South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

Joyce Burnside had backed as far away as she could, crab walking down her hillside lawn on her hands, but her tumbling riding lawnmower and its whirling blade kept following her — 30 feet down the slope until a tree blocked her from going any further.

The blades of the out-of-control Murray mower should have stopped within five seconds after Burnside jumped from the seat. But this defective mower didn’t stop until it tore into Burnside.

“I got off the mower and it rolled over and over and it never shut off,” the 58-year-old Lincoln County resident said Friday about the May 2002 incident.

Burnside tried to protect herself by throwing up her left arm, but the twirling mower blade chopped off all but her thumb and forefinger, while cutting her elbow and crushing the bone.

“The mower felt like it was tipping over, so I panicked,” and jumped off, she said. “It rolled completely at least three times that we know of.”

After tearing through her arm, the blade finally stopped.

That horrifying incident was only the beginning of the real tale of terror that Burnside has lived through since.

“Mrs. Burnside went through 18 operations, which included trying to put a cadaver elbow joint in place,” said Charleston lawyer Jeff Jones, who with Jack Kessler served as co-counsels in the suit Burnside would file against Wal-Mart. “They were all unsuccessful and, right now, she has no elbow and only the forefinger and thumb on her left hand.”

“I have very limited use,” Burnside said of her injured arm. “I can’t put my arm over my head.”

“There’s no mobility. There’s nothing there,” Jones said.

Murray, the lawnmower’s manufacturer, had filed for bankruptcy and gone out of business, but Wal-Mart, which sold the riding mower to Burnside, had continued to sell the defective product. So Jones and Kessler filed a federal lawsuit against the giant discount retailer.

“Wal-Mart admitted [at the trial] they were the ones that would be responsible,” Jones said.

During the trial, Jones and Kessler hammered home mower standards stipulated by the American National Standard Institute that allow for the engine to continue running for only five seconds after a person gets off the machine.

Following a three-day trial in May, jurors agreed. They made an award of $2.45 million, but stipulated that Burnside was 25 percent responsible, giving her $1.856 million.

Wal-Mart appealed and following mediation this month at the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., agreed to pay Burnside $1.8 million.

“Let’s face it,” she said, “nothing’s going to replace what I’ve been through.”

Luckily, her son was nearby their Upper Mud River Road residence when the incident occurred. Because of that, Burnside quickly got medical help. But she also quickly found out one of the real perils of lawnmower incidents: infection.

“They said mowers are the worst,” Burnside said, referring to the blades, which can be covered in grass, dirt, weeds and grease.

“It kept getting infected, so they finally ended up taking the elbow out,” she said.

About a year after that, her Louisville, Ky., surgeon called and recommended replacing her elbow with a cadaver’s. Despite a spate of surgeries already, Burnside agreed to another.

But infection and surgical problems loomed ahead.

“I almost died that time because there was an artery that was severed and I was in ICU for two days,” she said.

While her doctor has recommended trying elbow surgery again, Burnside is leery of any more surgery, fearing additional health problems.

“It would have to be almost a guarantee [of a successful outcome],” she said.

Instead, she plans to have an addition to her house built and use the remaining money to help get things — such as mowing her grass — done by others.

“It’ll help me get around,” she said.

LEXINGTON, Ky.-The taxi route for commercial jets using Blue Grass Airport’s main runway was altered a week before Comair Flight 5191 took the wrong runway and crashed, killing all but one of the 50 people aboard, the airport’s director said Monday.Both the old and new taxiways cross over the shorter general aviation runway where the commuter jet tried to take off early Sunday, Blue Grass Airport Executive Director Michael Gobb told The Associated Press.

The runway repaving was completed late on the previous Sunday, Gobb said. It wasn’t clear if the Comair pilots aboard Flight 5191 had been there since the change. Comair operates that regular 6 a.m. weekend flight to Atlanta from Lexington, but another commuter airline takes over that commute during the week.

“It’s slightly different than it used to be,” said Charlie Monette, president of Aero-Tech flight school based at the airport. “Could there have been some confusion associated with that? That’s certainly a possibility.”

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Conversations between the plane’s cockpit and the person staffing the control tower before dawn Sunday morning mentioned only the airport’s main commercial strip, Runway 22, NTSB member Debbie Hersman said earlier Monday.

