Personal Injury Law

DUI or Texting while driving which is worse?

Posted on July 02, 2009
Though most people have accepted that texting while driving is dangerous, a quick trip around your local city will provide you with more than enough evidence that it is still rampant. If you're still a skeptic, take a look first-hand look at the possibilities of texting while driving...

Pharmaceutical company claims controversial laxatives are safe

Posted on July 01, 2009
Six months ago, the pharmaceutical company C.B. Fleet pulled two laxative drugs from store shelves. Now, according to the Lynchburg (VA) News and Advance, the company is seeking to reintroduce thousands of cases of the recalled drugs onto the market...

Nestle Withholds Information from FDA

Posted on June 30, 2009
Recently released inspection reports from a Nestle USA cookie dough factory show that the company repeatedly withheld information from Food and Drug Administration inspectors USAToday.com. The inspection records were made public after Nestle's Toll House refrigerated, prepackaged cookie dough was pinpointed as the likely source of an E...

Bill to make road safer for Cyclist is vetoed

Posted on June 24, 2009
Four million bicyclists in Texas have to be a bit more careful after a bill ensuring safe passing was vetoed by Governor Rick Perry. Texas, a state with a reputation as one of the most unfriendly places to ride a bike, was set to gain a little breathing room on their roads, creating safer streets for not only bicycles, but also pedestrians, highway construction and maintenance workers, people on horseback, motorcyclists, and moped riders, to name a few...

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Boaters Beware!

Posted on June 12, 2009
With Memorial Day behind us and the Texas heat in full force, more and more people will be found out on the lake. Once summer hits, I personally hit the lake almost every weekend and I am aware of the boating laws and responsibilities but was totally naive to something called 'boaters hypnosis...

O'Connor Senior Killed in Rollover Accident

Posted on June 03, 2009
James Peterson, an 18 year old senior at O'Connor High School, was killed after losing control of his truck on Loop 1604, flipping his truck several times, and hitting a guardrail near Hausman Road. Petersen was partly ejected and crushed in the accident that killed him instantly...

Wrong-way Drivers

Posted on June 02, 2009
Around 3:15 a.m. on the morning of May 28th, a man driving the wrong way on Interstate 10 at Boerne Stage Road collided with a tractor-trailer. The impact caused the vehicles to burst into flames. Fortunately both drivers got out of their vehicles in time to escape the flames...

Nursing Home in Oklahoma Lost its Certification Due to Violations

Posted on May 28, 2009
Care Living Center in Edmond, Oklahoma is having its certification pulled because of deficiencies found by state health inspectors, resulting in more than two dozen Medicare and Medicaid residents being forced to move. Officials said that the deficiencies centered on medical and nursing neglect...

FDA Only Conducted Half of Food Safety Audits

Posted on May 27, 2009
According to new documents sent to Congress, the Food and Drug Administration only conducted about half of the state food safety audits it promised to do in the two years before the recent peanut salmonella outbreak. The documents show that the agency did not do any of the required audits of the state-run food inspections in five states during 2007-2008...

Small Gifts Found to Influence Doctors

Posted on May 26, 2009
According to a study in The Archives of Internal Medicine, little promotional gifts such as pens or coffee mugs inscribed with a drug's name can really make a difference in the doctor's prescription patterns. The study reports that students from a medical school which allowed gifts had a more favorable attitude toward a certain drug than did students from a school that bans promotional gifts...

Stabilizing the CNA Workforce

Posted on May 25, 2009
Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) handle the direct care of 1.5 million nursing home residents in the United States, providing about 8 out of every 10 hours of resident care. According to the study 'The National Nursing Assistant Survey: Improving the Evidence Base for Policy Initiatives to Strengthen the Certified Nursing Assistant Workforce' current demographic, economic, and policy trends suggest that the supply of CNAs could significantly worsen in the coming decades...

Bill Would Allow Military Personnel to Sue for Medical Malpractice

Posted on May 20, 2009
Legislation that would enable military service members to sue the government for medical malpractice is moving closer to becoming law. The House Judiciary Subcommittee approved Carmelo Rodriguez Military Medical Accountability Act. The legal precedence barring negligence lawsuits for military service members goes back to a 1950 Supreme Court ruling known as the Feres Doctrine...

The Safe Passing Bill: An Update

Posted on May 18, 2009
I recently wrote Motorists: Share the Road and Give Clearance to Cyclists about The Safe Passing Bill, which as a cyclist I personally believe is of great importance. I thought I would give an update on the bill and present some of the regulations associated with the bill...

Two Die at Delaware Hospital After Taking Heparin

Posted on May 15, 2009
Medical care providers at a Delaware Hospital and U.S. health officials are investigating the deaths of two patients that may have been related to a brand of heparin blood thinner Baxter Internal Inc. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that the situation 'appears to be an isolated incident...

