Oregon Injury Lawyer Blog

September 12, 2011

Oregon Highway Fatalities Down, DUI’s Up, Over Labor Day Weekend

Marking Oregon car crash deaths is one of grim rituals that follow most holiday weekends. As the Seaside Signal notes, citing state statistics, Labor Day is traditionally one of the deadliest holiday weekends for drivers here in Oregon and nationwide.

The good news this year is that fatalities were down statewide. Two holiday weekend crashes led to three deaths, the newspaper reports: two people died on Friday evening as the holiday weekend began in a Clackamas County, Oregon motorcycle crash that also involved a car. The other fatality was discovered early Monday morning, on Labor Day itself, in Grass Valley. “An adult male was found deceased in the wreckage of the crash believed to have happened September 4 or during the early morning hours of September 5,” the paper reports, citing the Oregon State Police.

Tempering news of a drop in actual Oregon car crash deaths was word that DUI arrests were up. This is especially worrisome since, as the paper notes, “impaired driving is a major factor in holiday-related traffic crashes and alcohol is a known contributing factor in over half of holiday fatalities.” A total of 70 Oregon DUI arrests took place over Labor Day weekend, up from 67 last year – with an eye-opening ten OSP command centers statewide reporting three or more arrests during the period.

September 5, 2011

Oregon Wrongful Death Lawsuit Filed in Case of Jeanette Maples

by Matthew D. Kaplan

The case of Jeanette Maples, the Eugene teenager who was starved and tortured to death by her own mother, shocked much of the state. Now, it is the state itself that stands accused of complicity in the girl’s death as the subject of an Oregon wrongful death lawsuit, according to television station KVAL and the Eugene Register-Guard.

The newspaper reports that Maples’ estate is suing Oregon Child Protective Services and the state Department of Human Services, alleging that their failure to protect the teen was “a substantial factor” in her death. Maples’ mother pled guilty to murder in criminal court and was later sentenced to death. The new suit, however, “claims the State of Oregon was negligent in not preventing Maples’ death by abuse,” KVAL reports.

According to the Register-Guard, the suit also alleges that the state’s neglect continued over an extended period of time. Specifically, “that state workers failed to ‘investigate and heed’ allegations of abuse from reliable sources beginning in 2006” and that this pattern of neglect continued until Maples’ death, nearly four years later.

September 2, 2011

Effort to Limit Oregon Child Injuries Takes Multi-Pronged Approach

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A statewide enforcement program officially known as “3 Flags” began in the waning days of August and is scheduled to stretch beyond Labor Day weekend. The initiative hopes to cut traffic-related Oregon child injuries and deaths through a combination of enforcement and education.

“The purpose of 3-Flags is to increase seatbelt use and decrease the number of speeding and/or impaired drivers,” according to MyEugene.org. In addition to people driving too fast, or engaged in Oregon drunk driving, the program also targets child seat use. The goal of this part of the program is both to increase awareness of Oregon’s child restraint laws – and of the resources available to help poorer parents get the child seats they need at a free or reduced price – and to ensure that parents using an approved booster or baby seat install and use it properly.

As the Gresham Outlook notes, in 2009 “observed booster seat use was only 58 percent among children ages 4 to 8… one-third of children in this age group who were killed or injured in crashes last year were not using booster seats.” As I noted in an earlier post, more than one highway safety study over the years has shown that the number of people – as many as ¾ of all drivers using the devices according to some sources – whose children ride in improperly installed child seats is shockingly high.

August 31, 2011

Salem hit-and-run yields lengthy charge sheet

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A series of Oregon car accidents on Interstate-5 allegedly caused by a reckless driver near Salem “came to an end when (the driver) exited the freeway near milepost 239 at Dever-Conne, crashed into a guardrail and was pinned in by an OSP trooper’s patrol car,” according to the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

KOIN Television reports that the alleged driver was arrested “after numerous hit-and-runs and leading the police on a chase where speeds reached in excess of 100 mph.” The station adds that the driver is alleged to have initiated four hit-and-runs before police identified him and began what turned out to be a more than 40 mile chase down the interstate. Before being apprehended the suspect allegedly “rear-ended another car six miles from where he crashed into the guardrail,” the station notes.

If the allegations are true, it would be fairly difficult to find a more obvious case of Oregon reckless driving leading to significant Salem auto accidents. Situations like these almost require the assistance of an Oregon car crash attorney to help victims obtain the justice they want and need.

August 29, 2011

Yamhill Dog Attacks: Brochure Seeks to Limit the Damage

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Yamhill County has been considering the question: could your dog become responsible for an Oregon dog attack? The answer, unfortunately, is ‘yes.’

As the Yamhill News-Register notes, “All dogs – from the most muscular guard type to the fluffiest family pet – may bite if frightened, challenged or overexcited.” The paper’s report is a reminder that Portland, Salem or Eugene dog attacks can happen anywhere, at any time. As the article notes, a valued family pet can, believing it is protecting its turf or its owners, attack a family friend or anyone else who enters its familiar areas unexpectedly. The source for the article is a newly-published brochure from Yamhill Dog Control, detailing warning signs and useful tips for keeping one’s pet(s) under control.

