Articles Posted in Personal Injury

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A recent announcement that insurance giant Allstate is buying the Esurance and Answer Financial brands from the smaller, less well-known, White Mountains Insurance Group raises several troubling questions.

According to an Associated Press article, Allstate expects to pay about $1 billion for the two brands. The acquisition will allow Allstate to broaden the offerings available under its corporate umbrella. AP cites an Allstate press release claiming “the deal will help it tap consumers who prefer certain brands along with consumers who want choices among insurance carriers.”

Leaving aside the dubious claim that one company’s marketing of its products under different names actually constitutes “choice” from a consumer’s perspective, customers might also want to consider what a company really has in mind when it makes acquisitions like this at below-market-value. Notably, White Mountain told the AP that the sale “will increase its book value by $80 per share.” Yet in trading after the deal was announced White Mountain’s stock rose by only $51 (about 15%) – indicating that the market thinks White Mountain should have gotten more money from Allstate for the deal to raise the company’s valuation as much as the White Mountain claims.

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After a year marked by bad news – fatal crashes; official reports indicating that safety needs to be improved – it is refreshing to encounter a story about Tri-Met that makes you feel good.

According to The Oregonian, a Tri-Met train driver’s quick thinking saved the life of a woman who had fallen onto the tracks last week. What could have turned into a disastrous Portland transportation accident was averted, the paper reports, mainly because train driver Arthur Beardsley “knew the Willow Creek stop in Hillsboro can be ‘a scary area.’” As a result, he was already approaching with caution when a woman fainted in front of his oncoming train.

Trains, as the article notes, can take a long time to stop. Large freight trains can easily travel over a mile after the brakes are applied before they begin to lose momentum. Even light rail cars, like the trains commuters use here in the Portland area, normally take about 600 feet to stop, according to The Oregonian. In this case it was only Beardsley’s unusually slow approach to Willow Creek that averted an otherwise certain tragedy.

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A recent profile in The Oregonian details the struggles, and mutual support, of Portland burn victims, offering a reminder of how devastating this kind of injury can be. The article focuses on Portland Burn Survivors, Inc. and a related group, Burn Concern. The latter is organized by Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, Oregon’s only hospital with a full-scale burn unit.

The paper notes that the prospects for Oregon burn victims have changed substantially over the last generation. “Until about 30 years ago, survival of a bad burn meant constant pain and medical complications that usually led to swift death,” the article states. Advances in medical technology have increased survival rates, and made life after a burn more tolerable for many in physical terms, but have done little to alter the stigma society often attaches to those dealing with a disfiguring injury.

Burns, of course, can happen for any number of reasons. The survivors profiled by The Oregonian received their injuries in vastly different ways – ranging from a camping accident to a car crash. One was severely injured as a 13 year old by an outdoor garbage fire.

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An article just published by the online magazine Slate raises an intriguing question: is it safer to drive head-first into a parking spot, the way most Americans do? Or to back into it? The question is relevant because if there is strong data suggesting that backing into parking spaces is, by and large, safer that, in turn, would mean that we ought to begin looking at Oregon car accidents in different ways.

We all know, of course, that Portland car accidents can lead to any number of traumas: Oregon brain injuries, injuries to children, even wrongful death. Who among us has not had a near miss either when backing out of a parking space or when passing by (whether in a car or on foot) someone who is doing so without paying sufficient attention.

Though Slate notes that “parking lot crash statistics are a bit hazy,” it goes on to note: “a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in 2001 and 2002 found that 14 percent of all damage claims involved crashes in parking lots (some number of which must have involved vehicles moving in and out of spaces).” Further, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in a report to Congress last year estimated that “backover crashes,” as they are officially known, “cause at least 183 fatalities annually” as well as approximately 7000 injuries. The NHTSA is studying new rules that it hopes may lower these numbers by cutting the size of vehicle blind spots.

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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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Two serious Portland pedestrian accidents only hours apart – one of them fatal – highlight the danger pedestrians continue to face here in northern Oregon, despite a renewed public focus on the issue in recent months.

The first accident took place last Monday on Southeast 82nd Avenue where a 27-year old pedestrian was hit by a car and run over by not one but two vehicles, according to a report in The Oregonian. The victim is hospitalized in serious condition. According to an OSP spokesperson, the Oregon pedestrian car accident began when she was struck while crossing 82nd Avenue in a marked crosswalk Monday afternoon. A pick-up truck traveling behind the car that hit the pedestrian ran over her as it attempted to drive around the first car. The driver of the first car, apparently startled, then moved her vehicle – in the process running over the victim a second time. Neither driver was cited in the incident, according to The Oregonian, but an investigation is still under way.