Motorists: Share the Road and Give Clearance to Cyclists

Posted on May 11, 2009
An article in the San Antonio Express News caught my eye this weekend regarding Senate Bill 488 – the Safe Passing Bill. As a cyclist and runner, I am a proponent of the bill which heads to the House after a recent Senate victory. The bill requires commercial vehicles and large trucks at least six feet clearance to groups including bicyclists, pedestrians, runners, motorcyclists and construction workers...

Hydroxycut Recall

Posted on May 07, 2009
One death has been linked to Hydroxycut and other cases have involved serious liver injuries, including jaundice and liver failure. Body builders and/or dieters have been warned – the FDA has issued a recall and have urged Americans to stop taking the dietary supplement...

Ambulance Chasers

Posted on May 06, 2009
In the San Antonio Express News, John MacCormack wrote about barratry by trial lawyers. Barratry is the unlawful solicitation of clients by lawyers. Lawyers are not allowed to contact a potential client and seek to represent them in a case. There are several bills before the Texas Legislature which support further penalty and restrictions to prevent trial lawyers from soliciting cases...

VIA Bus Drivers Texting While Driving?

Posted on April 29, 2009
Everyone's done it, but it doesn't make it right. Especially for VIA bus driver's on our city streets endangering our safety. About a year ago, VIA put surveillance cameras on every bus. VIA has a strict policy of no cell phones while operating your VIA bus...

41 Cases of Surgeons Operating on the Wrong Body Part

Posted on April 28, 2009
A consumer and patient advocacy group, OKWatchdog said Friday that is has found at least 41 instances between 1988 and 2003 in which Oklahoma physicians operated on the wrong body part. These cases were found by analyzing a federal database of medical malpractice insurance payments...

Funeral Home Company Accused of Abusing Corpses

Posted on April 27, 2009
A Virginia funeral home is being sued by the family of a deceased Army veteran for mishandling the man's body. The family claims that the body was left in an unrefrigerated garage for over two months while awaiting burial at Arlington National Cemetery...

Food Safety

Posted on April 18, 2009
As President, Barack Obama has a lot of challenging issues to deal with – I am sure he never thought peanut butter would be one of the issues. "When I heard peanut products were being contaminated earlier this year, I immediately thought of my seven-year-old daughter Sasha, who has peanut butter sandwiches for lunch probably three times a week," he told the nation in one of his weekly addresses from the White House...

25,000 Travel Tender Playpens Recalled

Posted on April 09, 2009
About 25,000 Travel Tender playpens made in China and imported by Simplicity Inc. and SFCA Inc. have been recalled because one or mare rails can unexpectedly collapse posing a possible hazard to children. At least five cases of the rails collapsing have been reported by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)...

Defibrillator Blamed in Deaths

Posted on April 08, 2009
Zoll Medical Corp. said recently that some of its defibrillators have defective batteries and software. The AED Plus external defibrillator, which is used in public settings such as airports, schools, and health clubs, failed to deliver a shock to two patients, leading to their deaths...

Kraft Sparks Pistachio Recall

Posted on April 07, 2009
Kraft Foods Inc. received notice that its trail mix products were tainted with salmonella in 2007. Recently, Kraft has been able to trace the source of that salmonella to Setton Pistachios of Terra Bella, Inc, a California company, leading to a nationwide recall of pistachios...

Solutions to Preventable Medical Errors

Posted on April 05, 2009
The real problem, says Tom Baker, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is "not too much litigation, but too much malpractice...

$11 Million Verdict in Assisted Living Case

Posted on March 31, 2009
An Arizona jury awarded $11 million, the largest verdict ever awarded against an assisted living facility in the United States, to the widow of a 36-year-old man with a traumatic brain injury who died after ingesting foreign objects while in the care of Liberty Manor Residency...

Proposed Ban on Drop-Side Cribs

Posted on March 20, 2009
Over the past two years there have been several infant deaths and injuries linked to drop-side cribs, which has lead a group of crib makers to propose an effective ban. Cribs with drop sides can derail from their tracks due to faulty hardware, poor design or improper assembly...

Car Crashes are Not "Accidents"

Posted on March 19, 2009
I recently read an article in the San Antonio Express News by Robert Ferrer M.D., M.P.H. The article was a commentary on the word 'accidents.' He stated that the word 'accident' is very misleading, and is a half-truth that gets in the way of making our roads safer...

Life Care Center Faces Manslaughter Charges

Posted on March 18, 2009
On the morning of Aug. 17, 2004, Julia McCauley, 74, rolled her wheelchair out the front doors of the Life Care Center of Acton, and tumbled down a flight of stairs. She died a short time later. McCauley was not wearing a doctor-prescribed WanderGuard bracelet designed to set off an alarm and lock the doors if she got too close to the exit...

Massachusetts Bans Drug Firm Gifts to Doctors

Posted on March 17, 2009
In the past I have blogged about the potential banning of pharmaceutical and medical device companies from providing gifts to physicians, and yesterday Massachusetts state officials gave the final approval to begin regulating this common trend. The regulations include banning gifts to physicians, limiting when companies can pay for doctors' meals, and requiring companies to publicly disclose payments to doctors over $50 for certain types of consulting and speaking engagements...

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