Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

Judge Removes Herself from Ford Rollover Case - Friday, July 13, 2007

The re-trial of a wrongful death suit against Ford Motor Company has been delayed for more than five months after the judge who threw out the original $15 million verdict removed herself from the case. U.S. Chief District Judge Claire Eagen granted the request of Kevin and Veronica Moody that she step aside from the judicial matter.

The Moody's filed the lawsuit in November 2003 a little less than a year after their 18-month-old son, Tyler, died from injuries he sustained in a rollover crash. A Tulsa, Oklahoma federal jury awarded a $15 million verdict in favor of the Moody's; however, Judge Eagan voided the verdict a few months later when she found that Ford showed in its post-trial motions that "it was prejudiced by plaintiffs counsel's conduct." The lead attorney for the plaintiffs asked Judge Eagan to step aside from the case in a June 27 filing.

Eagan granted the request and stated that her removal from the Ford rollover case is "necessary to preserve the appearance of fairness for the parties and the general public."

The Ford Motor Company has been the defendant in many SUV rollover lawsuits; in June 2004 a San Diego County jury awarded $369 million to a woman who was left paralyzed when her Ford Explorer rolled over.

Judge Rules Suits Are Not Barred Against Drug Makers - Thursday, July 12, 2007

A New Jersey Superior Court Judge has ruled that a federal law giving the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) the exclusive right to determine if a drug's label or package insert has adequate health risk information does not bar state lawsuits alleging that drug companies did not adequately warn about the medication's risk. Judge Bryan Garruto's ruling comes in response to a suit filed by Ellen Deutsch, who took the hormone replacement therapy Prempro for six years as well as Premarin, a drug used to treat the symptoms of menopause. Both drugs are manufactured by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Deutsch alleges the drugs caused her to develop breast cancer.

Prempro contains estrogen and progestin and was prescribed to treat symptoms of menopause before research linked the drug to a 24% increase in the risk for invasive breast cancer and other health risks. Six million women have been prescribed Prempro, and approximately 10,000 lawsuits have been filed over use of the drug. New Jersey has 250 Prempro lawsuits pending at this time.

Since 2006, pharmaceutical companies have said that product liability suits are barred because of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, but Judge Garruto's ruling is at least the third by state and federal judges that says the law does not pre-empt such suits.

Deutsch's attorney explained it rather simply, "The point is, a drug being approved by the FDA does not protect drug companies from being sued. The FDA regulations are a floor, not a ceiling."

Air Bag Deployment (or Lack of) Still Causing Problems - Wednesday, July 11, 2007

For as long as air bags have been in automobiles, they have saved lives, but, unfortunately, they have taken lives, also. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), from 1987 to 2005, it is estimated that air bags saved approximately 20,000 lives, but needless air bag deployments have seriously injured or killed thousands more.

Recently, a Florida woman crashed her 2003 Ford Windstar minivan into the passenger side of another car while going 50 mph and her air bag did not deploy. In 2000, a Fort Lauderdale woman died from chest injuries when her air bag did deploy when she drove into a barrier going only 10 mph.

These and similar cases have led to numerous complaints of air bag malfunction since they came into regular use in the mid-1990's. Car safety experts claim that in cases such as these, the air bags performed exactly as designed, whether they deployed or not. Orlando lawyer, Rich Newsome, handles auto product liability and personal injury cases and was the attorney for the family of Mayling Semidey (the woman who died when her airbag deployed at 10mph). In 2003, Newsome won the $3.3 million lawsuit against Ford on behalf of Semidey's son.

Newsome contends that the airbag is Semidey's case was defectively designed to deploy in low-speed crashes when it was not needed. Air bags are designed to prevent catastrophic injuries caused when the driver or passenger's head would strike the steering wheel, dashboard, windshield or other equipment at a high rate of speed. To prevent such serious injuries, air bags must deploy within 1/20th of a second and with enough force to cushion the blow; the force of an air bag deployment is like an explosion. In courtrooms, lawyers have deployed air bags to give the juries an idea of their force.

In response to the high number of deaths and injuries due to air bag problems, in the late 1990's, car manufacturers provided car owners the ability to turn off passenger side air bags. They also raised the deceleration speed that triggers deployment and lowered the force at which they come out. Ford safety spokesman Dan Jarvis has explained that forward quick-stopping pressure, not driving speed, is the determining factor in air bag deployment.

