South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

An Oregon women suffering from breast cancer after a radiologist incorrectly assessed her mammogram was awarded $5.7 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit.

The jury found the clinic that misdiagnosed Julie Joel’s cancer made a negligent error—a mistake that will cost the victim her life.

Case Details

In 2002, 58-year-old Joel went to the Oregon Clinic where a radiologist examined the results of her breast x-ray and assured her there were no abnormalities.

Two years later, Joel got a second opinion at another clinic and this time, the results weren’t so positive. Joel had advanced breast cancer.

Cancer Diagnosis

In many hospitals, two doctors are asked to analyze x-rays to determine whether or not the patient is afflicted with cancer. This is to prevent grave mistakes from occurring.

However, according to Joel, only one radiologist evaluated her mammogram and signed off on the results.

“In our system, when a mistake is made that causes tragic consequences, the person injured is entitled to fair compensation,” said Joel’s attorney Elden Rosenthal. “And the jury passed a fair verdict in this case.”

Joel will receive $754,052 for her economic losses including medical bills and lost income capacity and $5 million for pain and suffering.

She hopes that her case will lead hospitals to change their policies to require second opinions on test results.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to revive a $10.1 billion award against Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA, rejecting an appeal from smokers who said they were misled about the health risks of “light” cigarettes.The justices, without comment, today left intact an Illinois state court decision that threw out the case against Philip Morris, the nation’s largest cigarette maker.

The $10.1 billion award, which Philip Morris once said would bankrupt the company, was the third-largest trial judgment ever in a smoking case. Anti-smoking activists had hoped the verdict would be the first in a series of awards around the country against the industry over light cigarettes.

“It’s clearly the end of lights litigation in Illinois,” said David Adelman, a Morgan Stanley analyst who has an “overweight” rating on Altria. The rejection also will be “marginally helpful to the industry’s ongoing management of the other outstanding or potential lights cases.”

Altria shares rose 1 cent to $83.76 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading at 11:51 a.m. The company said in a statement that it will seek return of a $6 billion note it placed in an escrow account during the appeal.

In overturning the award last year, the Illinois Supreme Court said smokers couldn’t invoke a state consumer protection law because the Federal Trade Commission had endorsed the “light” and “low-tar” descriptions in settlements with other cigarette makers. Like many states, Illinois bars claims over actions “specifically authorized” by a government agency.

No Recourse

“The citizens of Illinois now have no effective recourse against Philip Morris for its fraud under Illinois deceptive- practice statutes,” the smokers argued in their appeal, filed in Washington.

Supreme Court intervention might have complicated New York- based Altria’s plan to spin off its Kraft Foods unit. On Nov. 16 Altria Chief Executive Officer Louis Camilleri said the company is ready to split off the food company, pointing to what he said was a waning risk of costly awards against the cigarette maker.

The Illinois court’s decision also blocked similar lawsuits in the state against Reynolds American Inc.’s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and other cigarette makers.

The tobacco industry is still defending a separate, nationwide class-action lawsuit on behalf of light cigarette smokers in federal court in New York. That suit, which invokes federal racketeering law, also raises questions about the legal force of the FTC settlements.

Class-Action Suit

The Illinois case was a class-action suit brought on behalf of an estimated 1.1 million smokers who bought Marlboro Lights or Cambridge Lights in the state over a 30-year period. The suit accused Philip Morris of designing its light cigarettes to maximize nicotine delivery to smokers while registering low nicotine levels on the machine tests required by the FTC.

Philip Morris urged the Supreme Court not to get involved in the Illinois case, saying the dispute concerned only the interpretation of a state statute and not a federal issue that might have warranted high court review.

The Illinois legislature and Illinois courts are free to interpret that state-law provision in whatever manner they wish, without regard to federal law,” Philip Morris argued.

The case is Price v. Philip Morris, 06-465.

A man who worked at a southwest Missouri group home with his wife was among 10 people killed in a fire that gutted the building, the state patrol said Tuesday.Rain fell on investigators working in the day-old ruins of the home for the mentally ill and elderly, where two dozen others, including the man’s wife, were injured in Monday’s blaze.

State and federal authorities were treating the fire at the Anderson Guest House as a crime but hadn’t ruled out the possibility of an accident.

“We’re not saying it is definitely a crime scene, but we are treating it as if it is and trying to determine if the fire was set by somebody who had a nefarious motive,” Gov. Matt Blunt said.

Authorities also were looking at possible links to a smaller fire at the facility Saturday morning, Assistant Fire Marshal Greg Carrell said. No one was injured in that fire.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol identified eight of the victims: Amy Brown, 37; Nathan Fisher, 52; Patricia Henson, 54; Brian Rudnick, 33; Don Schorzman, 57; Alta Lemons, 74; Isiah Joyce, 25; and Glen Taff, an employee whose age was not released.

