Articles Posted in Personal Injury

It was like a scene from a horror/thriller movie. It was every child’s zoo nightmare translated into gory, grisly reality at the San Francisco Zoo. On Christmas Day, almost at closing time, a Siberian tiger somehow escaped from his grotto and went on a bloody rampage at the zoo’s café, killing one patron and seriously injuring two others, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

CBS.com reported that the San Francisco Police Department has opened a criminal investigation, as Police Chief Heather Fong is reported to have said, “…to determine if there was human involvement in the tiger getting out…” Sounds like the police have some suspicions as to how this happened.

At first authorities weren’t sure which one of the zoo’s five tigers mauled the visitors, but later determined that it was Tatiana, the same 4-year-old Siberian tiger, that had chewed a zookeeper’s arm during an attack about a year ago. Although state investigators determined that the attack was the zoo’s fault because they did not configure the cages properly, the zoo authorities decided not to put down Tatiana because they determined it was a “random attack” and was something that could be fixed with a $250,000 safety upgrade.

The tiger initially attacked and killed 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. of San Jose near the grotto apparently when the tiger first got out. The tiger then proceeded to attack two other men in the café. The two injured men are brothers from San Jose ages 19- and 23-years-old. Their conditions have been upgraded to stable condition at San Francisco General Hospital after surgery. They suffered deep bites and claw wounds on their heads, necks, arms and hands, said Dr. Rochelle Dicker, a surgeon. She said they were expected to make a full recovery, according to MSNBC.

When four police officers arrived, the tiger that was sitting next to a victim, resuming its attack of the bloodied man. When the tiger made its move toward the officers, they all fired their guns, striking and killing the animal. Officers, who combed the zoo through Wednesday, did not find additional victims.
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Just as a Long Beach family was mourning the death of three girls in a fire caused by a space heater Friday, the girls’ aunt was wounded in a shooting not far from the home where her three nieces died, the Los Angeles Times reported. The 21-year-old woman was reportedly shot in the lower leg when she was standing near the burned detached garage. Stephanie Aviles, 6, and her sister Jasmine, 10 died Friday while another sister Jocelin, 7, died Saturday. Let’s pray for this family that has been hit with one tragedy after another over such a short period of time. And let’s hope investigators zero in on how this horrific tragedy unfolded and who is responsible for it.

The family of a 49-year-old Iowa woman who was run over and killed by a police sport utility vehicle when she was sunbathing on Mandalay Beach in Oxnard, received a $2.75 million settlement from the city of Oxnard, according to a news article in the Star Tribune. Cindy Conolly was hit by the police SUV on June 12, 2006 when she was laying on the sand after attending her son’s beach wedding, the article said.

Police officers didn’t even realize that they had run over Conolly until they got a 911 call about her. Conolly’s family filed a $10 million lawsuit against the city of Oxnard alleging wrongful death and negligence. Family members alleged that the city lacked proper safety policies and procedures, which could have easily prevented this unnecessary tragedy, the newspaper reported.

The city reportedly accepted full responsibility for what happened to Conolly. The case was scheduled to go to trial this week. An attorney for the plaintiffs said the family is pleased that their ordeal is finally over although no amount of money will ever bring their mother back. The two officers who were involved in the incident gave sworn depositions about the incident. They both said it was an honest accident and that they thought about Conolly every day.
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In his Nov. 17 “Talking Business” Column, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera meted out a scathing criticism of personal injury attorneys who represent about 27,000 victims of the defective drug, Vioxx, manufactured and aggressively marketed by pharmaceutical giant, Merck, a few years ago. I am one of those attorneys he criticized.

Nocera’s problem is not only with plaintiffs’ attorneys but with the justice system. His column is titled “Forget Fair; It’s Litigation as Usual.” Nocera asks this question: “Is a mass tort really the right mechanism to settle disputes about product safety, or to punish corporate wrongdoing?”

His answer, if you can guess from that sarcastic headline, is a resounding “no.” Nocera argues that product liability lawsuits make personal injury lawyers rich and leaves the people who were really affected with very little. He calls it an “unfair” system and a “rogue form of regulation.”

Well, Mr. Nocera, when the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t do its job and greedy corporate giants in the pharmaceutical and auto industry flood the market with defective products, who else is there to “regulate”?

The plaintiff’s attorneys of America make it their business to go after wrongdoers and hold them accountable. Mr. Nocera, how would you suggest holding Merck and other corporate giants liable when they have injured the public? Your article didn’t have an answer, it only complained about the only effective process we currently have in this country — a process that works.
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A Minneapolis personal injury law firm has filed a petition in federal court seeking access to the Interstate 35 W bridge, which collapsed Aug. 1, killing nine people and injuring at least 100 others. According to an article in the Winona Daily News , the law firm wants access to the collapse site right away so their own investigators can begin looking into what could very well lead to wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits. The firm, Schwebel, Goetz and Sieben, has reportedly been retained by three people severely injured in the bridge collapse and the families of two others who died in the disaster. Authorities are still pulling out debris, wreckage and bodies from the Mississippi.

