Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

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The driver of a van whose crash left his two passengers dead earlier this week has been charged with a range of offenses, including manslaughter in the first degree and Oregon drunk driving, according to The Oregonian.

The Oregon car accident occurred Tuesday morning near Seal Rock, on the Central Oregon coast. The Oregonian, quoting Oregon State Police, reports that 24-year-old Jose De Leon Colomo was driving north on US-101 when his “van failed to negotiate a left curve, traveled over an embankment, and crashed into a tree, police said. The van broke into several pieces.”

The two passengers in the van were pronounced dead at the scene of the alleged Central Oregon drunk driving crash. Colomo, the driver, was treated at an area hospital before being placed under arrest and transferred to the Lincoln County jail. In addition to drunk driving and manslaughter he has also been charged with recklessly endangering another person and reckless driving, according to The Oregonian.

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A newspaper’s detailed account of a teenage girl who suffered brain damage and eventually died because of negligence during what should have been a routine outpatient procedure was presented to Congress last week by patients rights advocates, according to an account in the Sacramento Bee.

The girl suffered brain damage during what should have been a routine procedure at a Los Angeles area hospital operated by UCLA. She never regained consciousness and died shortly after her parents authorized the removal of her respirator. What is truly shocking about this case, however, is the lengthy battle the girl’s parents had to go through just to get the hospital to level with them about what happened – and the difficulties they experienced in finding a medical malpractice attorney willing to take the case because of statutory limits on medical malpractice damages.

Hospitals and doctors claim such limits are necessary to curb frivolous lawsuits. In many states, however, the effect has been to shield the medical industry from accountability for negligence, particularly negligence leading to wrongful deaths here in Oregon and elsewhere around the country. Relatively low damage limits, in particular, can create an incentive for hospitals to stall families and their wrongful death attorneys with the goal of making the case too expensive for a personal injury or medical malpractice lawyer to pursue.

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A case headed for California’s courts offers a pointed reminder that there is more to ‘distracted driving’ than cellphones. According to the Orange County Register, a man in southern California has been charged with vehicular manslaughter for causing a baby’s death because he “was distracted by a laptop sliding off his passenger seat.” In California the charge of “vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence” caries a potential sentence of a year in jail.

According to the paper, the fatal car accident took place last September. It began when the driver, as he crossed some railroad tracks, turned his attention to a laptop sitting in the passenger seat that he feared would slide out of its bag. As a result, he “did not notice that the traffic in front of him had stopped” and rear-ended the vehicle in front of him. That vehicle, in turn, lurched forward, striking an Australian tourist who was making her way across a crosswalk with her baby in a stroller as well as her 11-year-old niece and 7-year-old nephew.

The woman and the 11 year old were struck and injured by the car at the head of the chain-reaction accident. The baby was launched from her stroller, landing “approximately 70 feet away,” the newspaper reports.

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A medical journal study released this month offers alarming evidence about the long-term prospects for stroke victims and raises broader questions about the way hospitals treat them. The study, originally published in the medical journal Stroke, and reported on by a number of mainstream media outlets, found that, as summarized by Bloomberg Businessweek: “within a year of having a stroke, almost two-thirds of Medicare patients die or wind up back in the hospital.”

According to Businessweek, the study looked at data covering over 91,000 Medicare patients at 625 hospitals nationwide. It covered the years 2003 to 2006 and found no change in the rates of rehospitalization or death over that period. One caveat, noted by outside experts interviewed by the magazine, is that a study like this – one focusing on older patients – can have a difficult time controlling for other medical issues the patients may be experiencing.

The study uncovered a death rate of 14.1 percent within the first 30 days after a stroke and 31.1 percent within a year. More alarmingly, “61.9 percent of stroke patients were readmitted to hospital or died within a year of their stroke,” Businessweek notes.

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A crowd turned out on Barbur Boulevard last night to remember Angela Burke, according to an account posted on the Bike Portland website. Burke, 26, was killed last week by what The Oregonian, quoting police and witnesses, described as a speeding car (reportedly doing 75 in a 35 mph zone) traveling barely on the edge of control.

The Oregonian reports that the driver who allegedly struck Burke was arraigned last Friday “on allegations of negligent homicide and driving under the influence of intoxicants.” He was reported to have significant amounts of both alcohol and marijuana in his system at the time of his arrest, shortly after the Portland fatal pedestrian car crash that killed Burke. The suspect has another court date scheduled later this week.

As both the newspaper and Bike Portland noted, the stretch of Barbur where Burke died is notoriously difficult for Oregon pedestrians and cyclists to cross safely, especially at rush hour. Even those going to last night’s vigil were urged to take safety precautions.

