Oregon Injury Lawyer Blog

Earlier this month HBO launched a new documentary, Hot Coffee, that is designed to challenge entrenched stereotypes concerning our legal system and to remind all Americans of an important, but often overlooked, constitutional right: the trial by jury.

The film takes its title from the famous 1990s personal injury lawsuit involving an elderly woman who suffered a serious burn injury after spilling a cup of McDonalds coffee. As the filmmakers point out, this case became the “poster child” for frivolous lawsuits. The point of the movie is not, however, to demonstrate that the facts of this and several other high profile cases were different than was widely reported in the media (though they are, and the film does make that point strongly).

Instead, it focuses on a broader and even more important issue: the lengths to which large and powerful corporations will go to keep cases involving their negligence out of our courts and away from juries. Our Seventh Amendment guarantee of a trial by jury is one of the most fundamental rights we enjoy as Americans. Yet, as Hot Coffee demonstrates, that right has been under attack for a generation or more. Companies make getting to court difficult and winning even harder.

When they do settle they often require victims to sign non-disclosure agreements that leave the company free to tell its side of the story but prevent victims from airing their own.

This, in turn, makes it easier for companies to dominate public discussion and to paint legitimate actions by ordinary Americans seeking justice as frivolous grabs for money and attention. Any Oregon personal injury lawyer can attest to the importance of the issues raised by Hot Coffee. The film is currently available for sale at Amazon.com and is also available for rent via Netflix.

Hot Coffee Website

Amazon.com Hot Coffee Page

A ruling earlier this month by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has opened the way for the parents of a teenager shot dead by police officers in Washington County to move ahead with an Oregon wrongful death lawsuit, according to a recent article in The Oregonian.

The case stems from the 2006 death of an 18-year old near Tigard, in Washington County, Oregon. The teenager was threatening to kill himself with a pocketknife when police officers arrived at the site of the incident. Within four minutes the officers had fired 11 shots, killing the teen, despite pleas from his family and friends that the boy posed a threat to no one but himself. The family has long claimed that the law enforcement officers overreacted and made little effort to assess the situation before using deadly force.

After the Washington County sheriff’s office issued an investigative report absolving the officers from any improper conduct the teen’s family “brought suit against the officers and the county in (an Oregon) wrongful death claim, alleging an unconstitutional use of force,” according to the newspaper. A federal district court issued a summary judgment in favor of the officers and the county, but the circuit court has now reversed that ruling and sent the case back to the lower court.

The paper reports that the appellate ruling found “that the district court erred in granting summary judgment on the constitutionality of the officers’ use of force,” and sent the case back to the lower court for a jury trial. “A jury should have the opportunity to assess the reasonableness of the force used after hearing all the evidence,” the court wrote, according to The Oregonian.

As a Portland wrongful death attorney one cannot help but applaud this important federal court decision. One of the most important rights we enjoy as Americans is the right to challenge the police and other authorities when we believe them to have acted improperly. Police and other law enforcement officials go to great lengths and take great risks to protect us all. That does not, however, mean that they can or should be above the law if they step out of line or otherwise act improperly, or that citizens should be denied their day in court when they feel they have been wronged.

The Oregonian: The Ninth Circuit Decision: Finally, a small step down the road to justice for Lukus Glenn

An Oregon City propane explosion left an 80-year-old man severely burned, requiring emergency air evacuation to the Oregon Burn Center, according to a recent article in The Oregonian.

The explosion, which also killed 200 birds with which the man was working in a barn, was strong enough that it destroyed “a 10-by-12 wall and blew out a nearby garage door,” according to The Oregonian. It took place after the victim “had turned on the propane and gone to light a heater that was hanging from the ceiling in a barn.” The “active fire” was out by the time law enforcement officials arrived though the area was still filled with smoke, according to the paper.

The paper reports that “authorities are not investigating the accident,” believing that the explosion was simply the result of the propane having been left on longer than the victim intended. The published reports of the incident, however, raise questions of Oregon product liability that bear examination.

It goes without saying that dangerous articles, like propane cylinders, must always be handled in a cautious and appropriate manner. That, however, does not release manufacturers from either a moral or a legal obligation to ensure both that the items they sell are safe and that they function as expected. A valve that is properly shut down should stay shut down. Containers that are not supposed to leak should be leak-free.