The second Portland car accident took place Tuesday evening. Unlike the first accident, where both drivers are cooperating with police, this was a hit-and-run, and a reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of the driver, according to The Oregonian. The accident, on Southeast Division St, led to the death of a pedestrian who was struck “as he crossed the wide road”, the newspaper reports. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

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Yamaha’s Rhino off-road vehicle is emerging as a target of significant personal injury lawsuits here in Oregon and elsewhere around the country, according to a recent article in The Oregonian. The paper notes that the Rhino, first introduced in 2003, is the subject of “about 700 injury and wrongful death claims” nationwide, including several in Oregon.

Only five such cases have gone to trial so far, and the company has won four of those (the exception was in Georgia), but, the paper notes, “Yamaha has quietly paid settlements in at least 40 Rhino cases, some on the eve of trial.” The paper’s reporting, which was compiled by the consumer watchdog organization FairWarning.org, also says the federal government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission “has received reports of 70 deaths in Rhino crashes.” An August 2009 CPSC news release notes that several models of the Rhino were recalled for repairs “in order to enhance stability and reduce the potential for rollover.” At the time of the recall the company also gave Rhino owners free helmets.

The company says the vehicles are safe, and that its winning record at trial proves it. Consumer advocates, according to The Oregonian, counter that the company has, until now, successfully cherry-picked cases it was likely to win: instances in which reckless driving appeared to have played a role in the injuries or deaths resulting from accidents involving Rhinos. A March 2009 CPSC report noted, however, that many of the more recent accident reports “appear to involve turns at relatively low speeds on level terrain,” according to The Oregonian.

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Have you ever been to a carnival, or even a child’s birthday party and wondered just how safe those moonwalks, bouncy castles and other portable ‘rides’ are? According to a recent article in the Wichita Eagle, a Kansas court case looks set to bring those issues into focus.

According to the newspaper, the civil lawsuit was filed last month by the parents of a five-year-old boy who died after being thrown from an inflatable ride called King of the Hill. The newspaper describes this as being “designed like a large mattress – flat except for a bulge in the middle – and… surrounded by a 2-foot-high inflatable barrier.” Parents were allegedly told to place a child in the center of the ‘mattress’ and then to jump up and down themselves on the inflatable’s sides, causing the child to fly into the air. Having done this a few days earlier for the boy’s birthday party the five-year-old’s family returned to the same amusement park a few days later, using free passes they had received during the birthday celebration. On this second visit, however, the child was launched over the inflatable barrier. He landed head-first on the facility’s concrete floor, resulting in his death.

The parents also charge that the ride was “underinflated and unsupervised” and that the operator ignored the manufacturer’s recommendation that the ride was for children ages 8 and up.

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Media reports over the last ten days have noted the strange case of nearly 20 Oregon high school football players taken ill after practice with a rare muscle disorder. According to the Associated Press three of the teens needed surgery “and 16 others were treated after suffering muscle damage following a fall camp.” The high schoolers are suffering from a rare condition known as “compartment syndrome” in which high levels of enzymes released after heavy exercise can, in some cases, lead to kidney failure. The constant repetition of the fact that the victims are football players, however, can obscure the fact that they are high schoolers – children, in the eyes of the law – and raises the question of what level of responsibility ought to be assigned to McMinnville High School and its football coach.

According to an article in The Oregonian, doctors familiar with the case say an intense combination of “high heat, dehydration and heavy exercise” may have led to the mass case of compartment syndrome. The doctors are also, however, “waiting for blood tests looking for the presence of creatine, a legal, loosely regulated and widely available bodybuilding supplement present in a number of weight-gain products that has been linked to an increased risk of sports-related injury.”

These Oregon child injuries, taking place at a high school sports practice, raise serious questions about the school’s responsibility – where it should start and where it should end. In particular, if creatine is found in the players’ blood that, in turn, would raise questions about whether the team’s coaches were aware of supplement use among their players and what, if anything, they may have done to warn against it.

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A new study from Tufts University, published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine, has found what appears to be a link between the chronic pain disorder fibromyalgia and Tai Chi, a Chinese martial art that is most often practiced here in the United States for its health benefits rather than self-defense.

The focus on fibromyalgia makes the study especially interesting for Oregon accident victims seeking to recover from a car crash, bicycle crash or industrial accident. According to an analysis by the New York Times, the study “found that after 12 weeks of Tai Chi, patients with fibromyalgia… did significantly better in measurements of pain, fatigue, physical functioning, sleeplessness and depression than a comparable group given stretching exercises and wellness education.”

The paper notes that other medical studies have previously suggested that Tai Chi might hold benefits for other pain suffers, such as people with arthritis. These, however, are relatively well-understood maladies. Fibromyalgia is different. As the Times notes, fibromyalgia is “common”, but remains little-understood and is often difficult to treat. One doctor involved in the study is quoted by the Times attributing Tai Chi’s success with fibromyalgia victims to the discipline’s multiple components: “physical, psychological, social and spiritual.”

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