In a Miami courtroom today, a panel of federal judges are scheduled to hear arguments in a case with implications for athletes here in Oregon suffering from traumatic brain injuries. According to the Associated Press, the judges are “considering whether to consolidate lawsuits filed around the country by more than…
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a voluntary recall of “Little Tricky” kids bike helmets. See the link below for the original CPSC news release, including pictures of the helmets themselves. Parents should immediately double-check their kids’ helmets to ensure that the children are not using the affected products.…
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…
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,…
The National Hockey League’s 2011-12 season kicked off last night with both the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins and the team they edged out last summer, the Vancouver Canucks, losing close fought, first-night match-ups. Those games (along with a Montreal-Toronto contest) were the first official ones to be played…
In an extraordinary, and welcome, initiative reported last week by the New York Times, the national retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods plans to offer millions of baseline concussion scans to student athletes in an effort to cut down on traumatic brain injuries. “Through a program it calls Protecting Athletes Through Concussion…
According to The Oregonian a shocking number of Portland-area children have been injured in falls from windows since the beginning of the summer. The newspaper recently reported that there have been eight such accidents in recent weeks, the latest one involving a toddler who fell “from the second-floor window of…
A class action lawsuit filed in Salem is taking aim at a perhaps surprising target. According to area television station KDRV the lawsuit alleges that a major insurance company has been “fraudulently denying claims after car crashes.” The target? USAA, a banking and insurance giant that deals exclusively with current…
A recent column in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call highlights a potentially serious attack on patients rights here in Oregon and elsewhere, one that has received relatively little notice in the months since the new Congress convened. The focus of the piece is HR 5. Formally titled the Help…
A poignant reminder of the long-term effects of concussions on football players cane over the weekend when Terry Bradshaw revealed in a blog post that “he is suffering from deficits in short-term memory and impairments in his hand-eye coordination,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper reports that the…