When accidents leave people injured and property damaged victims seeking justice have every right to ask pointed questions of manufacturers and marketers. A Portland product liability attorney with special expertise in Oregon explosions can help victims sort through the complexities of the law to determine where responsibility properly lies in the wake of an explosion or other severe, injury-causing accident.

The Oregonian: Propane explosion at Beavercreek-area farm burns elderly man, kills 200 quail

It is simple to understand the idea: the time we spend stuck in traffic takes an economic toll (lost wages, lost sales, etc). Those expenses, in turn, are part of a broader cost to society that we all bear as a result of gridlock (lost productivity, air pollution and its associated medical costs, etc). A recent study by AAA, however, puts forward a, perhaps, more startling idea: that the societal cost of auto accidents is far higher than that of mere congestion.

As outlined in a recent article from The Oregonian, the study put the overall “cost to society” of traffic congestion at $958 million per year for the Portland-Beaverton-Vancouver metro area. An eye-popping figure, to be sure. Using the same data, however, it concluded that “the annual societal cost of traffic crashes… is $2.74 billion.” The analysis was based on 2009 data (the newspaper article, accessed through the link below, includes, in turn, a link to the original report in pdf form).

The article goes on to note that these Oregon car crash figures are roughly in line with national averages. On a national basis the spread between the true cost of vehicle crashes versus the true cost of congestion is $300 billion versus $97.7 billion, making the ratio roughly 3-to-1 at both the state and the national level.

Putting it all in more human terms: those car crash numbers translate on a national basis to 33,000 deaths per year – roughly 635 every week. As a spokeswoman for AAA tells the paper, that many deaths in any other manner would shock the country into immediate action but, for some reason, we appear to view car and truck accidents differently, both here in Oregon and elsewhere in the country.

These numbers remind us of the importance of safety and caution whenever one gets behind the wheel. Oregon traffic accidents can result in broken bones, traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries and even death. An Oregon car crash lawyer can help victims and their families as they fight for justice in the wake of a crash, but it is far better for us all – victims, attorneys and society as a whole – if people drive safely in the first place, thereby limiting the toll that Oregon auto accidents exact on both individuals and on our city, state and nation.

The Oregonian: Portland area’s traffic crashes cost $2.74 billion a year: AAA study

A tragic central Oregon car crash has left a teen driver dead and injured four others according to reports in The Oregonian.

The crash took place on US route 26 near Madras, Oregon. According to the newspaper, a 17-year old driver traveling toward the east “drifted off the north shoulder of the road, according to state police. The 17-year-old driver then overcorrected the car and it crossed into the westbound lane where it collided with a westbound 2006 Chrysler van.”

The teen driver was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. Her passenger, also a 17-year-old girl, was transported to a hospital in Madras with what the paper describes as serious injuries. The driver of the van, a 38-year-old Portland man, and his two children all suffered what were described as minor injuries in the Oregon car crash and were released after treatment at the area hospital.

Many questions remain unanswered regarding this Oregon child injury car accident. Taking a broad view, however, we can all agree that any accident involving young drivers is especially tragic because of all the efforts we adults make to teach our children the best way to conduct themselves behind the wheel.

As an Oregon personal injury attorney with expertise in accidents involving injuries to children it is particularly regrettable to see accidents like this which result in deaths and injuries to young people on all sides of a crash. Careful education for young drivers will never prevent every accident, but it remains an essential part of the efforts we must take to keep our children safe.

The Oregonian: Fatal crash on Highway 26 kills 17-year-old girl, injures 4 others

The Oregonian: Police ID 17-year-old Bend girl killed in head-on US-26 crash

Late last month a small plane carrying both a student pilot and a flight instructor dove suddenly over Yamhill County, striking and literally slicing to pieces a smaller plane flying at a lower altitude, according to The Oregonian. The pilot and passenger of the descending plane were uninjured, but the pilot of the plane they hit died in the Oregon air crash. Both planes were flying out of Hillsboro, and the midair collision occurred “northwest of Aurora State Airport,” the newspaper reports.

The troubling thing emerging in media reports concerning this Oregon aviation accident is the revelation that this was not the first fatal accident involving students at a particular Hillsboro-based flight school. That fact raises troubling questions, and even the possibility that an Oregon wrongful death claim might eventually emerge from the investigations surrounding the crash.

