personal injury lawyer Tag Archives

April 12, 2010

Is Your Client on Facebook?

Stark & Stark’s Pennsylvania Law Monitor has a nice post about the impact of Facebook on personal injury litigation.

An excerpt:

The Internet and social networking sites have changed the face of litigation in this country. However, there are some precautions that you can take to protect yourself, short of boycotting the Internet all together. First, be careful in reviewing the photos and posts on your social networking site. Remove anything that you would not want an insurance company lawyer to see that could help them defend against your case. Next, check your privacy settings which enable you to block certain people from seeing you on a particular site (Facebook allows this). It is also helpful to search your name in the search field and see what comes up to make sure it is acceptable (it is advisable to do this on Google and YouTube as well). Finally never accept friend requests or respond to emails from people you do not know.

March 4, 2010

Online Accident Reports

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

Getting motor vehicle accident reports is a hassle, but is appears that it will be getting easier.

BuyCrash.com makes accident reports from Georgia, Indiana, and Kentucky available for purchase over the Internet. Accident reports from Tennessee will be available in the future.

Thanks to Chris Simon and the Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog for making me aware of this service.

February 22, 2010

Tennessee Personal Injury Client Advice

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

The Springfield Injury Law Blog has given us a great post titled "8 Ways to Help Your Personal Injury Lawyer Help Your Case." Obviously, the post informs personal injury clients how they can help their lawyer obtain a better result in their case.

It is so good I am going to reprint it here:

1. Give your lawyer the whole story

February 15, 2010

2009 Medical Malpractice Claims Reports Due March 1, 2010

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance has released the forms for reporting on medical malpractice claims for the 2009 calendar year.

The reports are due March 1, 2010.

Here are the instructions for filling out forms as a representative of the claimant. Here is the link to the reporting form.

January 18, 2010

Proposed Consumer Product Safety Commission Database Concerns Product Liability Defense Lawyers

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

Thompson Hine is a 99-year old law firm with offices in eight different cities. Its products liability lawyers work do work in the aerospace, automotive, chemical, electrical, mechanical, medical device and pharmaceutical areas.

And they are concerned about the implications of Section 212 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which requires the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to implement a publicly accessible, searchable database of consumer product incident reports.

The firm reports that:

December 31, 2009

Nevada Supreme Court Restricts Lawsuits Against Pharamacies

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that a pharmacy does not owe a duty of care to unidentified third parties who were injured by a pharmacy customer who was driving while under the influence of controlled prescription drugs.

In reaching the decision, the court rejected the arguments that pharmacies have a duty to act to prevent a pharmacy customer from injuring members of the general public and that Nevada’s pharmacy statutory and regulatory laws allow third parties to maintain a negligence per se claim for alleged violations concerning dispensation of prescription drugs and maintenance of customers’ records.

Here is the court’s summary of the facts:

December 30, 2009

Ambulance Driver Crashes Into TDOT Help Truck – Is There an Incapacitated Driver Defense?

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

David Cline, the paramedic who was killed when the private ambulance he was driving slammed into the back of a TDOT roadside help truck on Interstate 65 on October 22, 2009, had a history of medical problems, including narcolepsy and epilepsy. Investigators are unsure why Cline left the highway but believe that the he suffered a "seizure or some type of medical condition that [incapacitated] him and led to the fatal crash, according to the final report released by Metro Nashville Police Department on December 28, 2009. The story was reported in The City Paper.

The article reports that "after performing a toxicology examination, police determined Cline had an elevated level of amphetamines in his bloodstream from his prescribed medication for narcolepsy, Adderall. The same report did not find indications his prescribed epilepsy medication, Depakote, was in his system." The article also reports that

Cline did have previous incidents involving seizures and car crashes. On Christmas Day 1999, Cline ran off the road and struck a utility pole after he had a seizure, and following the incident, his driver’s license was suspended. His credentials were reinstated in March of 2000. He suffered another seizure while working his day job as a Franklin firefighter, "three or four years prior" to the deadly crash.

December 28, 2009

Problem Nurses Move From State to State

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

Today’s Tennessean has an article originally published in the Los Angeles Times that reveals a problem with nurses moving from state to state and leaving behind a bad disciplinary record.

The article reports that "using public databases and state disciplinary reports, reporters found hundreds of cases in which registered nurses held clear licenses in some states after they had been sanctioned in others, often for serious misdeeds. In California alone, a months-long review of its 350,000 active nurses found at least 177 whose licenses had been revoked, surrendered, suspended or denied elsewhere."

This problem can be avoided. "By simply typing a nurse’s name into a national database, state officials can often find out within seconds whether the nurse has been sanctioned anywhere in the country and why. But some states don’t check regularly or at all."

December 11, 2009

Fatal Car and Truck Crashes By Young Drivers

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

NHTSA has released a report concerning fatal crashes by young drivers. The report shows that

Youths 15 to 20 years old represented 9 percent of the U.S. population in 2007 and 6 percent of the licensed drivers; however, 19 percent of the fatalities in the United States in 2007 were related to young-driver crashes.
Approximately two-thirds of the people killed in fatal young-driver crashes are the young drivers themselves or the passengers (of all ages) of the young drivers.
Of the passengers killed riding in vehicles with young drivers, 67 percent are in the same 15-to-20-year-old age group as the drivers.
Fifty-six percent of the fatal crashes and 57 percent of the fatalities involving young drivers occur on rural road-ways.
In 2007, 6,982 young drivers were involved in 6,669 fatal crashes. A total of 7,650 fatalities occurred in those crashes.
The 2007 National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS) states that overall restraint use has increased slightly from the previous year, to 82 percent. However, belt use among people 16 to 24 was only 77 percent. In 2007, of the 15- to 20-year-old passenger vehicle occupants killed in all fatal crashes, 61 percent (of those whose restraint use was known) were unrestrained. Of the total fatalities in which restraint use was known in 2007, 54 percent of the vehicle occupants killed were unrestrained.
In 2007, 31 percent of young drivers 15 to 20 years old who were killed had blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) of .01 grams/deciliter (g/dL) or greater, and 26 percent of young drivers had BACs of .08 g/dL or greater. These figures are relatively similar to the overall driving population in which 37 percent involved BACs of .01 g/dL or greater and 32 per-cent involved BACs of .08 g/dL or greater in 2007.

December 10, 2009

Debt Collector Blamed in Wrongful Death Lawsuit

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

Dianne McLeod says a debt collector killed her husband Stanley.

According to CNN, Ms. McLeod alleges that " her mortgage company, Green Tree Servicing, for the wrongful death of her husband. McLeod said she thinks he would be alive if not for the stress caused by Green Tree’s debt collectors. She said they sometimes called up to 10 times a day and also called the McLeods’ neighbors." Stanley , a heart patient died of heart failure.

The CNN story does not reveal the cause of action being employed in the Florida litigation. In Tennessee, the Supreme Court has ruled that debt collectors may be liable for damages caused if they engage in intentional infliction of emotional distress, as known as the tort of outrageous conduct. The case applying this tort to debt collectors is Moorhead v. J.C. Penny, Co. 555. S.W. 2d 713 (Tenn. 1977). Whether conduct is "outrageous" and whether the conduct caused an injury or death is very much dependent on the facts.