Oregon Injury Lawyer Blog

February 27, 2011

Portland Burn Survivors Meet to Share Strength in the Wake of Tragedy

A recent profile in The Oregonian details the struggles, and mutual support, of Portland burn victims, offering a reminder of how devastating this kind of injury can be. The article focuses on Portland Burn Survivors, Inc. and a related group, Burn Concern. The latter is organized by Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, Oregon’s only hospital with a full-scale burn unit.

The paper notes that the prospects for Oregon burn victims have changed substantially over the last generation. “Until about 30 years ago, survival of a bad burn meant constant pain and medical complications that usually led to swift death,” the article states. Advances in medical technology have increased survival rates, and made life after a burn more tolerable for many in physical terms, but have done little to alter the stigma society often attaches to those dealing with a disfiguring injury.

Burns, of course, can happen for any number of reasons. The survivors profiled by The Oregonian received their injuries in vastly different ways – ranging from a camping accident to a car crash. One was severely injured as a 13 year old by an outdoor garbage fire.

February 24, 2011

Salem Car Crash Hospitalizes Three

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A six-car pile up blocked traffic on Interstate 5 last week and police say a blown tire may have been what set the incident in motion, according to The Oregonian. The dangerous Oregon car accident involved a vehicle jumping the median into on-coming traffic.

The newspaper, quoting Oregon State Police sources, reports that an SUV was traveling north on I-5 at mid-afternoon when the driver “lost control at about 2:30 p.m., crossing a grass median and slamming into an oncoming car just north of Portland Road NE.”

The attribution of the accident to a blow-out remained speculative at the time the paper went to press. The results of the accident were not: the SUV hit one oncoming car head-on. Four other vehicles swerving to avoid the main collision wound up hitting each other. Surprisingly, for so large an accident, only three people from the six vehicles were hospitalized, and only one of those injuries was reported to be serious, according to the newspaper.

February 22, 2011

Case of Injured Child Raises Liability Questions in Theme Parks

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A Florida lawsuit concerning a serious burn suffered by a four year old boy while visiting Disney World raises questions every parent should be concerned about regarding safety and possible injuries to children at theme parks and other recreational areas.

Contrary to what one might think, the case involves food safety – not the safety of amusement park rides (arguably the first thing many parents worry about when visiting a theme park). According to an account of the incident published in USA Today, the boy was severely burned while having dinner in a restaurant at Disney’s Magic Kingdom resort near Orlando “when a paper cup of scalding nacho cheese splashed on his face after he’d grabbed a food tray to keep from falling out of an unsteady chair.” A picture accompanying the newspaper report shows a small child with horrific burns disfiguring his face.

Some commentators have compared this to the famous McDonald’s hot coffee case of the mid-90s. But even if you were among those who thought the coffee case excessive it is important to understand that there are key difference between that case and this one. Aside from the obvious factor that a child is involved, it is (or ought to be) clear that customers have different expectations from different products. Coffee is intended to be consumed hot. Nachos, especially the processed kind one finds at an amusement park or a ballgame, are generally warm, at best. One does not expect the goopy cheese sauce to be cold – but no reasonable customer is expecting it to be scalding hot either.

February 20, 2011

House Bill Seeks to Curtail Oregonians Rights in Medical Malpractice Cases

by Matthew D. Kaplan

With little public notice this week the House Judiciary Committee in Washington DC sent to the floor a proposed law that, if enacted, will dramatically curtail the right of Oregonians to receive just compensation in medical malpractice lawsuits. As laid out in the official summary of the legislation (click here to read the full summary at the legislative-tracking website Thomas.gov) the so-called Help Efficient, Accessible, Low Cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2011 would shorten the statute of limitations for most medical malpractice cases and make it much more difficult to win punitive damages in an Oregon medical malpractice case. Any defendant who managed to win in court despite these new rules would find that the law also places severe limits on the size of the damages a court can award.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA), was first introduced late last month as HR 5 (the Senate version of the legislation, S 218, is sponsored by Nevada Republican John Ensign). It was hustled through the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month and passed out of committee on a voice vote – a stunningly fast timeline for such potentially momentous legislation.

Two of the most telling aspects of HR 5 are clauses that would shield the pharmaceutical and medical device industries from responsibility for their actions while limiting attorney’s fees in medical malpractice and medical wrongful death suits to a level that may discourage many attorneys from taking on such cases.

February 19, 2011

Oregon Brain Injuries Among Teens Continue to be a Serious Issue

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A recent Oregonian story on young athletes and Oregon brain injuries focuses not only on the potential consequences of head injuries here in Oregon and elsewhere, but spotlights how seemingly minor incidents can lead to TBI. As the article notes: “Despite national campaigns and state laws to increase awareness about teenagers and concussions, victims… still struggle to find effective relief.”

The article focuses on a high school basketball player who wound up missing nearly two years on the court after “a stray ball bopped her on the head.” The incident seemed relatively minor at the time, but coming, as it did, shortly after another head injury (“a sharp knee to the head during a spirit-building game of tunnel tag,” as The Oregonian puts it) it was enough not only to sideline the teenage girl’s basketball career but also to launch her into a two year odyssey of headaches, lowered cognitive function and repeated rounds of treatment.

The girl, now 17, is finally back in school and was recently able to return to her high school basketball team, the paper reports. But her experience is a reminder of how difficult diagnosis and treatment of Portland brain injuries often is where younger athletes are concerned. This is especially worrisome since, as the paper notes, a CDC study found that “adolescents are more likely than adults to get a concussion and take longer to recover.”