The earlier fatal Oregon air crash incident, according to The Oregonian, took place when “a company flight instructor and his student died in September 2009 when the helicopter they were flying crashed in a field south of Forest Grove and burst into flames.” Perhaps even more ominously, “investigators looking at the helicopter crash “concluded that the flight crew’s failure to maintain adequate rotor speed resulted in a stall, followed by an uncontrolled descent to the ground.”

Put another way, we now have two fatal crashes in a relatively brief span of time involving aviation students making critical errors while flying with instructors – instructors whose most important role is surely to ensure the safe operation of the aircraft while a student is at the controls.

Negligence is never a pleasant word to use, but from an Oregon aviation accident and wrongful death attorney’s perspective it is an issue that at the very least merits consideration in cases such as these. Instructors at flight schools are entrusted with significant levels of responsibility for the welfare of their students. Attorneys and courts can and should serve as guarantors that justice is served when people in key jobs fail to carry out their jobs in a safe and responsible manner.

The Oregonian: Champoeg midair collision was second fatal crash in 2 years for Hillsboro Aviation

The Oregonian: Plane with student pilot dropped onto smaller craft, breaking it into pieces, police say

A fascinating article published in Slate a few days ago raises some intriguing questions regarding Oregon distracted driving laws and some of the latest technologies making their way into our cars and onto our cellphones.

The article focuses on Siri, the computerized ‘assistant’ bundled into the latest version of the iPhone. As the author notes, “Apple advertises Siri as a way to get stuff done while you’re otherwise occupied,” and notes that the company’s videos show people using the application while, among other things, driving.

The legal question for Oregonians and others raised by the article is simple: do distracted driving laws, like Oregon’s, which ban texting while driving extend to a text-by-voice service? “Voice texting could be illegal in many places,” the piece notes, because of wording in the relevant legislation that makes “it illegal to ‘send’ texts,” or, in some cases, prohibits any form of electronic communication. “Each of these versions would make Siri-based texting verboten, because even if you dictate a message, you’re still, technically, sending some kind of electronic communication.”

There is, of course, the separate issue of how distracting operating Siri, or some similar voice-recognition application, may be. Reprogramming a car’s GPS is not, presently, illegal while the vehicle is moving – but that does not mean it is not almost as dangerous as texting. A related article published in Slate around the same time as the one cited here noted that the trend toward touch-screen radios and CD players in cars also raises distracted driving issues since these often require more of a driver’s attention to operate than old-style analogue push-button radio/CD players.

The lesson for Oregon distracted driving attorneys and their clients is that all of us need to rethink the basic idea of Portland distracted driving. When seeking justice in the wake of a Portland, Eugene or Salem car accident the specifics of Oregon distracted law are important, but broader questions of negligence also often need to be considered. We need to ask whether or not motorists in particular situations were operating their vehicles in a responsible manner and hold to account those who fail to do so.

Slate: Siri behind the wheel

When we contemplate the effects of an Oregon spinal cord injury one of the most tragic realities is the knowledge that such injuries are often irreversible. Months of hard work with a physical therapist may do much to make things better, but rarely does a patient have any real hope of returning to life as it was before an Oregon car accident or some other tragedy caused the spinal cord injury.

A recent medical study, however, holds out the prospect that scientists are taking some early steps toward changing this. The La Jolla Light reported recently on a study by biologists at the University of California – San Diego. Working in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Oregon, the scientists focused on “more than 70 genes that play a role in regenerating nerves after injury.”

According to the newspaper, the two-year project uncovered “a set of genetic leads that may one day result in therapies to repair spinal cord injuries and other common kinds of nerve damage, such as a stroke.”

The researchers focused on genetic materials that both promote and inhibit the regeneration of nerve cells, with special attention paid to axons, “the thread-like extensions of nerve cells that transmit electrical impulses to other nerve cells.” Discovering ways to encourage the regrowth of damaged nerves and their component parts would be a key breakthrough in the battle to help spinal cord injury victims truly recover from their injuries.

A Portland spinal cord injury attorney can help patients struggling to cope with the aftermath of a serious Oregon brain or spinal cord injury. It is an unfortunate reality of our society that victims must often fight to receive the care and treatment they need in the aftermath of a serious injury. Medical research holds much promise for the future, but it needs to work hand-in-hand with our justice system to ensure that victims get the care they need here and now.

La Jolla Light: Research report: UCSD team finds genes that repair nerves