Oregon Injury Lawyer Blog

September 30, 2012

Propane Truck Explosion Highlights Industrial Accident Danger

This week, a story from the other side of the continent turned a harsh light on an issue of great concern to us here in Oregon: propane explosions and the potential they have, as industrial accidents, to cause great damage.

According to an article from the Pennsylvania newspaper The Intelligencer, republished on the website Phillyburbs.com, the incident took place when a truck carrying a full load of 2000 gallons of propane collided with another vehicle in Tinicum, about 40 miles north of Philadelphia. Quoting local officials, the paper reports that two people were injured in the accident, a major roadway was closed and nearby residents were ordered to evacuate their homes.

“Hundreds of volunteer first responders and police set up a one-mile radius around the… propane truck, which caught fire shortly after the accident,” the paper reports.

September 28, 2012

Learning from Mistakes to Improve Patient Safety

by Matthew D. Kaplan

An opinion piece published earlier this month in the Wall Street Journal is an impassioned plea for greater accountability among physicians and greater engagement by patients all in the name of dramatically improving medical care and patient safety.

The piece by Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins, begins with a striking assertion: “medical mistakes kill enough people each week to fill four jumbo jets,” he writes. “But these mistakes go largely unnoticed by the world at large, and the medical community rarely learns from them.”

Makary’s solution? Better professional practice combined with a more attentive and engaged public.

September 25, 2012

Fight Against Distracted Driving Attracts Unexpected Supporter

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A recent New York Times article highlights a high-profile opponent of distracted driving here in Oregon and around the nation whose job might raise some eyebrows: he is the chairman and CEO of AT&T. As the newspaper notes, Randall Stephenson began his remarks at an investors’ conference last week with a plea to everyone in the audience not to text and drive.

“He’s been saying it a lot lately,” the paper continues, “at investor conferences, the annual shareholder meeting in April, town halls, civic club meetings, and in conversations with chief executives of other major companies.”

AT&T is not unique among cellphone companies in taking on this issue but, as the Times reports, Stephenson’s emphasis on it stands out both for its seriousness of purpose and for the personal nature of his story. “Mr. Stephenson said in an interview that a few years ago someone close to him caused an accident while texting,” the paper reports. The result has been a high profile anti-texting campaign by the company, one that the paper says has impressed even organizers focused on the broader issue of distracted driving as an advocacy and policy issue.

September 20, 2012

Oregon Concussions Among Student Athletes in the Spotlight

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A recent op-ed published by The Oregonian calls for parents to take more care, and schools to take more responsibility, when it comes to preventing concussions and traumatic brain injuries among student athletes, especially younger athletes still in high school.

The column was written by James Chesnutt. He is identified in the article’s footer as a doctor and the “medical director of the OHSU sports medicine program.”

In the article he says that he is writing to encourage “all Oregon high schools to agree to a management protocol to help their student athletes deal with concussions.” He writes: “The protocol calls for schools to establish a plan to help a student recover.” This, he adds, could include time off from school following a head injury.

September 17, 2012

National Child Passenger Safety Week

by Matthew D. Kaplan

This week – from now until Saturday September 22 – is National Child Passenger Safety Week. It is an excellent time to remind ourselves of the importance of preventing injuries to children in Oregon auto accidents.

Here in Oregon the public awareness events for National Child Passenger Safety Week are being led by SafeKids Oregon. The SafeKids webpage devoted to the week and its related activities opens with some stark statistics that put the problem into perspective:

“Motor vehicle traffic crashes,” it notes, “remain the leading cause of death for children ages 1 through 12 years old.” It also notes that fully 75% of children riding in American cars “are not as secure as they should be because their car seats are not being used correctly.”

September 12, 2012

Dog Attack Injures Washington Boy

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A recent account in TDN.com, a Longview, Washington-based news site, lays out the horrible tale of a 5-year-old boy attacked by a pitbull and police efforts to find the animal. The dog attack took place as “the victim was riding his bike on the sidewalk when the dog, tethered to a 15-foot rope outside a duplex” bit him. The newspaper reports that there were no witness to the initial attack “but neighbors heard the boy screaming and pulled the dog off the boy.”

The victim needed 40 stitches and may eventually require further medical attention, such as a skin graft.

Despite being tethered at the time of the attack the animal is still at large because, TDN reports, “when animal control authorities arrived… the 3-year-old pitbull named Lexi was gone. Lexi’s owner (said) her son had taken off with the dog and she did not know where he was.” According to the newspaper local authorities are especially concerned about finding the pitbull so that they can ensure it has been properly vaccinated against rabies, after it was discovered that “employees at the Oregon animal hospital listed on the (rabies) certificate said the veterinarian who allegedly signed it had never worked at the clinic” and that the animal had never been treated there.

August 31, 2012

Oregon Patient Safety Concerns in Portland Case Spotlight

by Matthew D. Kaplan

The shocking case of a Portland doctor who, according to The Oregonian, faces “manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges in connection with two after-hours tummy-tuck operations she gave to employees in 2010” is a reminder that all of us need to keep Oregon patient safety in our thoughts when considering medical procedures.

According to the newspaper the doctor, whose medical license has now been suspended, allegedly performed solo surgery on two of her employees in a back room at her office after the day’s work was done. One of the two employees subsequently died from complications stemming from the tummy-tuck while the other “complained of dizziness and a rapid heartbeat afterward.”

All of us place great faith in doctors and we have the right to expect, in return, that our doctors will perform their duties in a manner that keeps patients’ well-being first and foremost in their minds. Of course, this is exactly what the vast majority of doctors do every day.

August 29, 2012

Wrongful Death Suit Filed in Teen’s Disappearance

by Matthew D. Kaplan

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.

August 25, 2012

Critics Charge Transportation Bill Shortchanges Portland Cyclists & Pedestrians

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A recent op-ed piece in The Oregonian raises significant questions about transportation funding and Portland’s streets. Its arguments – whether one agrees with them or not – bear consideration even in a time of tight budgets and, often, cutbacks.

The author, Stephanie Routh, executive director of the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition, argues that the transportation bill passed by Congress earlier this summer falls far short of what is needed to fund improvements to “Portland’s most dangerous streets.”

“Congress didn’t improve on the situation with its new federal funding bill, dramatically reducing dedicated funds for walking and biking safety improvements,” she writes. “The lack of relief for known safety problems may result in preventable deaths of people walking, biking, driving or taking transit for years to come.”

August 20, 2012

Insurance Dispute Settled With Accident Victim’s Family

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A case that reached a resolution last week in Maryland offers a cautionary tale about dealing with insurance companies, as well as a lesson in the important role media sometimes play in helping victims obtain justice.

According to both Yahoo! News and CNN the story begins in June 2010 when a 24-year-old Maryland woman died in a car accident caused by another driver’s failure to stop at a red light. The driver who caused the crash was either uninsured or underinsured (media accounts vary on this point), but that ought not to have been a problem, since the victim carried uninsured motorist’s coverage as part of her auto insurance package with Progressive, one of the country’s best known car insurance companies.

Under Maryland law a trial was required to establish responsibility for the crash. To the fury of the victim’s family, Progressive’s attorneys helped the driver who caused the crash throughout the proceeding in an effort to establish that the victim was partly at fault – a circumstance that would have allowed the company to refuse to pay on its policy. The company has issued a statement pointing out that it did not formally represent the defendant, but the victim’s brother, quoted by Yahoo! News, said that the insurer’s lawyers repeatedly conferred with and assisted the defendant during the trial. They also made a closing statement claiming that his sister was at fault for the accident. “I am comfortable characterizing this as a legal defense,” he wrote last week, according to Yahoo! News.