Washington DC Injury Lawyer Blog

Social Media Technology Can Help Establish Liability in Accident Cases

September 15, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

A bike ride on the San Francisco peninsula during the 4th of July weekend turned disastrous for New York Times writer John Markoff when he crashed on a downhill at over 30 miles per hour. Paramedics took him to the hospital, where he found that he had a 20-minute gap in his memory surrounding the crash. He could not remember the circumstances of the crash at all, despite physical evidence such as road rash on his hands and a deep skid mark on his helmet.

Markoff relates the story of Ryan Sabga, a bike racer, who was hit by a car in Denver in 2010. The driver of the car claimed she did not think she had hit him, and police concluded that there was not enough evidence to issue a citation to the driver. Sabga was able to use data from the GPS device to establish where he was at the time of the accident, and to demonstrate exactly how the car hit him (including a spike in his heart rate at the moment of impact). Although police still did not want to pursue the case, this evidence was enough to get the driver’s insurance company to accept responsibility.

Markoff similarly used his GPS device to reconstruct his bike ride and figure out what had happened to him. Both Sabga and Markoff used a Garmin GPS device that recorded location, speed, and other information, and allowed the option of uploading data to a web service where it could be shared with other users.

Forbes columnist Kashmir Hill notes that an increasing number of people use devices like a Garmin GPS to record data about their daily lives and often share that information through social media. Widespread use of such technology is often known as “the Quantified Self” or “self-tracking.” While such recording and sharing can serve any number of useful purposes such as allowing support for fitness plans or tracking health conditions, it can also be useful for accident victims. This applies to accident victims who may use their own data, much like Markoff and Sabga, to determine what happened, or to those who may obtain data from another party to establish liability or challenge a conflicting description of an accident.

Social media information is the subject of a growing number of discovery requests in litigation. Courts, while often slow to adapt to new and quickly-changing technologies, are beginning to understand the importance and ubiquity of social media, and are allowing discovery of personal social media information that is relevant to the case at hand. Data collected by “self-tracking” technologies, particularly those shared on popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, are undoubtedly relevant in establishing the circumstances of an accident. This information can cut both ways. Information that could prove liability in a personal injury matter could also disprove a claimant’s account and clear a defendant of liability. Either way, this segment of social media technology, when used by people involved in accidents, is an invaluable fact-finding tool.

Safety Recalls of RV’s in Washington DC

September 6, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Recalls have been issued in the Washington, DC area for recreational vehicles from four different manufacturers: Spartan Chassis, Navistar, Dutchmen Manufacturing, and Winnebago Industries. The reasons for the recalls include problems with the exhaust system, defective headlight fuses, faulty ventilation, and possible fuel or propane leaks. Any of these conditions could severely impact the operation of the RV and threaten the safety, or even the lives, of drivers, passengers, and others on the road. Dangers include electrical failures, fires, and even carbon monoxide poisoning. RV owners should review the recall information carefully to see if their vehicles are affected.

An RV can be a great source of adventure and recreation, but RV’s also carry their own unique risks. RV’s are different from other automobiles: obviously they are larger and heavier, and they handle differently than other vehicles on the road. Automatic transmission and power steering may be standard features of today’s RV’s, but they require care and attention. An inexperienced driver should take care when operating an RV and take the time to learn how to operate the vehicle safely.

AllState recently ranked America’s 200 largest cities based on frequency of car collisions, ranking Washington, DC 193rd out of 200. Auto accidents are a serious problem. Numerous accidents in the Washington, DC area and elsewhere have involved RV’s. The past month has been an unusually dangerous one on DC-area roads, with multiple serious accidents and fatalities, so the news of the RV recalls is critical for driving safety.

If an RV is involved in an accident due to a defect in the vehicle’s design, construction, or marketing, the manufacturer may be liable for damages caused by the defect under the theory of products liability. A design defect is one where the product may work, but is dangerous to use because of an error or omission that occurred before the product was ever built. A construction or manufacturing defect most likely happened when the product was assembled or produced, and may cause the product not to function correctly. A marketing defect involves incorrect or insufficient instructions or guidance on how to use the product safely, or a failure to warn consumers about some dangerous characteristic of the product. The defects noted in the RV recall appear to be design or manufacturing defects.

