Accident and Injury Lawyer Blog

A recall was issued for a frozen fruit bar after a possible outbreak of typhoid fever in California. Fruiti Pops has recalled its mamey fruit bars. Mamey or zapote (zah-POH'-teh), is a popular fruit in Latin America and the Caribbean. Mamey frozen bars in California, Arizona or Texas since May 2009, may be contaminated. Fruiti Pops says retail stores, ice cream trucks and vending machines sold the frozen fruit bars subject to the recall. The bars have the UPC number 763734000097.

There have been no illness reported as of yet. But, as I understand it, typhoid fever comes largely from contact with human feces from an infected person. Mere garden variety human feces is not enough which has the mamey fruit bar addict wonder how much feces they have eaten before finally getting some with typhoid. Then, again, I think we would all be beyond terrified if we knew what we ate every day.

A San Mateo County jury ordered the California department of transportation to pay a 17 year-old girl injured in a pedestrian accident $12 million. As is the case in too many pedestrian accident cases, the plaintiff's injuries were catastrophic: she sustained a brain injury that put her in a permanent vegetative state. No matter what the facts are, it is just an unbelievable tragedy that happens far too often.

Plaintiff's attorneys' case rested on the premise that uncontrolled intersections with designated crosswalks are more dangerous than unmarked crosswalks because they give pedestrians a false sense of confidence that they can cross.

These pedestrian cases against state entities are tough and few accident lawyers are willing to take them. Plaintiff's lawyers in this case deserve a lot of credit.

State Farm has the highest market share among California car insurance companies at 12.9 percent, according to 2008 statistics released by the California Department of Insurance. The Automobile Clubs came in second at 8.9% of the California market. Together, these companies collect over $4 billion in insurance premiums in California alone.

The California State Automobile Association garnered third place with 6.8% of the market, followed by Mercury and Allstate. Interesting, GEICO, which is a powerhouse in so many jurisdictions, including Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., has just over 1 percent of the California market.

If you have been injured in a car accident in California and need an accident lawyer, call 800-553-8082 or get a free consultation on line.

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.

The South Carolina Lawyer Blog has a blog post about a malpractice/product liability lawsuit involving the radiation overdoses at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center which the Maryland Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog posted on last week.

Sometimes it makes sense tactically to file a lawsuit quickly. But it seems that the only cases that get filed in less than a few weeks are those cases that coincidentally happen to make headlines.

Doctors at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center committed medical malpractice when caring for a baby with meningitis, a Los Angeles jury found on Friday, causing the child a permanent brain injury. The jury awarded $7.3 million in damages. The award will be used to pay for past and future medical care, the medical malpractice attorneys for the child told the Associated Press.

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.

A Hydroxycutt class action lawsuit has been filed against Iovate Health Sciences, the makers of weight loss dietary supplement Hydroxycutt, in federal court in California. The plaintiffs' Hydroxycutt lawyers allege, among other things, that the manufacturer misrepresented the product as safe and effective in its advertisements.

The Orlando Sentinel (via Overlawyered) has an interesting article taking a detailed look at statistics surrounding theme park lawsuits. This is not your garden variety media article of a legal trend. It has detailed breakdown of the lawsuits filed against theme parks, and through statistics and interviews, sets the game plan of Disney theme parks, and I think to a similar but lesser extent, its brethren when facing a lawsuit: wage elongated war, make discovery brutal for accident lawyers and their clients, and settle the cases you think you might not win - particularly those cases you might prolifically not win.

Jury Verdict Research recent look a verdicts in personal injury cases in California shows the compensatory median award for personal injury trials in California is $150,000. This is a lot higher than the national average of less than $40,000. But plaintiffs receive money damages in only 45 percent of cases that go to trial, which is 5% less than the national average.

What does this data mean for personal injury plaintiffs in California? Not much but it is interesting data.

If you need a personal injury lawyer in California, call 800-553-8082 or click here for a free initial consultation.

The Maryland Auto Accident Lawyer Blog reports that the recent $45 million verdict reported in San Mateo, California is misleading because of the coverage issues that remain in the case.

Nursing home lawyers focus on the abuse and neglect that patients receive in nursing homes. The social good that derivies from this is that nursing homes have to be mindful that abusing patients comes with a cost.

The New York Times has an article off the radar screen of nursing home lawyers that can be just as awful for nursing home patients: abuse and neglect by family members.

The San Jose Mercury News reports on a medical malpractice lawsuit filed against the San Mateo Medical Center. Plaintiff alleges that his heart was permanently damaged after the center left a broken catheter in his heart and, even more seriously, that the hospital covered up the mistake. Although Plaintiff did not know about the catheter's break -which is the size of a drinking straw - until July 2008, it was clearly visible on x-rays and scans more than two years before. The first operation to remove the catheter was unsuccessful. Open heart surgery was required during which a heart valve was destroyed and had to be replaced with a valve from a pig’s heart. To make matters worse, the plaintiff has cancer.

I do not know what happened here and I think medical malpractice cover-ups do happen. But this is actually a rare sighting for medical malpractice lawyers. The vast majority of doctors and hospitals accused of medical malpractice were trying to do the right thing... but didn't.

