Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

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Last week’s huge explosion at a fertilizer plant in the small town of West, Texas killed 14 people and devastated a huge area. As a lengthy account in The New York Times earlier this week shows, it also raises serious questions about corporate responsibility, government oversight and the safety standards at dangerous facilities throughout the United States.

As the Times reports, the explosion at the plant “was so powerful it leveled homes and left a crater 93 feet wide and 10 feet deep.” The paper said the explosion appeared to have been more powerful than the 1995 bombing at the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Oklahoma blast provides a useful point of comparison because the bomb involved used the same chemical – ammonium nitrate – that was being manufactured and stored in the Texas plant.

The paper reports that while some state and local groups in both the private and public sectors received an annual report on ammonium nitrate and other chemicals being manufactured and stored in the plant others did not. The reporting requirements are designed to help local, state and federal authorities plan for exactly this sort of emergency, but the building’s owners apparently had not filed a report with the Department of Homeland Security. A federal law passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks mandates that “plants that use or store explosives or high-risk chemicals” file a federal report if they exceed certain limits. For ammonium nitrate a report is required if stocks exceed 400 pounds. According to the Times a 2012 report filed with the state listed the plant having 540,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate on hand.

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It has been just over three months since an Oregon bus crash in the Cabbage Hill area in the east of the state killed nine people and injured 38. As official investigations and a search for answers move forward, The Oregonian reports that lawsuits accusing the state Department of Transportation of negligence have now been filed by the loved ones of three of the Oregon bus crash victims, as well as by at least one of the accident’s survivors.

As the Associated Press reports, and as I blogged at the time, the deadly Oregon Bus Crash last December took place when a tour bus “slid on ice east of Pendleton, crashed through a guardrail and rolled down a steep hill.” Pictures published at the time showed a gruesome scene of wreckage on the snow-covered mountain pass.

According to the newspaper, relatives of the victims “are seeking at least $10 million in punitive damages, injuries and wrongful death… The suit claims ODOT was negligent for failing to equip the stretch of Interstate 84 with barriers strong enough to prevent the bus from leaving the roadway; not adequately plowing and sanding the freeway; failing to warn motorists of unsafe conditions; and failing to require commercial vehicles to take an alternative route.” The Canadian company that owned the vehicle, along with the bus driver, are also named as defendants in the suit, according to The Oregonian.

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Investigations of a 2008 helicopter crash that killed nine and injured four in Northern California have resulted in criminal charges for two Oregon men and also raise both Oregon wrongful death and, potentially, industrial accident issues. The details of the tragedy were outlined last week by The Oregonian.

All of the crash victims were involved in fighting wildfires in California at the time of the incident. All but one were Oregonians, as are the two men who, the paper reports, now face fraud charges in relation to the crash. The criminal complaint “accuses the two men of falsifying the weight and takeoff power of the helicopter that crashed and other helicopters that were part of a ‘call-when-needed’ contract worth up to $20 million” The Oregonian reports. Both men have been suspended by the Grant’s Pass company that employed them, owned the helicopter and had contracted it to the US Forest Service for firefighting duty in California.

The criminal charges carry potential 20-year sentences, but they also raise civil liability issues that ought to be considered. If the allegations against the defendants are true their actions could also warrant the filing of wrongful death charges by loved ones of those killed in the crash. Ordinarily, the statute of limitations for Oregon wrongful death claims is three years. The law does, however, allow for exceptions if the negligent act was not discovered within that time frame, a situation that may apply in this case since criminal charges have only just been filed. Whether such a suit would be directed at the men currently facing criminal charges, at their employer (the helicopter’s owner) or both is an issue requiring further legal analysis.

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A three-vehicle Polk County, Oregon car accident over the weekend left one man dead and five people hospitalized, according to a report in The Oregonian.

The Oregon auto accident took place in the town of Dallas, about 60 miles southwest of Portland. The newspaper, quoting the Oregon State Police, reports that the sequence of events began Saturday evening when a van driven by a man from Woodburn “was heading west when it traveled across the center line and collided” with a vehicle headed in the opposite direction on State Route 22.

The driver of the eastbound vehicle was a 69-year-old Silverton man. He was pronounced dead by paramedics responding to the accident. Two other people in the car were taken to a Salem hospital with what The Oregonian describes as “critical” injuries. The driver of the van was not seriously injured in the initial crash, but was struck by a third vehicle, a westbound pickup truck, when he stopped to assess the initial accident. He was taken to the same Salem hospital as the victims in the car and is reported to be suffering from “serious injuries.” The two people in the third vehicle were treated in McMinnville for minor injuries.

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The union representing Tri-Met workers has rejected proposed work rules that would have allowed bus and other transit drivers in the Portland area to work 14-hour shifts, according to a report published in The Oregonian.

The paper reports that “the union representing operators, mechanics and support staff quickly rejected the plan on Monday, saying it didn’t go far enough to address the growing problem with exhaustion.” The paper quotes a union leader saying “No human being, especially one transporting passengers through city traffic, can safely operate a bus over a 14-hour workday, day-after-day.”