February 15, 2011

Portland Hospital Death Raises More Questions Than Answers

by Matthew D. Kaplan

On its surface it is an Oregon wrongful death story so unbelievable it reads like the plot of a prime time police drama: a man feeling ill and heading for the hospital suffers a heart attack, crashes his car into a wall inside the hospital’s parking structure only steps from the emergency room entrance… then lies there, unconscious, for 20 minutes before anyone notices him. When summoned to the scene, the police attempt to revive him while sending another officer running into the emergency room for help – only to be told that hospital protocol requires the police to call 911 first and then wait for a dispatcher to give a formal order for the hospital’s own ambulance to pick up a patient lying only steps from the emergency room door, according to an account published in The Oregonian.

The heart attack victim, Birgilio Marin-Fuentes eventually made it into the emergency room, but was pronounced dead a short time later. The week since this Oregon hospital death has been marked by finger pointing between the police and the hospital, Portland Adventist, a threat from a U.S. congressman to investigate the hospital and seeming incomprehension throughout the city at how bureaucracy could have gotten so badly in the way of what would seem to be simple common sense.

However this case is eventually resolved on a criminal level, it raises serious questions that may also need to be resolved in civil court, via a Portland wrongful death or Portland medical malpractice lawsuit. Even if there were compelling reasons to adhere to procedures designed to dispatch emergency care across town, rather than across the hospital’s own parking lot, one needs to ask, in turn, why the emergency protocols themselves were so rigid.

February 13, 2011

Driver in Fatal Portland Bus Crash Convicted in Multnomah Court

by Matthew D. Kaplan

The criminal phase of the trial of a Tri-Met driver responsible for what The Oregonian calls “the worst transit tragedy in modern Portland history” has reached a turning point. Earlier this month, Sandi Day was convicted on all six charges she faced stemming from last year’s fatal Portland bus crash.

According to the newspaper, the judge “ordered Day to pay more than $1000 in fines, perform 200 hours of community service and complete a traffic safety course.” She also faces the loss of her commercial driving license and possible additional fines if she does not “comply with her sentence within a year.” As I noted in a post early last summer, the accident has already led to changes in Tri-Met’s operating procedures.

Day drove her bus into five people last April as she executed an illegal left turn. According to The Oregonian, police testified at her trial that she kept driving for 2.5 seconds after hitting five pedestrians in a crosswalk at approximately 13 miles per hour. Two of the pedestrians were dragged beneath the bus and died. Three others were injured.

February 11, 2011

Could More Back-In Parking Reduce Oregon Car Accidents?

by Matthew D. Kaplan

An article just published by the online magazine Slate raises an intriguing question: is it safer to drive head-first into a parking spot, the way most Americans do? Or to back into it? The question is relevant because if there is strong data suggesting that backing into parking spaces is, by and large, safer that, in turn, would mean that we ought to begin looking at Oregon car accidents in different ways.

We all know, of course, that Portland car accidents can lead to any number of traumas: Oregon brain injuries, injuries to children, even wrongful death. Who among us has not had a near miss either when backing out of a parking space or when passing by (whether in a car or on foot) someone who is doing so without paying sufficient attention.

Though Slate notes that “parking lot crash statistics are a bit hazy,” it goes on to note: “a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in 2001 and 2002 found that 14 percent of all damage claims involved crashes in parking lots (some number of which must have involved vehicles moving in and out of spaces).” Further, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in a report to Congress last year estimated that “backover crashes,” as they are officially known, “cause at least 183 fatalities annually” as well as approximately 7000 injuries. The NHTSA is studying new rules that it hopes may lower these numbers by cutting the size of vehicle blind spots.

February 8, 2011

Burn Awareness Week Highlights Danger of Oregon Child Injuries

by Matthew D. Kaplan

February 6 to 12 is National Burn Awareness Week. Here in Portland, Safe Kids Oregon (a project of the Oregon Public Health Division) opens its website promoting burn awareness with a particularly startling fact related to injuries to Oregon children: a “young child’s skin is thinner than older children and adults, and their skin burns at lower temperatures and more deeply.”

As the site goes on to note there are numerous ways that burns can happen in and around the home. We are all aware, for example, of kitchen dangers: steam, open flames, burners that look cool when they are not, etc. And most people with small children are aware that they should block sockets and replace frayed cords to lessen the risk of electrical burns. It is worth remembering, however, that burns can happen anywhere in the home. Safe Kids Oregon’s Burn Awareness Week web page, for example, includes a very useful section on bathroom hazards.

As the website notes, “accidental childhood injury” is “the leading killer of children 14 and under.”

February 4, 2011

Legislature Considers the Issue of Distracted Cycling

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Do cyclists wearing headphones pose a danger equivalent to drivers using a handheld cellphone to talk or text? That is a question the Oregon legislature is poised to address during the current session.

Rep. Michael Schaufler (D-Happy Valley) has introduced a bill (HB 2602) that, according to the advocacy organization BikePortland “would create a new traffic violation for ‘unsafe operation of a bicycle’”. The offense would target anyone riding “a bicycle on a highway while wearing a listening device that is capable of receiving telephonic communication, radio broadcasts or recorded sounds.” Violations could lead to a fine of up to $90 – the same amount as violations of the Oregon distracted driving law. To judge from the coverage at BikePortland the reaction among local cyclists has been far from positive. A selection of comments posted on the blog of BikePortland publisher/editor Jonathan Maus is pretty much uniformly negative.

An interesting aspect of this legislation which has not been addressed in the media coverage, however, is the degree to which this attempt to cut down on Oregon bicycle accidents differs in fundamental philosophical ways from the existing, year-old, Oregon distracted driving ban.