It is perfectly understandable that the firm wants to get there before most of the evidence is gone. But of course officials have objections to it. The U.S. Attorney’s office is calling the petition “premature.” Officials say efforts to recover bodies of other victims will be hampered by accommodating the law firm’s request. According to the article, the firm’s attorneys said in their petition that they had hired two experts specifically to help pursue wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits on behalf of the clients and that they had the special training and experience that would help jurors determine negligence and causation issues.

The petition also implores the judge to grant immediate access because once the wreckage is taken apart it would be impossible for the law firm and its independent investigators to conduct a legitimate investigation. Victims must file claims and lawsuits within with very specific time limits to preserve their rights. Failure to timely and appropriately file results in a termination of rights. The state’s liability is reportedly only $1 million. But victims could absolutely target private contractors and their insurers as well.

Even as officials are pulling out crushed vehicles and scouring the waters of the Mississippi for dead bodies, the Orange County Register reports that our Orange County bridges are in no better condition. The article points out that 16 bridges in the county are in worse condition than the 35 W Bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis Aug. 1st killing four people and injuring many others. Eight people are still missing.

Apparently transportation officials in Minneapolis have known for 17 years that the bridge was in poor condition, according to an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and all they’ve done in these years is to squabble among themselves about how to fix it. As a result, nothing was done to secure it. Nothing was done to make sure it would remain safe in the interim.

In Orange County 24 bridges are said to be “structurally deficient.” The Minneapolis bridge had a sufficiency rating of 50. An 80 rating or lower qualifies a bridge for the federal Highway Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program. According to the Register article, every 10th bridge in Orange County scored 80 or lower. Here’s the scary part. Sixteen of our bridges, right here in Orange County, have ratings equal to or worse than the collapsed bridge, which got a rating of 50.
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In an ironic twist of events, Judge Robert H. Bork, a one-time Supreme Court nominee and one of the architects of the judicial conservative movement, has filed a trip-and-fall lawsuit against Yale Club demanding $1 million in compensatory damages in addition to punitive damages, according to a news report in the New York Times.

What’s the irony here? It’s just that Judge Bork has been a leading advocate of restricting plaintiffs’ ability to recover through tort law. In a 2002 article published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, the judge famously argues that such “frivolous claims and excessive punitive damage awards” have led to the transformation of the Constitution into a document that would allow Congress to enact tort reforms, which would have been considered unconstitutional at the time of framing.

“Accordingly, proposals such as placing limits or caps on punitive damagers or eliminating joint or strict liability, which may once have been clearly understood as beyond the Congress’ power, may now be constitutionally appropriate,” Judge Bork said in that article.

But his opinions on tort law miraculously changed after the 80-year-old Bork took a tumble on June 6, 2006 as he was climbing up the stairs of the Yale Club to deliver a speech for The New Criterion magazine. His suit explains that the Yale Club did not provide handrails on the stairs for the guests to climb up to and that Bork’s fall was a direct result of that.
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A police officer is demanding compensation for a “slimy” prank two teenagers tried to pull off on him at a local McDonald’s franchise in Charles City, according to an Associated Press news report.

Officer Josh Douglas has filed a lawsuit saying that when he was working nights two years ago, he went through the restaurant’s drive-through and ordered a chicken sandwich. But when he removed a lettuce leaf, just because he didn’t like that stuff, he went on to discover some mucous-like substance holding the vegetables together. When Douglas and another officer checked into it, they discovered that the two teens were imitating a similar in a movie where a state trooper orders a sandwich and the cook spits phlegm on it, the news agency reported.

The officer and his attorney filed a lawsuit May 8 after they were unable to reach a settlement with McDonald’s. The restaurant owner said that he took immediate action by firing the two employees. But what does the officer and his attorney want? An apology and here’s the important word – compensation.

Officer Douglas didn’t even take a bite out of that sandwich. He didn’t suffer any kind of real physical injury as a result. He didn’t fall sick. He wasn’t hospitalized. And despite that, the restaurant owner did what he was supposed to do. He has probably apologized profusely to this officer and had even fired the two pranksters.
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A jet ski accident sent a 14-year-old to Broward General Hospital Friday afternoon after a crash at a lake at Markham Park in Broward County, Florida, an NBC news affiliate reported.

Officials said Tyler Goldberg apparently drove his jet ski into a wooden dock at a high rate of speed. Video footage captured by an NBC news helicopter showed a jet ski floating near a dock at the boat-loading area of the lake. It appeared that the jet ski handlebars had been knocked off.

The teenager was heading for the dock, but couldn’t turn the handlebar, officials said. He then lost control of the watercraft and plowed right into the dock. The exact cause of the jet ski accident is yet to be determined.

Goldberg’s family was on shore and saw him hit the dock, the article said. A police official said that Goldberg could have turned off the power when he saw the dock approaching. That could have caused him to lose steering control because a personal watercraft needs that power to move.

Officials at the scene said Goldberg suffered chest, head and neck injuries. He is listed in critical condition, according to NBC reports.
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