Oregon Injury Lawyer Blog

A few days ago I wrote about the importance of access to our courts and the myth that Oregon personal injury lawsuits are frivolous actions designed to clog up the legal system and undercut the business community. A case settled earlier this month in the southern part of our state illustrates my point perfectly. Through a settlement announced just before Christmas a severely injured motorist has used the legal system to achieve accountability from those responsible for his suffering and, in the process, to see justice done.

According to an account by the Associated Press, the victim of a horrific Oregon car-truck accident a year ago in Central Point will receive a $1.4 million payment to account for the injuries and trauma he suffered when “a trailer detached from the rig that was pulling it and slammed into his Chevy Silverado, flattening it and trapping him inside.”

Trapped in the wreckage for an hour-and-a-half the pick-up’s driver was badly injured. Upon finally reaching a hospital “he was treated for a broken neck, spinal fluid leakage… and (multiple) fractures… as well as nerve damage in his right arm and wrist,” the news agency reports. His suit against the truck driver and the driver’s employer alleged that the truck was operating recklessly at the time of the Oregon truck crash and that the vehicle had not been properly maintained.

The sum of the settlement may look large on paper, but much of it is earmarked for paying existing medical bills and covering future medical treatment the victim will require. This, too, flies in the face of the popular perception of Oregon car and truck accident lawsuits: this action was, first and foremost, about ensuring that the victim was made whole to the extent that doing so is possible.

We can all applaud the fact that justice was eventually done in this case, even as we acknowledge that this degree of accountability should not have taken a year to achieve. This case serves as a reminder of the important role that Portland car and truck crash attorneys and other Oregon personal injury lawyers play in our legal system: helping average citizens to have their day in court and earn the justice to which they are entitled. It is also a pointed reminder that access to the courts cannot be taken for granted, and that skilled legal representation is often the essential first step victims need to take to ensure that their rights are protected.

AP via Salem Statesman-Journal: Southern Oregon motorist settles lawsuit against trucking company

A few weeks ago I alerted readers to the new movie Hot Coffee and the vital message it has for all of us as Americans. It is important that we educate ourselves concerning attempts by powerful corporations to curtail access to our courts. Now, the American Association for Justice has done us all a service by taking on one of the most powerful organs of corporate America, the United States Chamber of Commerce.

As a recent article on AAJ’s website lays out, though the C of C complains loudly and often about excessive lawsuits which are supposedly clogging our courts, “the U.S. Chamber is actually one of the most aggressive litigators in Washington D.C., entering lawsuits at a rate of twice weekly.” At the same time, however, the Chamber, through its Institute for Legal Reform, lobbies heavily “for legislation that would close the courthouse doors on anyone who would attempt to hold negligent corporations accountable.”

As every Portland personal injury attorney can attest, the barriers corporate America puts in the way of ordinary citizens seeking to confront powerful companies whom they believe have wronged them are formidable. Contrary to popular belief, getting to court is not easy. Winning in court is even harder, especially when one is faced with powerful and deep-pocketed corporate adversaries. As the article notes, the Chamber’s ILR branch “has the sole mission of making it more difficult for individuals harmed by negligent corporations to access the civil justice system.” The article contains a link to two detailed AAJ reports documenting the Chamber and ILR’s activities.

Fighting back against corporate attempts to stack the legal system against ordinary people is one of the most important jobs that every Portland personal injury attorney takes on. The vast majority of lawsuits are far from frivolous. Rather, they are attempts by ordinary Americans to protect their rights, and to see that justice is done. That is not something we ought to have to fight for in 21st century America but, unfortunately, it is.

American Association for Justice: The U.S. Chamber’s Hypocrisy Problem

A fatal accident earlier this month at an Eastern Oregon railroad crossing where collisions involving trains and vehicles have occurred in the past raises serious questions about corporate responsibility and road/rail safety.

According to Oregon Public Broadcasting (citing an article that originally appeared in the East Oregonian), a 63-year-old county worker died earlier this month “when a train struck a road grader on Canal Road south of Hermiston” in the Eastern part of the state. The worker was using the grader to spread gravel along one side of the tracks at the time of the accident. According to OPB “the train dragged the grader about 100 feet before it stopped.” The grader operator died at the scene of the Oregon train and car accident.

What makes this tragedy especially noteworthy are facts indicating it was ultimately preventable. As the article explains, at the crossing in question “motorists cannot see trains coming from the west until they emerge around a nearby curve. The crossing is uncontrolled, meaning it does not have traffic control arms.”

When one adds in the fact that there have been accidents involving vehicles at this particular crossing in the past it is difficult to avoid asking why the railroad company has not seen fit to install crossing arms in such an obviously dangerous location.