An injured person making a claim of products liability may recover damages due to product defects for property damage, medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Products liability is often a matter of strict liability, meaning that a manufacturer may be liable for damages even if it did not know of the defect. In claiming products liability, an injured person should look at the manufacturer of the product as well as any distributors and retailers responsible for marketing the product.

Washington DC Defective Medical Device Cases: Surgical Mesh Can Cause Serious Side Effects

August 31, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The US Food and Drug Administration is proposing that surgical mesh products be subject to tougher regulations. The mesh products, which are placed in the vagina to treat pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence, can cause serious injuries. In an update to its 2008 advisory warning that transvaginal mesh products can serious complication, last month the federal agency announced that these complications are not rare.

If you or someone you love has experienced bleeding, organ perforation, infection, urinary issues, and severe pain after undergoing a transvaginal mesh procedure, you may have reason for filing a Washington DC products liability case against the manufacture of the surgical mesh products. These medical devices are currently manufactured by about nine companies, including Boston Scientific Corp. and Johnson & Johnson.

Now that the FDA believes that the severity and rate of injuries related to surgical mesh to treat POP repair are serious enough to raise questions about the safety of these medical devices, the federal agency is proposing that new mesh products go through a premarket review process. This would require companies to conduct studies examining a product’s effectiveness and safety before it is approved. Right now, mesh products are subject to the 510(k) process, which is less rigorous.

According to consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, of the almost 300,000 women who underwent surgery for pelvic organ prolapse in 2010, nearly 67,500 women underwent procedures involving a mesh product that was implanted in their vaginas. From these transvaginal procedures, federal regulators received 1,503 reports of complications, such as mesh implant erosion and pelvic organ injuries. Also, surgical mesh-related complications may require a woman to undergo more surgeries, which can place her at risk of additional complications and decrease her quality of life.

Our Washington DC personal injury lawyers represent clients that have sustained injury, illness, infection, or died because the medical device they used proved unsafe, dangerous, defective, and/or worsened their condition or health.

Public Citizen calls for a ban of surgical mesh devices, NJ.com, August 25, 2011
FDA Planning Tougher Regulations For Surgical Mesh, The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2011

Related Web Resources:

FDA

Pelvic Organ Prolapse, Web MD
Stress urinary incontinence, NIH

More Blog Posts:
Are Some Children Undergoing Unnecessary CT Scans?, Washington DC Injury Lawyer Blog, May 11, 2011
Dangerous Medical Device?: Woman Files Cold Therapy Lawsuit Against DeRoyal Industries Alleging Tissue Damage, Maryland Accident Law Blog, June 18, 2011
US Lawmakers Seek to Reinstate Right to Sue Medical Device Makers for Personal Injury and Wrongful Death, Maryland Accident Law Blog, February 19, 2009

NHTSA Rejects Petition Calling for Safety Belts on School Buses

August 25, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Our Washington DC personal injury law firm represents children and adults injured in motor vehicle crashes. Unfortunately, DC school bus accidents can be a cause of serious injury to kids—especially because there is no law requiring that these large vehicles be outfitted with seat belts. This means that during a school bus collision, kids on a bus don’t have anything to keep them securely tethered to their seats. As a result, head injuries, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injuries, and other debilitating injuries are more likely to occur during a crash.

The NHTSA has just turned down a petition calling for a federal law requiring that all school buses come with seat belts. The National Coalition for School Bus Safety and the Center for Auto Safety were the leaders of the petition.

According to the Washington Post, In the Federal Register NHTSA said it considered big school buses among some of the safest vehicles in the country. Their fatality rate is six times less than that of passenger cars. NHTSA also said that of the approximately 19 school kids who die annually in bus crashes, 14 are killed in school bus loading zones—compared to the five that die while on the bus. The federal agency argued that since fatalities in a school bus usually will have occurred because of impact with an object or another auto, seat belts would likely not prevent this. Cost, decrease in the number of passengers, and smaller fleets were also cited as a factor for why mandating seat belts on large school buses did not make sense.

School bus safety coalition member Arthur Yeager, however, noted that it was “hypocrisy” for NHTSA to push for seat belts in almost all other vehicles under their control but not for school buses. (Smaller school buses weighing less than 10K are required to have shoulder-lap belts for their seats.)