The family of a man killed by police during an attempted arrest for a gang related murder has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Sunnyvale. The family contends the decedent did not attempt to run over the police officers and was not resisting arrest at the time of his death. The family filed a previous suit six months ago, but withdrew it after the city protested that it was too vague. The city plans to seek a dismissal of the case again. You can find one of the articles on this case here.

Sunnyvale is not the only city in California to face a similar lawsuit. In what would appear on its face to be a more compelling case invovling an innocent 20-year-old black man who had a wife and small child, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against the city of Anaheim for fatally shooting this young man in his frontyard. You can find that story here.

It is impossible to prejudge a case with knowing all of the facts. But absent other factors which very well may exist, Plaintiff's wrongful death claim in the latter case seems strong.

The Los Angeles Times writes this morning about a tragic case in Los Angeles at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center where an official Los Angeles County assessment has acknowledged for the first time that a woman who died shortly after writhing in pain for nearly an hour on the hospital's waiting room floor would not have died if she had received proper medical care.

The vast majority of medical malpractice cases in Los Angeles occur when doctors who are largely good doctors and good people had good intentions but medical mistakes were made. This is something very different. The only reason this woman's family has a potential wrongful death medical malpractice case is that a security camera videotaped a janitor mopped around the victim while a triage nurse dismissed her complaints.

Sad but true: video cameras and phones are helping make more and more medical malpractice and nursing home claims.

AstraZeneca is going to keep pushing Seroquel. Last week AstraZeneca asked the FDA to let it market the antipsychotic drug Seroquel for the treatment of schizophrenia in teenagers and for the treatment of acute manic episodes associated with bipolar I disorder in children and teenagers between 10 and 17.

It is amazing that there are over 13,000 Seroquel lawsuits and AstraZeneca is looking to expand the uses of Seroquel. Currently, two atypical antipsychotics are approved to treat adolescents and the literature to support their use with children is certainly not overwhelming. You have a drug under siege and you try to use that drug for a purpose for which pharmacological efficacy is highly questionable. This is called pushing all of your chips to the center of the table.

In other Seroquel news, About Lawsuits reports that the MDL judge in Orlando, Florida, who is overseeing all federal Seroquel lawsuits, denied a request by AstraZeneca last week to file motions in the Seroquel litigation under seal.

Note: For information on Seroquel class action cases involving diabetes and pancreatitis, click here.

If you think you may have a potential Seroquel lawsuit and have a question about the Seroquel class action lawsuit, you can call one of our Seroquel lawyers for a free consultation at 800-553-8082 or click here for a free Internet Seroquel consultation.

Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo filed a lawsuit accused Anthem Blue Cross of California of attempting to pay off plaintiffs involved in a class action over insurance rescissions.

Paying off plaintiffs with money? How awful! Wait, I thought that was the point...

In the insurance law class that I teach, we are often discussing the fine line between accidental acts covered by insurance and intentional acts that are generally not covered in most policies. The reality is that coverage in most states is interpreted very broadly and, as a result, acts that we all agree are intentional in the vernacular are not intentional in the insurance law context. The San Diego Injury Lawyer Blog has a good post about a recent California case where the insured's son threw someone into the shallow end of a pool at their home and fractured the victim's clavicle.

The son was charged and later pled nolo contendre to a misdemeanor so, obviously, it was a little more than negligence because battery - by definition - is an intentional tort. The court does an end run around this - as most courts do - by finding that the son did not intend or expect the consequence. Obviously, in the world of torts, this does not negate an otherwise intentional act.

The classic case on this premise in the torts context is the one we all remember from law school: Garratt v. Dailey, 279 P.2d 1091 (Wash. 1955). In that case, a 5 year-old boy who pulled a chair out from under his aunt committed a tort if he knew that the likelihood of his action was that she would fall to the ground. Obviously, the insured in this case knew that the person he threw in the pool would land in the pool and that there was not consent for the act.

For a similar case in the insurance law context that is in most modern insurance law textbooks, read AMCO Ins. Co. v. Haht, 490 N.W.2d 843, 845 (Iowa 1992), which also includes a dissent that articulates the insurance company's point of view in these types of cases.

Good news for Medtronic defective lead patients: the FDA last week approved of a software update from Medtronic that will help detect fractures of Medtronic's Sprint Fidelis cardiac defibrillator lead. The new software package will allow Medtronic patients to rest a little easier knowing that the software will alert patients of a potential Medtronic lead fracture.

Our lawyers are handling claims for defective Medtronic Sprint Fidelis leads that were the subject of a October 2007 Medtronic "recall" because the leads were found to be prone to fracture in a small number of patients. I put recall in quotes because by necessity, most of the patients with the Medtronic Sprint Fidelis lead still have the device implanted in their chests because of the surgical risk associated with removal.

This cynic in me wonders if Medtronic's purpose in developing this new software was to decrease the potential damages to patients without fractures to improve their chances in the Medtronic medical monitoring lawsuits that are being filed around the country (currently consolidated in a MDL). Why didn't they develop this product sooner? But forget about that for now. Good job Medtronic in finding a product to help you patients deal with the concerns that they are having.

My two volume treatise Insurance Settlements is now available from James Publishing. The book discusses how to position a lawyer's car accident, truck accident, medical malpractice or product liability case to the best possible settlement at every step along the way (until the state's high court affirms the judgment).

Click on the James Publishing link. If you have any comments on the book, please email me at ronmiller@millerandzois.com under the subject "Insurance Settlements Comments."