The patrol withheld the names of the other two victims pending notification of relatives.

Inspectors from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which licenses the facility, found some deficiencies at the home in March but none related to fire safety, agency spokeswoman Nanci Gonder said.

The home is licensed to allow mentally ill patients to live there and receive treatment elsewhere. It had fire alarms but no sprinklers.

The dead included nine residents and an employee and ranged from their early 20s to elderly. Eighteen people were taken to hospitals and six were treated at the scene.

The group home is operated by Joplin River of Life Ministries Inc. Robert Joseph Dupont, the ministries’ executive director, issued a statement Monday expressing sadness and saying all displaced residents were being cared for with the help of local agencies.

Dupont, 61, was convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud in 2003 for his part in a Medicare kickback scheme, according to federal records. He was sentenced to 21 months behind bars, followed by three years of supervised release.

Earlier this year, a federal judge rejected Dupont’s efforts to persuade the court to vacate that conviction.

Dupont was listed as a ministries’ officer in the group’s 2002 articles of incorporation. As a convicted felon, he is not allowed under state law to hold such a position with a long-term care facility, Gonder said.

Investigators cited two other group homes operated by Joplin River of Life Ministries for fire safety violations in October 2003, according to a health department memo provided to The Associated Press by the nursing home watchdog Missourian Coalition for Quality Care and a report in the Joplin Globe.

One of those facilities has since closed.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, the nation’s deadliest fire in a facility for older adults since 1950 was at the Katie Jane Nursing Home in Warrenton, where 72 people were killed in 1957.

Monday’s blaze was one of the worst fires at a health care facility since 2003, when a patient suffering from dementia and multiple sclerosis, set fire to her bed and burned down a care center in Hartford, Conn., killing 16 residents. Six months later, in September 2003, a fire killed 15 patients in Nashville, Tenn.

Recently, the federal agency that oversees the safety of nursing homes asked for comments about a proposal to require all nursing homes to have comprehensive sprinkler systems. The rule would not address group homes like the one in Anderson because such facilities are not subject to the same federal oversight.

Exotic animals captured in the wild are streaming into the U.S. by the millions with little or no screening for disease, leaving Americans vulnerable to a virulent outbreak that could rival a terrorist act.Demand for such wildlife is booming as parents try to get their kids the latest pets fancied by Hollywood stars and zoos and research scientists seek to fill their cages.

More than 650 million critters - from kangaroos and kinkajous to iguanas and tropical fish - were imported legally into the United States in the past three years, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

That’s more than two for every American.

Countless more pets - along with animal parts and meats - are smuggled across the borders as part of a $10 billion-a-year international black market, second only to illegal drugs.

Most wildlife arrive in the United States with no quarantine and minimal screening for disease. The government employs just 120 full-time inspectors to record and inspect arriving wildlife. There is no requirement they be trained to detect diseases.

“A wild animal will be in the bush, and in less than a week it’s in a little girl’s bedroom,” said Darin Carroll, a disease hunter with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While exotic pets from Africa, Asia and South America can be cute and fashionable, scientists fear that bacteria and viruses they carry can jump to humans and native animals. Recent statistics raise the alarm.

FROM EXOTIC ANIMALS TO HUMANS:

Zoonotic diseases - those that jump to humans - account for three quarters of all emerging infectious threats, the CDC says. Five of the six diseases the agency regards as top threats to national security are zoonotic, and the CDC recently opened a center to better prepare and monitor such diseases.

The Journal of Internal Medicine this month estimated that 50 million people worldwide have been infected with zoonotic diseases since 2000 and as many as 78,000 have died.

U.S. experts don’t have complete totals for Americans, but partial numbers paint a serious picture:

-Hantavirus, which is carried by rodents and can cause acute respiratory problems or death, has sickened at least 317 Americans and killed at least 93 since 1996.

-More than 770 people have been sickened since 2000 with tularemia, a virulent disease that can be contracted from rabbits, hamsters and other rodents. At least three people have died. The plague, another animal-born disease, has sickened at least 22 Americans and killed at least one.

-Three transplant patients in New England died last year after receiving organs from a human donor who had been infected with the lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus from a pet hamster. There have been 34 U.S. cases since 1993.

-More than 210,000 Americans were sickened between 2000 and 2004 with salmonella, and at least 89 died. Most infections come from contaminated food - but up to 5 percent have been linked to pets, especially such reptiles as iguanas and turtles. And last year, at least 30 people in 10 states were sickened with a drug-resistant form linked to hamsters and other rodent “pocket pets.”

