Oregon Injury Lawyer Blog

November 30, 2011

New Documentary Challenges Lawsuit Stereotypes

Earlier this month HBO launched a new documentary, Hot Coffee, that is designed to challenge entrenched stereotypes concerning our legal system and to remind all Americans of an important, but often overlooked, constitutional right: the trial by jury.

The film takes its title from the famous 1990s personal injury lawsuit involving an elderly woman who suffered a serious burn injury after spilling a cup of McDonalds coffee. As the filmmakers point out, this case became the “poster child” for frivolous lawsuits. The point of the movie is not, however, to demonstrate that the facts of this and several other high profile cases were different than was widely reported in the media (though they are, and the film does make that point strongly).

Instead, it focuses on a broader and even more important issue: the lengths to which large and powerful corporations will go to keep cases involving their negligence out of our courts and away from juries. Our Seventh Amendment guarantee of a trial by jury is one of the most fundamental rights we enjoy as Americans. Yet, as Hot Coffee demonstrates, that right has been under attack for a generation or more. Companies make getting to court difficult and winning even harder.

November 26, 2011

Oregon Wrongful Death Suit Revived by Federal Court Ruling

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A ruling earlier this month by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has opened the way for the parents of a teenager shot dead by police officers in Washington County to move ahead with an Oregon wrongful death lawsuit, according to a recent article in The Oregonian.

The case stems from the 2006 death of an 18-year old near Tigard, in Washington County, Oregon. The teenager was threatening to kill himself with a pocketknife when police officers arrived at the site of the incident. Within four minutes the officers had fired 11 shots, killing the teen, despite pleas from his family and friends that the boy posed a threat to no one but himself. The family has long claimed that the law enforcement officers overreacted and made little effort to assess the situation before using deadly force.

After the Washington County sheriff’s office issued an investigative report absolving the officers from any improper conduct the teen’s family “brought suit against the officers and the county in (an Oregon) wrongful death claim, alleging an unconstitutional use of force,” according to the newspaper. A federal district court issued a summary judgment in favor of the officers and the county, but the circuit court has now reversed that ruling and sent the case back to the lower court.

November 23, 2011

Oregon City Propane Explosion Raises Defective Product Questions

by Matthew D. Kaplan

An Oregon City propane explosion left an 80-year-old man severely burned, requiring emergency air evacuation to the Oregon Burn Center, according to a recent article in The Oregonian.

The explosion, which also killed 200 birds with which the man was working in a barn, was strong enough that it destroyed “a 10-by-12 wall and blew out a nearby garage door,” according to The Oregonian. It took place after the victim “had turned on the propane and gone to light a heater that was hanging from the ceiling in a barn.” The “active fire” was out by the time law enforcement officials arrived though the area was still filled with smoke, according to the paper.

The paper reports that “authorities are not investigating the accident,” believing that the explosion was simply the result of the propane having been left on longer than the victim intended. The published reports of the incident, however, raise questions of Oregon product liability that bear examination.

November 17, 2011

Oregon Auto Crashes Have Nearly $3 Billion Economic Impact, According to AAA

by Matthew D. Kaplan

It is simple to understand the idea: the time we spend stuck in traffic takes an economic toll (lost wages, lost sales, etc). Those expenses, in turn, are part of a broader cost to society that we all bear as a result of gridlock (lost productivity, air pollution and its associated medical costs, etc). A recent study by AAA, however, puts forward a, perhaps, more startling idea: that the societal cost of auto accidents is far higher than that of mere congestion.

As outlined in a recent article from The Oregonian, the study put the overall “cost to society” of traffic congestion at $958 million per year for the Portland-Beaverton-Vancouver metro area. An eye-popping figure, to be sure. Using the same data, however, it concluded that “the annual societal cost of traffic crashes… is $2.74 billion.” The analysis was based on 2009 data (the newspaper article, accessed through the link below, includes, in turn, a link to the original report in pdf form).

The article goes on to note that these Oregon car crash figures are roughly in line with national averages. On a national basis the spread between the true cost of vehicle crashes versus the true cost of congestion is $300 billion versus $97.7 billion, making the ratio roughly 3-to-1 at both the state and the national level.

November 11, 2011

Oregon Car Crash Kills Teen, Injures Four

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A tragic central Oregon car crash has left a teen driver dead and injured four others according to reports in The Oregonian.

The crash took place on US route 26 near Madras, Oregon. According to the newspaper, a 17-year old driver traveling toward the east “drifted off the north shoulder of the road, according to state police. The 17-year-old driver then overcorrected the car and it crossed into the westbound lane where it collided with a westbound 2006 Chrysler van.”

The teen driver was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. Her passenger, also a 17-year-old girl, was transported to a hospital in Madras with what the paper describes as serious injuries. The driver of the van, a 38-year-old Portland man, and his two children all suffered what were described as minor injuries in the Oregon car crash and were released after treatment at the area hospital.

