Articles Posted in Personal Injury

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A new measure signed into law in Massachusetts this week raises questions about whether Oregon has sufficiently strong laws regarding young riders and ATVs. As outlined by Boston TV station WCVB, the measure, known as “Sean’s Law,” raises the minimum age for ATV operation in Massachusetts from 10 to 14. The law is named after a 8 year old boy who died in an ATV accident in 2006.

New laws such as this are necessary because of the disturbing ways in which some ATV manufacturers market their products. Advertising materials show families using ATVs – in some cases portraying children who in many states would be breaking the law by being on one. Manufacturers downplay the tendency of ATVs to flip over and the serious consequences that can come from being pinned under one. ATVs are neither small nor light.

Here in Oregon there is no minimum age for operating an ATV, though operators below the age of 30 are required to complete a safety education course (by 2014 that requirement will apply to all Oregon ATV riders regardless of age). The course can be taken either in person or online, though beginning in 2012 the “hands-on” version will be required for Oregonians 15 and younger.

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Contracts between the Pentagon and defense contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root grant the company complete immunity in Iraq for harm its employees may cause to either Iraqi civilians or American and other coalition soldiers.

That immunity – cited by KBR in defending itself against an Oregon workplace injury lawsuit – has prompted Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat who represents much of the Portland area, to demand an explanation from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to The Oregonian. In his letter to Gates, Blumenauer called the blanket liability exemption “mind-numbing”.

The newspaper reports that the exemption came to light as part of a lawsuit filed by 26 Oregon National Guardsmen who served in Iraq in 2003. The troops were assigned to guard KBR employees undertaking reconstruction work. The guardsmen claim that “the contractor knowingly or negligently exposed them to a cancer-causing chemical” the newspaper reports. A similar suit is also being considered by courts in Indiana.

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A 69 year old Salem man died Thursday in an Oregon car accident just as the holiday weekend was getting underway. According to The Oregonian, Rodney Kamppi was headed for a Fourth of July camping trip with his daughter, son-in-law and the younger couple’s two daughters when the driver, Kamppi’s son-in-law, lost control of vehicle near La Grande.

The family was traveling in an SUV, and was towing a large camper. According to the newspaper, quoting an Oregon state trooper, “the SUV flipped over, separated from the trailer and slid about 100 feet down an embankment before hitting a tree.” Kamppi died at the scene of the accident, the newspaper reports, despite the best efforts of two nurses who were passing by and stopped to offer assistance, including CPR. The remaining members of the family were taken to a local hospital. The OSP told The Oregonian that all occupants of the SUV were wearing safety belts.

In the wake of accidents like this one it is an unfortunate fact that grieving and injured families often require the assistance of an Oregon personal injury lawyer in what becomes a fight to receive all of the insurance benefits to which they may be entitled.

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The Oregon Supreme Court sided with cigarette giant Philip Morris last week in refusing to reinstate a $100 million punitive damage ruling issued by a lower court in 2002. That earlier ruling was overturned by a state appellate court in 2006.

It is important to note that one part of the Oregon product liability and wrongful death case still stands: the original Oregon jury award of more than $164,500 in “economic losses, pain and suffering” is not affected by the ruling regarding punitive damages, according to The Oregonian. Moreover, the Supreme Court ruling does not mean that the case is finished or that punitive damages have been disallowed: merely that the issue of Oregon punitive damages must be reargued before a lower court.

The case concerns a Salem woman who died in 1999 after decades of regular smoking. According to The Oregonian, she switched to low-tar cigarettes in 1976, after a dozen years of smoking, believing that low tar cigarettes would be less problematic for her health. Oregon personal injury attorneys representing the woman’s family argued that Philip Morris possessed study data showing that smokers of low-tar cigarettes tended to inhale longer and more deeply, thus negating the alleged benefits of the product. The company, however, did not disclose this information to consumers.

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One of the stranger stories of the week comes from Minnesota where a fatal crash involving two cars and two semi-trucks Monday not only killed two people, but also released a swarm of millions of bees.

According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, rescuers responding to the fatal car-truck crash had to fight their way through dark clouds of bees released from one of the trucks, both of which were hauling bees that had spent the winter in Mississippi to North Dakota for the summer. The cars were reportedly crushed between the two trucks. Police are still investigating the cause of the fatal car-truck crash, according to the Star-Tribune.

The bee-laden semi-trailers collided with two cars on Interstate 35 closing what the Star-Tribune described as a five-mile stretch of the interstate for several hours. The paper quoted a fireman who was one of the first rescuers on the scene saying; “I saw this big black cloud… I opened up my door and got stung in the face by a couple of bees.”

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The videos on The Oregonian’s website are arresting: a table saw stopping abruptly as it comes into contact with a hot dog (standing in for a human finger as part of a demonstration), leaving the hot dog barely nicked. The technology, called “Saw Stop”, was developed by a Portland lawyer (with a PhD in Physics) whose Tualatin-based company now manufactures its own table saws after failing to sell industry leaders on the technology. It represents a dramatic leap forward in safety: something that could decrease the number of Oregon amputations significantly were it to come into wider use.