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Nine months after an explosion in a West Virginia coal mine left 29 mine worker dead, the Wall Street Journal reports that many families torn apart by the tragedy remain unsure of their next legal steps forward. Their stories contain many lessons for Oregon families thrown into similarly tragic circumstances as the result of an Oregon wrongful death or industrial accident.

As the paper reports, within days of the mine explosion the board of Massey Energy Company, one of the largest and most powerful companies in West Virginia, offered each family a settlement: $3 million in compensation for the death, lost wages and lost companionship of their loved-one, in exchange for giving up any right to sue the company. The Journal reports that, at present, only seven families have agreed to the company’s settlement, and that “in at least two cases family members are at odds and plan to let a court decide which path they should take.”

For the families the choice is a painful one. As the Journal quotes one victim’s father, himself a miner, saying: “I don’t think it’s justifiable that they want to put a dollar sign on my boy.” As the article notes, the families of workers involved in other industrial accidents often face similarly agonizing choices.

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A scathing statement released Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board cites “a series of improper actions” by a Grant’s Pass, Oregon contractor leading up to a 2008 crash that killed nine firefighters in California. According to a report in The Oregonian, the NTSB’s chairwoman found some actions by the company, Carson Helicopters, “so distressing that the NTSB has alerted the Department of Transportation’s inspector general to investigate in more detail, looking for possible criminal wrongdoing.”

The NTSB statement (see link below) paints a devastating picture of corporate negligence and deception. Referring to Carson, whose helicopters were contracted out to the US Forest Service for firefighting purposes, the NTSB writes: “The contractor’s actions included the intentional alteration of weight documents and performance charts and the use of unapproved performance calculations.”

Though the NTSB also found fault with actions by both the Forest Service and the Federal Aviation Administration, “Carson’s actions were so egregious – so egregious – that they have to go first,” NTSB member Robert Sumwalt told The Oregonian.

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The death of a young Corvallis man on Thanksgiving Day as the result of an Oregon motor vehicle accident involving an armored car was a sad reminder of the dangers of driving on holiday weekends and has left a number of legal questions potentially unresolved.

Joseph Michael Pablo was riding in the back of an armored car early on the morning before Thanksgiving when the vehicle’s driver lost control, according to reports in the Corvallis Gazette-Times and the Salem Statesman-Journal. The accident took place off Highway 99W near Monmouth, southwest of Salem. The Gazette-Times reports that Pablo’s armored “truck was headed south and veered off the right side of the road, hit a tree and rolled several times before coming to rest on its roof.”

Pablo had been riding in the back of the truck as part of his job as a guard working for the company operating the vehicle. Pablo was transported to an area hospital in critical condition and died of his injuries the following day. The truck’s driver at the time of the Oregon fatal truck accident was not seriously injured and did not require hospitalization. He was cited for Oregon careless driving, according to the Gazette-Times.

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The family of a driver who died in an Oregon truck crash earlier this year has filed an Oregon wrongful death lawsuit against the other driver involved in the accident, according to a report in the Eugene Register-Guard.

Because the driver of the truck that caused the accident is already serving an 18-month prison term in connection with the fatal Oregon big rig crash, this case offers an especially clear reminder of something I have frequently mentioned in this space: the fact that the search for justice does not end in our criminal courts.

According to the Register-Guard the fatal accident on Highway 58 east of Eugene took place last March. Driver Bon Puckett “pleaded guilty last month to criminally negligent homicide and hit-and-run in connection with the pre-dawn wreck.” The accident took place when 28,000 pounds of hay Puckett was hauling that morning came loose and crushed the cab of a paint truck driven by Gregory Muller of Nevada. Prosecutors later contended that Puckett had not secured the hay properly and that his truck had not been properly maintained.

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A 67-year-old woman trying out a “go kart-like” vehicle at a California swap meet was killed last week when she lost control of the vehicle, drove out into traffic and was hit by a car. The sudden and unexpected tragedy raises a host of legal questions, particularly concerning liability and whether the woman’s accident can be defined as a wrongful death.

Family members later told the Orange County Register that Hwa Oh had never driven a go-kart before. The newspaper reports that while visiting the swap meet with her sister she accepted an offer to try out the go-kart in the facility’s parking lot. According to an account of the accident by the Associated Press, moments after taking the wheel the woman “lost control of the cart and ran through some bushes, across a sidewalk and onto a street.” She was pronounced dead at an area hospital a short time after the accident.

The AP report notes that law enforcement did not issue any citations at the scene of the accident. That decision by the local police does not, however, necessarily foreclose the possibility of legal action. One has to ask whether appropriate safety measures were in place in the parking lot before the woman climbed into the go-kart. We know from her surviving relatives that she had never driven such a vehicle, but did the cart’s owner ever ask that question? Should the owner of the property even have allowed people to drive around an active parking lot in small, fast, unsafe vehicles?

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