Somehow, the commuter jet ended up on the airport’s other runway instead, Runway 26 - a cracked surface meant for small planes that was much too short for Comair’s twin-engine jet.

What followed was the worst U.S. plane disaster since 2001.

The pilots tried to lift off, but the plane clipped trees, then quickly crashed in a field and burst into flames, killing everyone aboard but a critically injured co-pilot who was pulled from the cracked cockpit.

LOS ANGELES-Federal safety investigators on Monday urged more stringent inspections of turbine disks in certain General Electric jet engines following a failure that hurtled damaging fragments and ignited a fire during a maintenance ground test of an American Airlines Boeing 767 at Los Angeles International Airport in June.The National Transportation Safety Board gave the Federal Aviation Administration five recommendations - two marked “urgent” - concerning the high-pressure turbine stage 1 disks on General Electric CF6-80A engines.

“We were fortunate that there were no fatalities or injuries in this serious incident,” said NTSB Chairman Mark V. Rosenker said in a statement issued in Washington, D.C. “We need to take every precaution and move rapidly to avoid something similar happening again.”

The June 2 accident was an “uncontained failure” of the disk in the engine on the airliner’s left wing. Three maintenance workers were aboard the craft and another was on the ground at the time.

Engine parts hurtled into the 767’s left and right wing fuel tanks, and the leaking fuel ignited, the NTSB said.

Disk pieces penetrated the fuselage and the engine on the right wing, and one piece was found near an airport perimeter fence about 2,500 feet from the jet. The NTSB said the piece crossed two of the airport’s active runways and taxiways.

A metallurgical examination found that the disk ruptured because of a fracture that originated at a small dent, and that there were also two similar cracks on the disk, the board said.

The board said the disk had accumulated 9,186 cycles in service, totaling 48,429 hours, with 5,814 cycles remaining for the disk’s life limit of 15,000 cycles.

After the June 2 incident, the FAA issued an airworthiness directive with a schedule for removal, inspection and reworking of the disks beginning at 6,900 cycles.

The NTSB’s urgent proposal calls for the FAA to require immediate removal of the disks for maintenance if they have been in service for more than 3,000 cycles since new or since the last inspection.

“This significantly more stringent standard would not permit disks to remain in service without inspection beyond the earliest known number of cycles at which cracks have been detected or failure has occurred,” the board said.

Drug manufacturers of stimulant medications used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are following the Food and Drug Administration’s request to add stronger warning labels notifying consumers of the serious risks linked to the drugs.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC have become the most recent company to add the new safety labels to their stimulant drug Dexedrine. The new warning will highlight the possible risks of cardiovascular problems and psychiatric events that have been associated with the use of some ADHD medications.

Similar warnings were added to the labels for other drugs in the same category including Shire PLC’s Adderall and Johnson & Johnson’s Concerta.

According to a spokeswoman for the FDA, the agency asked drug manufacturers to strengthen their warnings to address the serious risks of cardiovascular and psychiatric effects. However, they do not believe the risks “justify a black box,” the strongest possible label warning.

The new drug labels on ADHD stimulant medications warn that there are some reports of sudden death in children using the drugs who have cardiac abnormalities or other severe heart complications.

Furthermore, the labels states that heart attacks, strokes, and sudden death have also been reported in some adults taking ADHD drugs. Other serious side effects listed on the new drug labels say “psychotic or manic symptoms, e.g., hallucinations, delusional thinking, or mania in children and adolescents without prior history” of these problems “can be caused by stimulants at usual doses.”

According to the drug label, all patients should have a medical background check for signs of heart conditions that could pose severe risks when taking ADHD drugs.

WASHINGTON | Consumers in Kansas City and elsewhere have settled a lawsuit alleging that two soft drink makers sold products that contained excessive amounts of cancer-causing benzene.

The companies, In Zone Brands Inc. of Austell, Ga., and TalkingRain Beverage Co. Inc of Preston, Wash., have already reformulated certain products to eliminate the alleged presence of benzene, according to the settlement.

The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Besides consumers in Kansas and Washington D.C., consumers — all parents — also filed lawsuits in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Florida.

“It’s progress,” said Neil Sader, a Kansas City attorney who represented a local plaintiff. “There’s no reason for these problems not to be addressed.”

His client, MeLisa Gonzalez, a Blue Valley School District teacher, said last spring that she sued the companies to make sure her children were drinking safe products.

