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…
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…
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…
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 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,…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…