According to an NHTSA employee, air bag malfunctions are rare. In some cases, air bags may fail to deploy due to the car being in an earlier crash and not repaired properly. The NHTSA does not compile statistics about air bag failures or complaints; however, it does keep records of complaints and investigations searchable by specific make and model through its Office of Defects Investigations (ODI) website. If the NHTSA receives enough complaints about a particular make and model, it will investigate. If it finds a problem, it can force the automobile manufacturer to issue a recall.

While air bag-related injuries and deaths are dropping, they still happen. There are still many problems with air bags that continue to kill people and cause serious injuries including deployment at low speeds, untimely deployment, deployment with too much force, and failure to deploy.

Memory Loss After Traumatic Brain Injury - Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Memory loss is one of the most common cognitive side effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Even in mild TBI, memory loss is still very common. The more severe the victim's memory loss after the TBI, the more significant the brain damage will be most likely. TBI's are very common in car and motorcycle accidents, and falls from ladders or scaffolding often result in severe brain injury.

Some TBI-related amnesia such as patients unable to recall what happened just before, during and after the head injury is temporary. Temporary memory loss is often caused by swelling of the brain in response to the damage it sustained. But because the brain is pressed against the skull, even parts that were not injured are still not able to work. The patient's memory typically returns as the swelling goes down over a period of weeks or even months. Temporary memory loss may also be an emotional response to the stressful events surrounding a TBI.

Damage to the nerves and axons (connection between nerves) of the brain may also result in memory loss. The brain cannot heal itself like an arm or a leg, so any function that is damaged during a TBI is permanently impaired unless the brain learns how to perform that function differently. Fixed amnesia may include the loss of meanings of certain common, everyday objects or words, or a person may not remember skills he had before the TBI.

A different kind of memory loss is called anteretrograde amnesia, which is an inability to form memories of events that happened after the injury. Doctors are not sure, exactly, why this happens, but some research has shown that it may have something to do with the fact that TBI's reduce the levels of a protein in the brain that helps the brain balance its activity. Without enough of that particular protein, the brain can easily overload and memory formation is affected.

At the current time, there is no treatment for memory loss following TBI; if the memory does not come back on its own, it will be lost permanently. There is a great deal of research in the field of TBI and memory loss, but, sadly, there are no cures for TBI-related amnesia at this time.

Lawsuit Against Maker Of Acne Drug Dropped - Monday, July 9, 2007

The mother and grandmother of a 15-year-old boy who intentionally flew a stolen plane into a Bank of America building in Tampa four months after the 9/11 attacks have dropped their $70 million lawsuit against the drug manufacturer Hoffmann-LaRoche, the maker of the acne medicine Accutane. The women blamed the drug maker for Charles Bishop's suicide but have said they do not wish to proceed with the lawsuit due to being "physically and emotionally" unable to continue with the litigation.

The boy's suicide flight gained national attention as images of the stolen Cessna aircraft protruding from the Bank of American Plaza were televised all over the world just four months after the 9/11 attack on New York City and Washington D.C. Inside the plane, authorities found a note from the boy expressing sympathy for Osama bin Laden and promising that the United States would pay for oppressing Palestinians. The boy's mother, Julia Bishop, and his grandmother, Karen Johnson, blamed Accutane for his suicide and sued the manufacturer three months after his death.

Family History of Suicidal Behavior?

Hoffman-LaRoche denied the drug was responsible and suggested the boy came from a troubled background. Allegedly the boys' parents entered into a suicide pact in 1984 before the boy was born. The couple was not yet married. They tried to kill themselves with carbon monoxide, but when that didn't work, they agreed to stab each other. Julia Bishop stabbed Charles' father first in the abdomen with a kitchen knife, and then he was supposed to stab her and "curl up and spend eternity together." Allegedly, when Julia stabbed Charles' father, he said, "Oh my God. This hurts so much. I can't do this. I won't do this to you." They then called 911. The attorneys for the drug maker say, also, that the boy's mother was suicidal at age 15, when she tried to jump out of a window.

Julia Bishop, when questioned, did admit to and describe numerous bouts of depression she has endured over the years; she has been prescribed several psychiatric drugs, also. Her son, Charles, spent every grade in a different school, and in some years, he attended more than one school in a single school year.

The family cannot go on with the lawsuit due to enduring "years of difficult litigation and personal attacks." The judge granted a dismissal upon the request of lawyers for the plaintiffs.

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