Attorneys for In Zone and TalkingRain could not be reached for comment.

The American Beverage Association, the industry trade group, has insisted that soft drinks are safe.

The beverages in the settlement are TalkingRain’s pink grapefruit-flavored “sparkling spring water with juice” and In Zone’s “Bellywashers” containing “2/3 less sugar.” “Bellywashers” come in cartoon character-shaped containers.

Manufacturers don’t add benzene to their soft drinks. It can form when vitamin C and either sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate — common ingredients in many soft drinks — combine and the products are exposed to heat and light.

The Food and Drug Administration tested more than 100 soft drinks for benzene over the winter and spring after private tests showed that some contained higher than allowable amounts. The FDA found only a few that exceeded the federal standard.

A FDA spokesman could not be reached for comment.

In March 2001, plaintiff’s decedent James Fairhurst, 64, retired Air Force sergeant, went to the Eglin Air Force Base hospital, complaining about a urinary tract infection and back pain. Fairhurst had suffered from these infections since the early 1990s that were often accompanied by back pain. Fairhurst was treated at Eglin through May. When an intravenous pyelogram–an X-ray of the urinary tract–came back with abnormal readings, Fairhurst had CT scans performed at a local civilian hospital on May 23. The CT scan returned a result consistent with multiple myeloma, a plasma cell cancer. It’s incurable, but there are treatments available that extend and improve the quality of life.Although the civilian hospital radiologist immediately reported the CT scan results to Eglin, nothing was done to treat Fairhurst’s cancer. Fairhurst’s spine fractured on July 23 because diffuse osteoporosis can be one of the outcomes of multiple myeloma. Treatment for the multiple myeloma wasn’t started until August 2001.  After his spine fractured, Fairhurst was no longer ambulatory. After two courses of chemotherapy, Fairhurst died on Oct. 16 from an uncontrolled infection which is a common cause of death in multiple myeloma patients. Palarica Fairhurst, individually and as personal representative of her husband’s estate, sued the United States for medical malpractice, seeking wrongful death damages. The estate’s lawyer argued that Fairhurst died prematurely and suffered terribly because of the Eglin physician’s failure to diagnose cancer. The defendant admitted liability and the case was tried on damages only. Fairhurst died from cancer on Oct. 16. Plaintiff’s expert oncologist, Richard Kosierowski, testified that if aggressively treated, multiple myeloma patients have a median life expectancy of 2.5 to 3 years. Kosierowski also opined that if Fairhurst’s cancer had been treated immediately with radiation therapy after the CT scan results were reported in May, then his spine wouldn’t have fractured. Fairhurst’s lack of mobility, as well as the delay in treating the cancer, made him more susceptible to the infection that killed him, according to Kosierowski. Plaintiff sought damages for her own and her husband’s pain and suffering and for loss of consortium. Defense oncology expert Charles Goldman testified that Fairhurst’s myeloma was particularly aggressive and that earlier diagnosis would not have changed how fast his disease progressed.   Judge Richard Smoak ruled that multiple myeloma is always fatal, therefore, plaintiff’s counsel couldn’t show that Fairhurst would have survived if his cancer had been timely diagnosed and ruled that his wife couldn’t recover for her own pain and suffering under the state’s wrongful death statute. However, the judge also held that she could recover for loss of consortium and for Fairhurst’s pain and suffering because of his misdiagnosis and awarded the plaintiff $500,000.

A.P. NAPLES — A jury has awarded a Lee County woman $8.25 million after she lost both her breasts in a botched plastic surgery, her attorney said.Christy Allis was awarded the money this week as part of a medical malpractice lawsuit, according to her attorney Jeff Garvin.Allis was 28 when she had a breast lift and augmentation in 2003 by Naples surgeon Dr. Luciano Boemi. During the surgery at the Bonita Bay Surgical Center in Bonita Springs, blood supply to Allis was cut off, resulting in her breasts turning black and forming a hard, dry tissue, Garvin said.Thirteen surgeries were needed to repair open wounds and try to reshape some of the remaining tissue, he said.The amount of the award was appropriate “given the amount of suffering Christy has endured,” Garvin said.

An attorney for Boemi said there were five issues raised in the lawsuit and that four of tem were decided in the doctor’s favor. “A past president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons testified in full support of Dr. Boemi,” Ted Copeland said.