Articles Posted in Personal Injury

The recent horrible tragedy of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota raises the question, and rightly so, of whether Georgia bridges are unsafe, also. ap_us_minneapolis_bridge_collapse_195_02Aug07.jpg

Unfortunately, the answer is probably “yes.” The Georgia Department of Transportation takes responsibility for inspecting roadway bridges throughout the state. It has a grading system of ranking the safety of Georgia bridges from 1-100, 1 being the least safe (or possibly dangerous) and 100 being the most safe. It might surprise many Georgia citizens to learn that 18 local bridges rated less than 10 on a 100-point scale were not closed and were listed as open in the federal database. Something is obviously wrong here. Many Georgia bridges are, apparently, unsafe, and yet remain open to use. This may have to do with a faulty rating system used by the Georgia DOT. Each bridge is rated on a 100-point scale. Those determined to be 50 or below are considered “structurally deficient.”

More than 1,100 roadway bridges in Georgia are in such bad shape that they need renovation or rebuilding, state and federal records show. Another 1,800 Georgia bridges are considered functionally obsolete: They aren’t designed to meet new standards. Nearly 500 of the problem bridges are in metro Atlanta. But while one in five Georgia bridges are considered by the government to be structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, the state Department of Transportation says no roads now open to traffic are unsafe for the vehicles that travel them. How can this be? Can Georgia citizens rely on what the Georgia DOT is telling us about the safety of our bridges? Or does Georgia have to experience something as utterly horrible and tragic as the Minneapolis bridge collapse before we get the Georgia DOT’s attention that something needs to be done to make Georgia bridges safe? And I don’t mean “safer”: I mean simply “safe.” Remember, this is the same Georgia DOT who immediately proclaimed nothing was wrong with its left-hand exit from I-75 at Northside Drive after the bus carrying the Bluffton, Ohio baseball team accidently drove up this exit and crashed off the overhead pass when the driver at last realized it was not the continuation of the bus lane on I-75.

The loss of a child saddens me and it is especially tough when the child’s death was preventable. In the last two weeks, children in two separate incidents were killed when they were run over by one of their parents who was driving an SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle). The first incident, in Savannah, Georgia, involved a mother who ran over her twenty month old daughter as she backed up in her Isuzu Ascension, an SUV. To read more of that horrible story, click here.http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/stories/2007/07/20/toddlerkilled.html Then I see today that in Ohio, a father backed over his own child yesterday while heading out to church. This father was driving a Chevrolet Suburban. For more on this tragedy, click here. http://www.wlwt.com/news/13778230/detail.html

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I am willing to bet that neither the Chevrolet Suburban nor the Isuzu Ascension had a back-up camera in them, which easily allows an SUV driver to see what is behind the car before backing up. In fact, this type of camera automatically comes on anytime the vehicle is in reverse. Also, they are cheap, costing only approximately $150.00. These back-up cameras are crucial in SUVs, in which the driver is sitting so high off the ground and the SUV is so long that it is almost impossible to see everything behind the SUV clearly. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in a report to Congress in November, said backover accidents are not a recent phenomenon. But NHTSA disputes perceptions that the number of accidents is increasing as the size of the nation’s vehicle fleet grows — led by SUVs and minivans, which tend to have larger rear blind zones.

A study by Consumer Reports magazine suggests SUVs, pickups and minivans are longer and taller and their blind zones extend as much as 50 feet from the rear bumper. These factors contribute to poor visibility, the report says.

Back-up cameras would have prevented both of these tragic deaths.

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Something obviously needs to be done. The statistics are alarming: 1,200 children under 15 who have been killed since 2000 in nontraffic motor-vehicle accidents in the United States. Half of those fatalities were in backovers, almost all of them involving children under 5, according to Kids and Cars, a child-safety advocacy group in Leawood, Kan.http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/64616.html

What is $150.00 if it will save the life of a child? A child’s life is priceless. It is time Congress mandated the inclusion of these inexpensive, but absolutely life-saving, back-up cameras in all new SUVs before another child dies needlessly, and another family is tortured with the guilt of running over their own child. Enough is enough.