Some of the scariest diseases to emerge since 2001 also have been tied to exotic animals: One of the first times the deadly Asian bird flu reached the West was in eagles smuggled aboard a plane to Europe. Likewise, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, is believed to have jumped to people from caged civet cats in a Chinese market. The cats are believed to have gotten the virus from bats.

PARIS HILTON’S BITE, OTHER RECENT THREATS:

Carroll, the disease hunter, knows the dangers well. For the past three years, he has traveled the globe tracing the origins of a monkeypox outbreak in 2003 that sickened dozens of adults and children in the U.S. Midwest.

That disease, related to smallpox, is believed to have spread to people from rodents imported from Africa as pets. While no victims died, scientists are eager to understand the disease so they can stop a future outbreak.

Another newly discovered threat involves a current rage among exotic pet owners: a small carnivorous mammal with sharp teeth called a kinkajou. The nocturnal, tree-dwelling animals originally from Central and South America’s rain forests have a dangerous bite - as Paris Hilton recently learned.

The actress used to carry her pet kinkajou named “Baby Luv” on her shoulder as she partied. This summer, Hilton landed in an emergency room when Baby Luv bit her on the arm.

The concern about a bite is real.

In 2005, a kinkajou bit a zookeeper in England on the wrist. The keeper’s hand became infected, and she almost lost her fingers, said Dr. Paul Lawson, a University of Oklahoma microbiologist who first identified a new bacterium specific to kinkajous.

The first antibiotics doctors prescribed didn’t work, so a combination of several was used to stop the aggressive infection.

Scientists worry that most Americans are ignorant of the threats, and the government’s defenses are limited.

THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM:

Though such diseases can spread to humans in many ways, the exotic pet trade is a growing concern because of its lack of government oversight and its reliance on animals caught in the wild.

The legal wildlife trade in the United States has more than doubled in the past 15 years, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Last year alone, there were more than 210 million animals imported to the United States for zoos, exhibitions, food, research, game ranches and pets. The imports included 203 million fish, 5.1 million amphibians, nearly 1.3 million reptiles, 259,000 birds and 87,991 mammals.

Imported mammals caught in the wild range from macaque monkeys and chinchillas to wallabies and kangaroos.

Only wild birds, primates and some cud-chewing wild animals are required to be quarantined upon arriving in the United States. The rest slip through with no disease screening, except for occasional Agriculture Department checks for ticks.

“Taking an animal from the wild and putting it in your child’s bedroom is just not a good idea,” said Paul Arguin, a CDC expert on exotic animal imports. “We just don’t know a lot about the diseases these animals carry.”

THE POTENTIAL DISEASES:

The known diseases that can jump from exotic pets to humans are many:

Rodents can carry hantavirus as well as Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, which causes high fever, muscle pain and severe bleeding in humans and can lead to death.

Quarantines in 1989 and 1990 helped lead to the discovery of a new strain of the hemorrhagic disease Ebola in some primates. The primates either died or were killed.

Then there are the mystery diseases, which scientists have yet to understand.

During the 1990s, desert jumping rodents called jerboas were imported to Texas from Egypt as pets, according to Alan Green, a wildlife expert. Many new owners fell ill with a strange rash that defied treatment.

LOOPHOLES IN SCREENING OF LEGAL PETS:

Loopholes abound with legal imports, even when screening and quarantine occurs.

For instance, the thousands of monkeys that are imported each year for research from countries like China, Indonesia and Vietnam are quarantined for at least 31 days. While the monkeys are checked for tuberculosis, they aren’t tested for other diseases unless they show signs of sickness.

However, monkeys can carry dangerous viruses and bacteria that don’t make them sick but can harm people. For example, herpes B virus is a pathogen carried by 80 to 90 percent of adult macaques. The virus may not harm the macaques, but humans can be infected and suffer severe neurological damage or death.

In 1997, a 22-year-old researcher at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta died from herpes B virus weeks after a caged monkey splashed something in her eye.

Though the CDC has prohibited importation of most monkeys as pets since 1975, some macaques imported for research are now being sold on the open market.

“Whatever researchers are using and importing in great numbers is what we see in the pet trade,” said April Truitt of the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, Ky.

The government acknowledges it doesn’t track where animals go after quarantine.

THE CHALLENGE POSED BY ILLEGAL SMUGGLING:

Illegal trade presents another challenge. “If you can think of it, you can get it,” said Mira Leslie, a disease expert in Washington state.

Smugglers have been known to tape small tubes filled with birds on their legs to smuggle them through airports or to cut deep boxes into car seats filled with exotic wildlife to drive across the Mexican border.