Regardless of whether or not a school bus is equipped with seat belts, depending on who caused the crash and the severity of your child’s injuries, you may have reason to seek damages from the school bus operator, the school, the bus manufacturer, the district, the motorist of another car that was involved, and/or the entity in charge of maintaining the road or traffic signals where the accident happened.

Feds reject request to require seat belts on school buses, Washington Post, August 25, 2011
NHTSA Turns Down Petition for Lap/Shoulder Belt Requirement on Large School Buses, School Transportation News, August 25, 2011
Related Web Resources:

Read the petition for rulemaking (PDF)

The Federal Register

Center for Auto Safety

National Coalition for School Bus Safety

More Blog Posts:
Preventing the Non-Crash Auto Deaths of Kids, Washington DC Injury Lawyer Blog, July 26, 201
Tour Bus From Washington DC Involved in Deadly Crash May Have Been Derailed by Tire Blowout, Washington DC Injury Lawyer Blog, July 18, 2011
Frederick County, School Bus Crash Involving Injuries Went Unreported, Say Maryland State Police, Maryland Accident Law Blog, October 28, 2010

Washington DC Medical Malpractice: Most Doctors Will Be Sued by Age 65, Says New England Journal of Medicine

August 19, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

According to an article published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, most doctors will face at least one medical malpractice lawsuit as a defendant by the time they turn 65. Their findings come from looking at the files of a national malpractice insurance carrier.

The five most-sued specialties, with its doctors having a 99% chance of being sued by the time they celebrate their 65th birthday, are:

• Thoracic cardiovascular surgery

Washington Area Car Crashes Kill at Least Eight In Less than 48 Hours

August 13, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Over the last two days, at least people have been killed in Washington area motor vehicle crashes. AAA says that we currently in the deadliest driving period of the year through the Labor Day weekend. Part of this can be attributed to there being so many people on the road driving long distances because its the summer holiday season. Unfortunately, reports AAA, some motorists that are in vacation mode may forget to be as vigilant while driving, which can lead to fatal DC car crashes.

On 4am on Friday, a driver of a 2004 Mercedes-Benz lost control of the vehicle in a Southeast Washington car crash. The auto hit a utility pole before bursting into flames. The bodies of two juveniles were retrieved from the vehicle. That same day, a St. Mary’s County motorcycle crash claimed the life of Devin Sweeting, who sustained multiple pelvic fractures when his bike left Route 5, hit a cement culvert, skidded on its side for approximately 170 feet, before hitting a utility pole. Sweeting was pronounced dead at a Baltimore hospital.

Several hours later, two people died in a Montgomery County car crash that also involved the vehicle leaving the road and bursting into flames. Not long after that an adult and a teenager were killed in a Prince George’s County SUV accident on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. The vehicle went off the road before crashing into a large tree. Five other kids and one adult were transported to local hospitals in critical condition. One of these children, a 3-month-old baby, was later pronounced dead.

Washington DC Traumatic Brain Injuries May Up the Risk of Stroke and Dementia

August 10, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Our DC injury lawyers are familiar with the devastation that suffering from a traumatic brain injury can wreak on the lives of victims and their families. Now, here is more disturbing news about some of the serious side effects that can come with a Washington DC TBI.

University of California-San Francisco scientists, who studied nearly 300,000 older war veterans (age 55 and older), found the having a brain injury can more than double a person’s risk of developing dementia. According to lead researcher and San Francisco VA Medical’s Center Memory Disorders Program’s director Kristine Yaffe, veterans with a TBI diagnosis had a 15% chance of developing dementia, while the risk for those who never had a TBI was 7%.

Obviously, you don’t have to go to war to develop a traumatic brain injury. Fall accidents and car crashes are two of the most common causes of TBIs. In many instances, these types of accidents occur because someone else was negligent, which is where an experienced Washington DC traumatic brain injury law firm can step in to help you.

Unfortunately, a TBI doesn’t just up someone’s dementia risk, but Taiwanese researchers report that having a TBI can increase the patient’s chances of developing a stroke by up to 10-fold. It doesn’t help that complications from a TBI, such as cardiac injuries, ruptured arteries, and blood clotting disturbances, can also increase the chances of stroke.

The researchers compared data between 69,597 patients without TBIs and 23,199 patients with TBIs. They found that within the first three months, TBI patients had a 2.91% risk of stroke while the risk for those who didn’t have a brain injury was .3%. That’s a 10-fold difference. However, with time, the risk of stroke for the TBI patient did go down. Although his/her risk of stroke was 4.6 times more one year after the injury, after five years it had gone down to 2.3 times more than for patients who never had a TBI.