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I am not at all surprised to see that the fallout from the discovery that many Chinese manufactured toys are hazardous to children’s health continues. I am sure many of these hazardous toys have made their way to Georgia and Atlanta. Every day now it seems as if we learn of new toys from China that should not be bought for children because they pose a health threat to the children who would play with them. The latest such dangerous toys: sets of Essentials for Kids jewelry, 800 Mag Stix magnetic building sets and 68,000 Shape Sorting Toy Castles. These toys have now all been recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. You can find a list of recalled toys by going to http://www.cpsc.gov.
I think it is probably a good idea to check on the USCPS’s list of recalled toys periodically, especially before buying for a birthday or Christmas. My friend and fellow Georgia Trial Lawyer, Don Keenan, also makes a point of including a list of dangerous toys on the Keenan Kids Foundation website, http://www.keenanskidsfoundation.com. Some of these toys were even manufactured right here in the United States. It is senseless that the practice of allowing foreign manufactured toys that can kill children continues. It is only a matter of time before one of these hazardous toys kills a precious child right here in Georgia.

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I have just returned from a wonderful beach vacation over the Fourth of July Holiday, during which my two children swam every day in various swimming pools, and I am saddened and shocked to find out that another preventable swimming pool tragedy occurred during what was meant to be a fun summer week. This time the tragedy occurred in Minneapolis at a pool that we now know had some sort of defective drain in it. A six year old girl was eviscerated by the swimming pool drain while doing what normal six year olds are supposed to do in the summer…have fun swimming in a pool. As a mother of two, this news has hit me especially hard. I was under the impression that following several other lawsuits over such defective swimming pool drains and a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warning in a 2005 report, Guidelines for Entrapment Hazards: Making Pools and Spas Safer, that every commercial pool in the United States had taken the necessary steps to make their pools safe. Also, that many pool owners, at least those in North Carolina, retrofitted their pools to make them safer after Presidential Candidate John Edwards successfully brought a lawsuit against a pool owner and drain manufacturer in an almost identical case in which his clients’ child was disemboweled by a defective pool drain. But, unfortunately, such was not the case, to this little six year old’s (and her parents’) horror. You can read more of the facts of this preventable tragedy here. Either the pool drain’s cover was carelessly off, or the pool had not been retrofitted with other drains to prevent too much suction power from being on this one drain. Either way, the owner of the pool was careless in allowing children to swim in a pool with a defective drain. Because of this carelessness, a young girl’s life is forever changed, to the point where she may have to be fed intravenously for the rest of her life.
Pool owners who fail to make their pools safe and pool drain manufacturers who fail to make safe swimming pool drains must be held accountable for their carelessness in our Civil Justice System. It will be the only justice this little girl will ever realize. Although such blatant corporate negligence really should be a crime. And this should never happen to another family ever again. I urge you to find out about the safety of the pool(s) in which your children are now swimming. Ask whether the pool has been retrofitted as suggested by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Ask how often the owners check to insure all drains are covered. I am going to do so regarding the pools my children swim in. Demand that safety action be taken to correct any such dangerous situation as having a missing pool drain cover. The little Minneapolis six year old will be in my prayers.

It seems that in New Jersey, physicians are forcing their patients to give up their rights to sue the doctor in the event of malpractice before the doctor will even agree to see the patient. To read the full article, click here.

Let’s hope this doesn’t make its way to Georgia…otherwise, hundreds of Georgia citizens will be involuntarily forced to give up their constitutional rights, under the Georgia Constitution, to hold a doctor accountable for that doctor’s negligence or carelessness. Unfortunately, noneconomic damages in Georgia are already capped at $350,000.00, a drop in the bucket if you are talking about someone’s life. The Georgia General Assembly decided that was the value of the life of a Georgia citizen, their constituents, when it passed SB3 in 2005. My guess is that if pressed on the issue, no Georgia Legislator would dare agree that the value of the life of one of his sons or daughters amounts only to a mere $350,000.00. But that’s what the Georgia Legislature has told Georgia citizens their lives are worth. The largest medical malpractice insurer in Georgia, MAG (Medical Association of Georgia) Mutual, promised to lower their malpractice insurance premiums in exchange for SB3 and a cap on damages, but MAG hasn’t lowered premiums yet, two years after the passage of SB3, and I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for MAG to do so anytime soon.

And let’s think about this…what kind of healthcare do you think you’re going to get if the doctor knows he won’t have to responsible for his mistakes? 648495_my_doctor_2.jpg

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