The article notes that Yamhill County alone has recorded 61 Oregon dog bites so far this year – a pace that puts the county ahead of last year’s annual total of 98 and even further ahead of the county’s average annual number of Oregon Dog bites over the last seven years: 82.

August 25, 2011

Portland Dram Shop Suit Seeks $7m+ for Drunk Driving Death

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A civil suit filed earlier this month here in Portland is an excellent illustration of Oregon dram shop law and the ways it seeks to protect the public at large and accident victims in particular. According to The Oregonian, the husband of a woman who died in a Portland drunk driving accident last February is suing not only the alleged drunk driver but also two bars which, he claims, served the driver “while he was visibly intoxicated.”

The newspaper goes on to add that “the complaint accuses the bars of negligence for allowing him to drive, failing to determine whether he planned to drive and failing to alert authorities.”

This is practically the definition of a claim under the Oregon dram shop law – a statute that says a bar or alcohol retailer can be held legally responsibly for the damage done by a patron who clearly should not have been served in the first place.

August 22, 2011

Oregon Traumatic Brain Injuries: Retailer Takes a Stand

by Matthew D. Kaplan

In an extraordinary, and welcome, initiative reported last week by the New York Times, the national retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods plans to offer millions of baseline concussion scans to student athletes in an effort to cut down on traumatic brain injuries.

“Through a program it calls Protecting Athletes Through Concussion Education, or PACE, Dick’s will pay for schoolwide neurocognitive testing of athletes across more than 3,300 schools totaling more than a million students,” the paper reports. The goal is to help schools know when athletes have been injured by establishing a baseline against which their brain functions can be compared following a sports-related traumatic brain injury. The idea is to test athletes before their seasons begin.

Having data on “functions like verbal memory, visual memory, and reaction time” collected while a student is healthy will make it easier to determine later on whether injuries, even subtle ones, have altered the way the brain is functioning. The paper notes that the same tests are now routinely administered to professional baseball, football and hockey players.

August 17, 2011

Reexamining Public Policy in the Wake of Oregon Bike Accidents

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A recent fatal cycling accident to our north in Washington State, has prompted some careful thinking concerning the way cyclists are treated by the public policy process. In the wake of this month’s Portland bike accident that landed former star University of Oregon and NFL quarterback Joey Harrington in intensive care, this is clearly an issue that merits attention on both sides of the Columbia River.

A fascinating column published recently in the Seattle Times addresses this issue in the wake of a fatal Washington cycling accident in a busy part of Seattle. Seattle, like Portland, has a reputation for being a cyclist-friendly city. Yet a biker there died late last month while riding in a marked bike lane after an “SUV sped across traffic, slammed into him, and fled,” according to Times columnist Alan Durning.

Durning writes that car crashes killed nearly 1100 people in Idaho, Oregon and Washington during 2009 alone, adding that “car crashes are the No. 1 cause of death among American children and young adults, and the group of pedestrians most in jeopardy is seniors.” As a way of beginning to deal with these problems Durning proposes a simple public policy solution: reduce the regulatory barriers that can make it difficult for municipalities to lower speed limits in critical areas.

August 12, 2011

Oregon Auto Accident Near Seaside Hospitalizes Six

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A near head-on Oregon car accident involving a van and a ambulance led to the hospitalization of six people – one of whom was a patient being transported in the ambulance at the time of the crash, according to The Oregonian.

The newspaper reports that the crash took place near the town of Seaside, Oregon on US-101. The ambulance was headed south in the early hours of the morning “when an oncoming van crossed the centerline.” All six people involved in the Oregon van accident wound up being treated in area hospitals: the driver of the ambulance, the patient in the back and a paramedic who was tending to her, as well as the driver of the van, an adult passenger in the front seat and a five-year-old who was riding in a child seat in the back.

Injuries to the most vulnerable victims – the child and the elderly ambulance patient – were not severe, the paper reports. The van driver and her passenger were the most seriously injured, though their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening, according to the newspaper’s account.

August 8, 2011

Portland Bike Accident Lands Joey Harrington in Intensive Care

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A Portland bike and car crash that could have been a lot worse landed Joey Harrington, the former University of Oregon and NFL quarterback, in the hospital last week with serious, though not life-threatening, injuries. Harrington spent a day in intensive care following the Oregon bike accident according to Fox News.

The Oregonian, citing the Portland police, reports that in the early evening Harrington was biking “westbound on Foster Street when a motorist heading westbound struck Harrington’s rear bicycle wheel.” Harington was wearing a helmet – a fact that his father, speaking to Fox, said probably spared him far more significant injuries. According to The Oregonian the driver of the SUV that struck Harrington remained at the scene of the accident and was later cited by police for “following too close.”

When cars – particularly SUV’s – come into contact with a bicycle on the road the results are almost never good for the cyclist. This is especially important to remember because drivers of larger cars can lose track of just how close they are tracking a cyclist if they do not pay close attention.