Private companies have a special responsibility to ensure that their products and services pose no threat to the public in situations where the public has no choice but to interact with the company – such as when a road crosses railroad tracks. From the perspective of an Oregon vehicle accident attorney it is especially important that ordinary citizens know that they have rights, and that they should not be intimidated by the rich or the powerful when it comes to claiming them. We all deserve to know we are safe when taking appropriate care as we cross train tracks. Doing so requires that the railways, too, take appropriate precautions concerning motorists’ safety.

OPB News: County Equipment Operator Killed in Canal Road Train Collision

The circumstances surrounding a product liability penalty announced this week by the Consumer Product Safety Commission go a long way toward explaining why both government oversight and the remedies offered by our courts are so important when defective or dangerous products find their way to market.

According to the Sacramento Bee, and an announcement on the agency’s website, the Consumer Product Safety Commission “has reached a settlement with E&B Giftware LLC of Yonkers, N.Y., resolving CPSC staff allegations that E&B failed to report a defect with its fitness balls.” The agency reports that the company has been hit with a $550,000 civil penalty as a result of its failure to act promptly on legitimate product safety issues.

A statement published on the CPSC website notes that E&B sold three million fitness balls between 2000 and 2009, despite, over that period, “47 reports of the fitness balls unexpectedly bursting when overinflated by consumers, resulting in injuries, including a fracture and bruises.” The agency notes that the balls were recalled by the company in 2009, but that more recent investigations have shown that the manufacturer was aware of some of the potential problems for a significant period of time prior to agreeing to the recall.

We would all like to think that companies will always do the right thing when confronted with evidence that a product they manufacture does not function, particularly when the product in question emerges as a danger to the public. Unfortunately, as this and many earlier CPSC actions demonstrate, that is not the case.

When companies ignore clear, obvious signs that their products are not functioning as anticipated, or that the product’s use requires greater precautions than the manufacturer has taken, it is the responsibility of an Oregon product liability attorney to help victims gain their day in court and the accountability that comes with it. Justice should not require going to court to make companies do the right thing. Too often, however, it does.

Sacramento Bee: E&B Giftware Agrees to $550,000 Civil Penalty for Failing to Report Defective Fitness Balls

CPSC announcement regarding E&B

A pair of recent stories from Washington go a long way toward putting Oregon’s, and the nation’s, distracted driving problem in context: last week the National Transportation Safety Board formally called for a nationwide ban on “driver use of personal electronic devices,” according to the Washington Post. This came only a few days after new data compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that “for all the criticism and new legal bans, texting by drivers just keeps increasing, especially among younger motorists,” according to a report filed by the Associated Press.

Both of the organizations are independent federal agencies. The NHTSA studies and promotes highway and traffic safety while the NTSB is charged with investigating transportation accidents of all types (i.e. not just cars and trucks).

The NTSB statement was particularly strongly worded, according to the Post, and followed the lengthy investigation of a crash last year in Missouri in which “a 19-year-old pickup driver sent 11 texts in the 11 minutes before the accident.” The paper adds that the NHTSA’s data show that in 2009 (the last year for which numbers are available) distracted driving resulted in 5000 deaths and half-a-million injuries on America’s roads.

In practical terms instituting any sort of nationwide ban on distracted driving will be difficult – though the federal government’s experience during the 80s and 90s in using highway funds as a lever to force states to mandate seat-belt use does, potentially, offer a useful model. The broader point, however, concerns the need to change attitudes at a very basic level. According to the Post, 35 states, including Oregon, now ban texting by drivers. A growing number (again, including Oregon) also restrict the use of handheld phones by anyone behind the wheel. The statistics will not really change, however, until people’s attitudes toward technology and its uses changes.

As any Portland distracted driving lawyer can attest, virtually everyone on the road believes him or herself to be a better-than-average driver. Laws like the Oregon distracted driving law are useful, but they, and their enforcement, are only steps – important steps, but steps nonetheless – on the road to real highway and traffic safety. Enforcing distracted driving laws is important, but the practice will not stop until people take real responsibility for their own actions.

AP via NBC4: More drivers texting at wheel, despite state bans

Washington Post: NTSB seeks nationwide ban on driver use of personal electronic devices

Resource:
Distraction.gov – Official US Government site concerning distracted driving

Kevin Pierce’s long journey back to snowboarding is an object lesson for everyone here in Oregon concerned about traumatic brain injuries in sports. Once one of the world’s top riders and a likely member of the 2010 US Olympic team, the snowboarding star was severely injured “when he fell and hit his head on the icy wall” of a halfpipe where he was training.