The proposed work rules would “limit” drivers to a 14-hour workday and require at 10 hours off between shifts. According to the paper the proposed work plan would have applied to drivers of both buses and light-rail trains. The paper notes that “the current policy, based on service days, makes it easy for a driver to finagle extra overtime by working marathon runs.”

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Following up on a story I first blogged about last week, The Oregonian reports that federal authorities have ordered the bus company involved in the New Year’s weekend crash on Deadman’s Pass section of Cabbage Hill, east of Pendleton, to cease operations in the United States. According to the newspaper, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced on this week that the Canadian company operating the tour bus had let the driver work “well beyond” the 70 hours per 8 days maximum allowed by US law.

As the paper notes, “nine people died in late December when (the) bus… ran through a guardrail and rolled down a steep embankment along Interstate 84.” A further 39 people were injured in the fatal Oregon bus crash, an accident which, as I noted last week, raises significant wrongful death questions.

The action taken by federal officials raises several issues. Obviously, rules designed to prevent driver fatigue need to be rigorously enforced in the interest of public safety, but enforcing those rules on a foreign company is likely to involve significant technical and logistical issues. It is especially worrisome that, as The Oregonian reports, the order requiring the company to cease US operations “specifically cites the company for failure to test the driver for drugs and alcohol prior to the crash, failure to properly maintain driver qualification requirements and failure to operate a motor vehicle in a safe manner.” To be fair, it is difficult to imagine that Canadian national or British Columbian provincial law (the bus company is headquartered in Vancouver, B.C.) does not also address most if not all of these issues – but assuming that it does, one has to wonder why two governments as closely tied as ours and Canada’s are not able to exchange information that might go a long way toward protecting public safety.

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By now most Oregonians will have read or heard about the terrible New Year’s weekend bus crash on Deadman’s Pass in the east of the state. According to The Oregonian, nine people died and dozens were injured last weekend when a tour bus “skidded off Interstate 84 east of Pendleton and rolled 200 feet down a mountain canyon.”

The newspaper quotes an Oregon state police spokesman saying that 39 injured people were taken to hospitals across three states. A total of 49 people were aboard the bus at the time of the accident, meaning that only one person avoided injury in this Oregon bus crash. The newspaper reports that the passengers ranged in age from seven to 73 years old. Most were Americans and Canadians of Korean ancestry.

The bus was reportedly returning from an excursion to Las Vegas at the time of the accident, which occurred on a dangerous stretch of the Cabbage Hill section of I-84. “Oregon state police investigators will look into the possibility that (the) bus driver… was driving too fast for the slippery conditions on the notorious mountain pass,” according to the paper. “Investigators will also determine if driver fatigue was a factor,” The Oregonian reports.

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An Oregon wrongful death lawsuit filed recently in Chiloquin raises new questions about the conduct of an area children’s center that has had a rocky relationship with state and local authorities.

According to the Klamath Falls Herald & News, the Oregon wrongful death suit against Kleos Children’s Community and the Klamath County Department of Human Services alleges that “a wheelchair-bound 14-year-old placed at Kleos under the directive of DHS died as a result of complications from two bilateral fractures to both femurs” as a result of a November 2010 accident.

The paper and local television station KOBI report that the suit claims that DHS was negligent in placing the child at a facility that, it says, could not properly address his “medical and physical needs.” The newspaper reports that the suit claims that Kleos was negligent in its treatment of the boy – both in initiating the actions that resulted in the accident, and, later, in its treatment of him following the incident. The boy died a day after suffering the two broken legs “when two employees of Kleos dropped him while trying to move him from his wheelchair to a new location.”

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The family of a New York teenager who disappeared on a trip to Hawaii and is presumed dead has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii, claiming that the guides on their son’s tour made an “outrageously reckless and irresponsible decision” in taking a group of high school students into a “treacherous lava rock area,” according to accounts by the Associated Press and a local Honolulu TV station.

The 15-year-old boy from White Plains, New York was visiting Hawaii with a teen tour group. Both the umbrella group and its local contractors were named in the suit, the news agency reports. According to the AP, while hiking on July 4 the group “stopped to rest at a tide pool, authorities said. The teens were led to an area that’s out of a state-permitted area despite dangerous surf warnings, according to the suit.”

When large waves came into the tide pool the children scrambled for cover but the victim was swept out to sea. The guides and their employers contend that the adults on the scene did all they could to search for and save the victim, but he has been missing ever since and is now presumed dead.

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A lawsuit recently filed in Salem charges both doctors and prison officials with the Oregon wrongful death of a Salem man in 2010. The suit was filed by the alleged victim’s mother, according to a report in the Salem Statesman-Journal.

According to the newspaper, her son, Robert Haws, was a pre-trial detainee two years ago this month “when he got into an argument with another inmate.” The other inmate attacked Haws “hitting his head on concrete and knocking him unconscious. He died at the hospital after undergoing brain surgery and lingering for days on life support.”

At issue are “the hours following the fight and the lengthy delay in treatment for Haws’ injuries,” according to the Statesman-Journal. Haws’ mother believes that the jail staff did not give her son the attention he needed in the minutes and hours immediately after the fight. It also alleges that once Haws reached the hospital doctors treated him as if he were a patient coming down from a drug overdose despite significant evidence that he needed urgent treatment for an Oregon head trauma.

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