real concerns we have should be underscored in the instruction to the jury but that we should otherwise leave things as they are.

A spokesperson from AstraZeneca tells us that plaintiffs’ lawyers have voluntarily dismissed two Seroquel lawsuits set for November trials in Delaware. AstraZeneca has a gloating statement:

With this announcement, the initial seven cases prepared for trial in federal and state courts have been thrown out by judges or abandoned by the plaintiffs’ attorneys themselves. We have said from day one that the heart of these cases are unproven claims that Seroquel caused diabetes in the individual plaintiffs. That continues to hold true as we see that plaintiffs’ lawyers have placed a huge burden on valuable court and public resources, bringing claims that they are repeatedly unable to prove.

Why did these Seroquel lawsuits get dismissed? I think plaintiffs' Seroquel lawyers know that the worst Seroquel cases are not going to make it to a jury. Clearly, AstraZeneca and this author apparently think this is the death knell for Seroquel cases. On the other hand, I don't think they will be telling shareholders to expect these cases are not going to cost AstraZeneca 10 figures. I'll still bet the Plaintiffs are going to win some of these cases and there is going to be a global settlement. But there is no question: the plaintiffs need to get these Seroquel cases to a jury.