The lawyer/inventor/physicist, Stephen Glass, designed a technology that allows the saw to distinguish flesh from things it ought to be cutting (such as wood or metal). When the blade senses it is in contact with flesh it stops and retracts, Glass claims, 10 times faster than an airbag deploys in an Oregon auto crash. Glass and his partners set up their own company to sell saws using their technology after the country’s leading tool manufacturers refused to license it, deciding, Glass said, that “safety doesn’t sell.” This, he says, despite an estimated 60,000 table saw injuries each year in the United States, about 3000 of which lead to amputations.

What may change this equation is a recent Massachusetts jury decision against Roybi, a large table saw manufacturer, awarding $1.5 million to a man who mangled his hand while working with one of the company’s table saws. The Oregonian reports that 60 similar cases have already been filed nationwide. Since Glass believes the tool companies were uninterested in his technology because they had not previously been held liable for the injuries their products can cause, the evolving legal landscape may lead to a change in the business environment.

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A man from Prospect, in southern Oregon between Medford and Crater Lake National Park, has filed an Oregon personal injury lawsuit against the US Forest Service and a local lumber company for injuries sustained because the government allegedly failed to remove a dangerous tree. According to The Oregonian, as well as wire service reports, Bert Fernandez claims he was permanently injured, and that his vehicle was severely damaged, when a 32-foot tree fell on his car as he drove through the Rouge River National Forest. The accident took place in February, 2008.

Fernandez charges that the tree had been marked by the Forest Service for removal and that the logging company failed to cut it down within the timeframe agreed in the company’s contract with the government. He is alleging negligence on the part of the logger for failing to cut down the tree, and on the part of the Forest Service for failing to hold the loggers to their contract.

While unusual in some respects (people more commonly get sued for cutting down a tree improperly rather than for failing to cut it down in the first place), at its core this is a familiar sort of Oregon personal injury case: one that seeks to recover damages caused by alleged negligence on the part of the government and a private company.

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Cars and cellphones have been the media’s main focus when discussing Oregon’s new laws, but the distracted driving bill was not the only significant piece of legislation which came into force on January 1, 2010. Several new measures change state insurance regulations in ways that stand to benefit consumers in significant ways.

Among the most important is a new law raising the ceiling on income replacement benefits from $1250 to $3000 per month. These are benefits paid by your insurer if you are unable to return to work because of an injury. It goes without saying that for many people the old monthly rate of $1250 – essentially a minimum wage salary – fell far short of actually replacing lost income.

The same bill also increased the required level of motor vehicle liability insurance for damage to others from $10,000 to $20,000 (that increase, in turn, bumps up the minimum level of optional uninsured motorist coverage for property damage that companies must offer their customers. This level also goes from $10,000 to $20,000).

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Police in Gresham, just east of Portland, have arrested a suspect in a hit-and-run Portland auto accident that injured four people, three of them from the same family. According to a report in The Oregonian, a 26-year-old Gresham man has been charged with two counts of felony hit-and-run, one count of reckless driving, four counts of reckless endangering, three counts of criminal mischief and with driving without a license. The paper quotes Gresham police saying the man has confessed to the crime.

The Portland injury crash took place at the corner of SE Stark and 181st St last Friday. According to the Salem News, the suspect rear-ended a vehicle carrying a family of three that was stopped at a traffic light, forcing that car into the one in front of it. All three people in the first car as well as the driver of car it was shoved into had to be transported to area hospitals for treatment. The driver of the pick-up fled, but police arrested him later that evening.

After an accident like this prompt consultation with a Portland traffic accident lawyer should be a top priority. The criminal charges filed against the alleged driver of the pick-up truck are separate from, and do not address, civil liability. Put another way: in a situation like this the criminal charges may take a reckless driver off the road, but they will not pay the victims’ hospital bills or compensate them for lost wages or pain and suffering.

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This may not come as a huge surprise, but a new survey indicates that teens are still texting while driving, despite a rising number of state bans across the country, including a newly enacted one here in Oregon.

The new survey data, compiled by Pew Research, was released this week, according to the tech news website CNET. In July Oregon became the 16th state to ban texting while driving, a practice that is pretty much universally acknowledged to be extremely dangerous. Oregon car accidents leading to serious injuries or death are far more likely to occur when a driver is talking on a cellphone or texting. This includes single and multi-car Oregon auto accidents as well as Oregon pedestrian accidents.

The Pew survey indicated that one-third of 16 and 17 year old drivers admitted to texting while driving (one was quoted as saying he wears sunglasses while texting “so the cops don’t see” him looking down). A full 48 percent of passengers age 12 to 17 said they had been a car while the driver was texting. Portland car accidents involving a texting driver can be especially serious, and may expose the driver to liability even from passengers in his or her own vehicle. A Portland personal injury lawyer specializing in Oregon cellphone-related car accidents can advise on the best way to approach a car accident lawsuit.

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