A few weeks short of the second anniversary of that accident, Pierce got back on a snowboard, last week according to the New York Times. The paper reports that his road to recovery has been long and slow. That first run, at a ski resort in Colorado, was a slow cruise down an easy slope: “No tricks. No big air,” the newspaper reported.

Even now, Pierce’s life remains marked by “an unsteady walk, blurry vision and a diminished memory.”

And this, remember, is the portrait of an elite athlete coping with the after-effects of a traumatic brain injury. For almost anyone else it is safe to say that the road to recovery could well be longer and more difficult.

Pierce’s story is also a reminder to the rest of us that even the most talented athletes can suffer horrendous injuries – a fact that, in turn, places a special burden on equipment manufacturers and those who run athletic facilities: to offer the safest gear and the safest environment possible. From an Oregon product liability attorney’s perspective, it is unfortunate to ever see a person suffer because of someone else’s negligence. Particularly when the injury involves a traumatic brain or spinal cord injury. The law can be an important force in helping ensure that justice is done after tragedy strikes, but any Portland brain injury lawyer will affirm that it is better when things function smoothly in the first place, ensuring that lawyers and courts need not get involved.

New York Times: Pearce to ride for first time since 2009 accident

An Idaho mine operator says it plans to contest citations and fines totaling $1 million levied by the federal government in the wake of a miner’s death earlier this year, the Associated Press reports in an article reprinted in The Oregonian. The violations that led to the citations, in turn, raise wrongful death questions and are a reminder for us here in Oregon that mine operators and other employers in hazardous industries have, at all times, both a legal and a moral obligation to do everything they can to keep employees safe.

The 53-year-old victim, a 12-year veteran of the mine according to AP, died last April after a cave-in at the place where he and his brother were working, approximately one mile underground. The two “had just finished watering down blasted-out rock and ore in the mine in the Idaho Panhandle before the collapse,” the news agency writes.

The miner’s job involved “drilling holes in a rock face, blasting it to rubble, then carting the debris to the surface to be processed into silver, lead and zinc.”

The news agency reports that the federal report “has not yet been made public,” but that did not stop the company’s president from speaking to the media to reject the four reported citations and accompanying fines. Clearly any company employing people in so inherently dangerous an occupation has a special obligation to do whatever it can to keep its employees safe.

The citations and the criticism the company has encountered in the federal report are reminders to us here in Oregon that mining can be a dangerous business. An Oregon industrial accident attorney can offer victims and their families invaluable assistance in the wake of a disaster, helping survivors to sort through the complexities of state and federal law related to Oregon wrongful deaths and Oregon industrial accidents as a first step toward ensuring that justice is served.

AP via The Oregonian: Idaho company disputes federal citations following miner’s death

An article published this week in the New York Times offers details of a “class-action suit that claims the NCAA has been negligent regarding awareness and treatment of brain injuries to athletes.”

According to the newspaper there are currently four plaintiffs involved in the suit – three football players and, unexpectedly, a soccer player. As the newspaper notes, the suit is particularly interesting because it targets the NCAA, the body that oversees most college athletics here in the United States, rather than the individual schools for which the plaintiffs played.

The focus of the article is a former University of Central Arkansas football player, described in the piece as once having been a three-sport athlete, straight-A student and talented trumpet player. Following a severe hit as he was returning a punt last year he has been unable to play. Heeding doctors’ advice he has now permanently abandoned contact sports, the newspaper reports.

As the Times observes, one of the key problems facing those who believe they have suffered traumatic brain injuries here in Oregon or elsewhere while playing a college sport is the unique status of college athletes. They are not, legally speaking, children, like players in High School or Middle School games. But they are not employees either (at least not in a formal sense) like pro players in the NFL. That is one reason why the Washington State brain injury lawyer in charge of the case says he is focused on arranging “insurance that would provide for training and evaluation for players and follow-up care for athletes,” as part of any resolution of the lawsuit. The NCAA, rather than individual schools, is the focus of the suit because the plaintiffs want to change the way severe brain trauma is handled across the world of college sports, not merely in any particular sport or institution.

From an Oregon traumatic brain injury lawyer’s perspective the approach these plaintiffs are taking is particularly interesting. If we start from the premise that the real purpose of going to court is to see justice done, we must also acknowledge that justice that only looks backwards is, philosophically speaking, incomplete. Victims and their families should know that the people responsible for an injury have moved to ensure that the injury will not be repeated. Any suit that seeks to improve the way the world of college sports handles all athletes is a welcome addition to our national discussion of the problem of sports-related head and brain injuries.

New York Times: College Athletes Move Concussions into the Courtroom