November 7, 2011

Oregon Midair Collision Focuses Attention on Aviation Safety

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Late last month a small plane carrying both a student pilot and a flight instructor dove suddenly over Yamhill County, striking and literally slicing to pieces a smaller plane flying at a lower altitude, according to The Oregonian. The pilot and passenger of the descending plane were uninjured, but the pilot of the plane they hit died in the Oregon air crash. Both planes were flying out of Hillsboro, and the midair collision occurred “northwest of Aurora State Airport,” the newspaper reports.

The troubling thing emerging in media reports concerning this Oregon aviation accident is the revelation that this was not the first fatal accident involving students at a particular Hillsboro-based flight school. That fact raises troubling questions, and even the possibility that an Oregon wrongful death claim might eventually emerge from the investigations surrounding the crash.

The earlier fatal Oregon air crash incident, according to The Oregonian, took place when “a company flight instructor and his student died in September 2009 when the helicopter they were flying crashed in a field south of Forest Grove and burst into flames.” Perhaps even more ominously, “investigators looking at the helicopter crash “concluded that the flight crew’s failure to maintain adequate rotor speed resulted in a stall, followed by an uncontrolled descent to the ground.”

November 4, 2011

Oregon Distracted Driving Questions Raised by New Technologies

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A fascinating article published in Slate a few days ago raises some intriguing questions regarding Oregon distracted driving laws and some of the latest technologies making their way into our cars and onto our cellphones.

The article focuses on Siri, the computerized ‘assistant’ bundled into the latest version of the iPhone. As the author notes, “Apple advertises Siri as a way to get stuff done while you’re otherwise occupied,” and notes that the company’s videos show people using the application while, among other things, driving.

The legal question for Oregonians and others raised by the article is simple: do distracted driving laws, like Oregon’s, which ban texting while driving extend to a text-by-voice service? “Voice texting could be illegal in many places,” the piece notes, because of wording in the relevant legislation that makes “it illegal to ‘send’ texts,” or, in some cases, prohibits any form of electronic communication. “Each of these versions would make Siri-based texting verboten, because even if you dictate a message, you’re still, technically, sending some kind of electronic communication.”

November 1, 2011

Medical Report Offers New Hope for Spinal Cord Injury Victims

by Matthew D. Kaplan

When we contemplate the effects of an Oregon spinal cord injury one of the most tragic realities is the knowledge that such injuries are often irreversible. Months of hard work with a physical therapist may do much to make things better, but rarely does a patient have any real hope of returning to life as it was before an Oregon car accident or some other tragedy caused the spinal cord injury.

A recent medical study, however, holds out the prospect that scientists are taking some early steps toward changing this. The La Jolla Light reported recently on a study by biologists at the University of California – San Diego. Working in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Oregon, the scientists focused on “more than 70 genes that play a role in regenerating nerves after injury.”

According to the newspaper, the two-year project uncovered “a set of genetic leads that may one day result in therapies to repair spinal cord injuries and other common kinds of nerve damage, such as a stroke.”

October 28, 2011

Reckless Oregon Driver Closes Area Road With Four-Car Crash

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Reckless driving charges are now on the books for a Portland man after a four-car Oregon car accident allegedly caused by his reckless driving, The Oregonian reports. The crash took place in Sherwood, near Beaverton, Oregon.

The newspaper reports that the Oregon car crash on Route 99W took place Wednesday. “Witnesses told investigators an Audi A4 was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic for several miles” along the road before it “crashed into a line of cars stopped at a red light,” the paper notes. The Audi, driven by a 31-year old Portland man, was reportedly traveling at more than 50 miles per hour when it hit a car driven by a 19-year-old Newberg woman. That collision, in turn, set off a chain reaction that damaged two other cars and left the affected stretch of road closed for more than an hour.

The drivers of both the Audi and the car he struck were taken to an area hospital with what The Oregonian describes as “non-life-threatening injuries.” The driver, meanwhile, “was arrested on charges of reckless driving” by Washington County law enforcement officials.

October 26, 2011

Portland Bicycle Accidents and Following the Traffic Laws

by Matthew D. Kaplan

An excellent piece by The Oregonian’s traffic and commuting columnist raised an issue that all of us who care about the Portland cycling community need to think about: how important is it that cyclists observe the traffic laws?

The Oregon bicycling accident article focuses specifically on the question of red lights. We all know, of course, that bicycles are vehicles just like a car or truck. Cyclists have the same right to use the road (with a few exceptions, such as interstate highways) as any car or truck, but with that right comes an equal set of responsibilities. We have all seen bikers who blow through red lights or stop signs or weave through traffic.

Leaving aside the obvious observation that such behavior is incredibly dangerous it is also illegal. As the newspaper notes, “the potential risks are known: a hefty ticket, hitting a pedestrian, possibly even getting killed.” What the column then goes on to do is address head-on, and effectively demolish, the excuse offered by many cycling scofflaws: the idea that they are saving time by ignoring the rules of the road. Just as we have all seen drivers weave dangerously through traffic only to find them sitting beside us at a red light a mile up the road, so the author carefully charts the progress of a Portland cyclist he observed riding dangerously, versus a law-abiding group whom the scofflaw passed when running a red light. The lone rider did not, in fact, get anywhere noticeably faster than the safe, law-abiding cyclists.