A fractured skull, however, did up the chance of stroke by 20 times for patients with brain injuries compares to those without this type of fracture. The chances of brain bleed, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, diabetes, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation was also greater for TBI patients. This study can be found in Stroke’s July 28 online edition.

Proving that you have a brain injury and that it occurred in an accident caused by another party’s negligence can be incredibly challenging, which is why you want to make sure you are represented by experienced DC traumatic brain injury lawyers.

Stroke Risk Spikes After Brain Injury, The State Column, July 31, 2011
Traumatic brain injury doubles risk of later dementia, USA Today, July 18, 2011

Related Web Resources:
Traumatic Brain Injury, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dementia, Medicine.net
National Stroke Association

More Blog Posts:
Many Brain Injury Patients Suffer from Pseudobulbar Affect, Says Survey, Washington DC Injury Lawyer Blog, January 6, 2011
Maryland TBI: Call a Concussion a Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Says Researchers, Maryland Accident Law Blog, January 23, 2010
Natasha Richardson Did Not Receive Medical Attention Until Four Hours After Ski Fall Accident that Resulted in Fatal Traumatic Brain Injury, Maryland Accident Law Blog, March 20, 2009

Kathy Wone Settles $20M Washington DC Wrongful Death Lawsuit with Three Men Linked to Her Husband’s Dupont Circle Murder

August 3, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Over the past year, our Washington DC personal injury law firm has written about the civil lawsuit between Kathy Wone and Victory Zaborsky, Dylan Ward, and Joseph Price. Wone is the widow of Robert Wone, a Radio Free Asia attorney who was fatally stabbed at the DuPont Circle residence shared by the three men in August 2006.

Although the Zabrosky, Ward, and Price were acquitted of charges of obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and evidence tampering related to Robert’s death (they have always maintained that he was killed by an unknown intruder), Kathy went ahead and pursued the men in civil court. Now, she and the three men have settled the DC wrongful death lawsuit against them for $20 million.

The outcome of this civil case is an example of how even if an acquittal is the outcome of the criminal case, you can still hold the parties that you believe are liable for your loved one’s death in civil court. Granted, a jury might have awarded Kathy a larger monetary sum if she had decided to go to court. However, in an interview that she gave this week Kathy explained that even if the case went to trial, she didn’t think more information would be shed on what happened to her husband (the three defendants had refused to answer a lot of questions that were posed during deposition). She has also decided to start focusing her energy on moving forward with her life and using some of the settlement money to go toward the causes that her husband believed in.

Washington DC Medical Malpractice: Surgeon’s Estate Must Pay $1M Share of Settlement

July 31, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

An appeals court isn’t letting a deceased doctor off the hook for his share of a Washington DC medical malpractice settlement owed to a woman who sustained serious injuries because anticoagulants were improperly administered to her. Per the court, the estate of Ronald Kurstin, MD must pay $1 million of a $2 million settlement.

The plaintiff, Rosalee Blue, was administered the heparin compound Lovenox during an abdominal hernia repair procedure at Sibley Memorial Hospital on April 2004. It was Dr. Kurstin who directed anesthesiologist Dr. John Lordan to give Blue the anticoagulant.

Unfortunately, the medication caused her to experience spinal bleeding and suffer permanent injuries, including impaired mobility and bladder and bowel dysfunction. Blue also continues to experience chronic pain.

Preventing the Non-Crash Auto Deaths of Kids

July 26, 2011 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

While motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of child fatalities, our Washington DC personal injury lawyers want to warn you of other auto vehicle-related dangers that could put a kid at serious risk. Here are a few of these safety hazards, as identified by the National Highway Safety Administration:

Backover accidents: This usually involves a vehicle backing out of a driveway or parking lot and the driver not realizing that there is a child behind the auto. Backover accidents can prove fatal. Because the vehicle is being operated in reverse, the motorist must take extra precautions to check all viewing mirrors, footage from the backup camera, and perhaps even physically look back to make sure there is no one there.

Power windows: Power windows can entrap a young child’s hands, fingers, feet, neck, or head. It is important to make sure that power window switches have been locked. Otherwise, a child can accidentally activate the switch.