Accident and Injury Lawyer Blog

A school in Arizona was sued by a high school football player who injured his ankle during practice. The lawsuit blames the poor conditions of the practice field. The merits of this particular case is unknown but these kind of lawsuit make a lot of accident and malpractice lawyers a little squeamish because the "blame the school" approach turns off a lot of jurors to personal injury claims generally.

The interesting legal issue in this one is that the Plaintiff contains he lost a college scholarship. Tough argument because it is so speculative. In a famous case involving where a high school (and later college) wrestling great in Iowa (where else?), the court found that there was no property interest in a college scholarship until it was awarded Brands v. Sheldon Community School, 671 F.Supp. 627, 630-631 (N.D. Iowa 1987).

The Maryland Auto Accident Lawyer Blog has a post setting forth the filing fee in Maryland personal injury cases. The fee varies depending upon the court.

The one thing defendants (and plaintiffs for that matter) consistently screw up at deposition is time, speed and distance calculations. Often, how a defendant claims an accident happened could never happen as defendant claims. If you are cross examining a defendant, make use of the following information to back the defendant into an impossible claim on liability:

1 mile per hour = 1.4667 feet per second
10 miles per hour = 14.7 feet per second
20 miles per hour = 29.3 feet per second
25 miles per hour = 36.7 feet per second
30 miles per hour = 44.0 feet per second
35 miles per hour = 51.3 feet per second
40 miles per hour = 58.7 feet per second
45 miles per hour = 66.0 feet per second
50 miles per hour = 73.3 feet per second
55 miles per hour = 80.7 feet per second
60 miles per hour = 88.0 feet per second
65 miles per hour = 95.3 feet per second

Defendants often want to stretch on how fast a plaintiff was going on how slow the defendant was traveling. Often, these stories, even after being prepared by their insurance defense lawyer, are impossible as a matter of physics.

A South Dakota woman filed a lawsuit against two mining companies and Johnson and Johnson last week, alleging the companies have been failing for decades to warn consumers of the association of talcum powder and ovarian cancer.

Plaintiff's lawsuit alleges that talc particles cause tumors in human ovaries. Plaintiff used talc-based body powder each day for over 30 year and contracted ovarian cancer in 2006.

I suspect the thrust of the lawsuit is that the National Toxicology Program found in 1993 that cosmetic grade talc caused tumors in animal subjects. The FDA has taken no action and cosmetic grade talc remains unregulated by the federal government.

Do I think that the Plaintiff will be able to show that her ovarian cancer was caused by talc at trial? I have no idea but I suspect not. Would I have liked to know about this National Toxicology Program finding before I wrote this post this morning? Obviously, yes.

The first MRI contrast lawsuit for for patients claiming nephrogenic systemic fibrosis as the result of diagnostic drugs containing gadolinium will go to trial in San Francisco in January.

Our law firm is handling MRI contrast lawsuits. I believe these are huge cases. Just how big these cases are remains to be seen but this case will offer the first clue. I think Bayer and the other defendants are going to want to reach a settlement in these cases after a few of these cases are tried.

If you believe you or someone you love has or had NSF or NSD as the result of exposure to gadolinium, call one of our MRI contrast lawyers at 800-553-8082 or get a free MRI contrast consultation. On some of these cases, there may be statute of limitations questions so potential claimants who are interested in a settlement or a lawsuit should contact our lawyers or another lawyer immediately.

State Senator Jack Harper from wants to ask voters to let lawmakers limit how much Arizona juries can award to accident and malpractice victims. "This is probably the only year we will have a legislative makeup that will allow the measure to go to the ballot," said Harper.

Okay. But if this is the only year you can get it through, doesn't that underscore it is a really bad idea? A great selling point for politics. Less so for doing the right thing.

Arizona votes defeated a similar ballot issue in 1986.

Voltaren Gel may cause liver damage according to a statement by the FDA MedWatch site last week. As a result of these reports of problems with Voltaren Gel, new warnings will be added to the drug to address the possibility that it cause liver damage. The FDA is advising doctors to measure the titer of a specific enzyme in patients who are undergoing long-term treatment with Voltaren Gel.

Voltaren Gel (diclofenac sodium topical gel 1%) is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that is used to treat the sometimes intense pain cause by osteoarthritis of joints in the knees and hands. .

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, where all Yaz cases filed in federal court now reside, has posted to its website the minutes from the initial conference, held on November 19, 2009.

Yaz lawsuits continue to move forward. If you have a potential Yaz lawsuit, call 800-553-8082 or get a free on-line Yaz internet consultation with a Yaz lawyer.

The North Carolina Medical Board has launched a website to help patients determine whether doctors who have been found liable for medical malpractice for more than $25,000 or have been convicted of a felony.

I wrote about about this issue last year.

You can find the website here.

And, yes, absolutely, the same should be done for personal injury lawyers in North Carolina and elsewhere around the country.

According to a Jury Verdict Research study that was published this month, the average compensation for a personal injury lawsuit in Texas over the last six years is compensatory median award for personal injury trials in Texas is $826,892. The highest verdict was over $100 million which, obviously, inflated the average verdict. The median verdict is only $12,281. Certainly, medical malpractice reform in Texas has not helped this number in recent years.

The same doctor gets sued for the same injury in Huntington, West Virginia. Two Plaintiff allege medical malpractice against the same obstetrician and gynecologist for separate acts of negligence within the same month in 2007.

Frequent flyer doctors make up an obscene percentage of the medical malpractice payouts in this country.

A recent Jury Verdict Research study found that the median (midpoint of data, not average) jury award for personal injury trials in Pennsylvania is $40,974. Personal injury plaintiffs in Pennsylvania receive damages in 48% of tort cases that go to trial.