Inspectors have been on heightened alert looking for smuggled birds since a man in 2004 smuggled two Crested Hawk-Eagles on a flight from Bangkok, Thailand, to Brussels, Belgium. He had wrapped them in white cloth and stuffed them into handmade, wicker tubes that he carried in a handbag.

Officials later learned that a well-known bird collector ordered the eagles for thousands of dollars. When the birds were tested, they were found to be infected with a strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus. Fortunately, no human was infected.

A BUREAUCRATIC MESS:

America’s defenses are a bureaucratic nightmare. Laws are outdated and no single agency is responsible for pre-empting the next outbreak.

-The CDC is in charge of human health and the quarantine of imported monkeys.

-The Agriculture Department has primary responsibility for livestock health and the quarantining of wild bird imports and wild cud-chewing animals.

-The Fish and Wildlife Service is charged with stopping smuggled wildlife and enforcing laws that protect exotic and endangered species.

“The three agencies don’t work together,” said Cathy Johnson-Delaney, a veterinarian who advised the Agriculture Department during the early 1990s. “We should be screening all critters coming into the U.S. We aren’t doing this.”

The CDC’s Arguin acknowledges oversight of wildlife imports is reactive at best, noting that civet cats were banned from sale only after the SARS outbreak and the increased screening of birds occurred only after H5N1 started sweeping through Asia.

NO AGREEMENT ON FUTURE SOLUTIONS:

Jasen Shaw, president of U.S. Global Exotics, one of the largest American wildlife dealers, opposes banning exotic animal imports but acknowledges, “It doesn’t do the industry any good to have diseases slip through.”

Quarantine for all mammal imports - which are more likely to carry diseases that jump to humans - could be a solution.

Shaw said, however, that the industry would be wary of regulations that were too restrictive. Mass quarantining would be very expensive, he added.

Marshall Meyers, of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, which represents the $30-billion-a-year pet industry, advocates a risk-based system. Disease threats posed to humans by other mammals is far greater than those posed by fish, he explained, so tighter regulation on certain species might be warranted.

The CDC convened a meeting this spring to examine the lack of oversight, exploring options but making no recommendations. With no government action imminent, some support a private solution.

“We should shift the burden to importers to prove that the animal imports are safe,” said William Karesh, a zoonotic disease expert who works with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He suggests exotic importers take out insurance to foot the bill if their animals cause an outbreak.

“Why should you and I bear the cost of an outbreak when the industry makes all the money off this trade?”

Automaker DaimlerChrysler Corp. must pay US$20 million to a retired police officer and brake repairman whose right lung was removed because of cancer caused by asbestos, a jury ruled.A jury in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court ruled that Alfred D’Ulisse, 73, of North Massapequa, New York, and his wife were owed a total of US$25 million, D’Ulisse’s lawyer Jerry Kristal said Monday.

DaimlerChrysler was found to be 10 percent liable for D’Ulisse’s cancer, and it will be responsible for a total of 80 percent of the damages because two other companies found to be liable no longer exist, Kristal said.

DaimlerChrysler, which makes cars under the Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler brands, issued a statement saying the case was built on “junk science” and accused Justice Louis B. York of “improper rulings.” The company said it was confident last week’s verdict would be reversed on appeal.

The automaker was responsible for the amount owed by the now-defunct companies because the jury found that the automaker acted with reckless disregard for the safety of others, Kristal said.

Two other auto manufacturers, each found to be 10 percent liable by the jury, settled with D’Ulisse before trial for undisclosed amounts, he said.

The repairman contracted the cancer, mesothelioma, after working at Morak Brakes in Brooklyn, Kristal said. Surgeons removed his right lung in 2004, the lawyer said.

Asbestos is a fire retardant material that was formerly used widely as insulation in buildings and motor vehicles.

The jury found that DaimlerChrysler was not responsible for the mesothelioma of another worker, Rodolfo Colella. The 50-year-old auto mechanic from Queens worked with brakes made by various automakers between 1972 and 1989.

A DaimlerChrysler spokeswoman, Elaine Lutz, said her company’s lawyers presented evidence that Colella’s cancer was caused by radiation therapy after he contracted Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the 1970s.

The judge had ordered the cases tried together because they had the same lawyers and the same main defendant.

DaimlerChrysler assistant general counsel Steven B. Hantler issued a statement saying his company presented evidence at trial showing its products “were not a substantial factor in causing their diseases.”

“Inexplicably, the jury accepted the junk science theories presented by the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the D’Ulisse case,” the statement said. “DaimlerChrysler plans to vigorously challenge this verdict and is confident of a reversal.”

The statement said DaimlerChrysler on appeal “will clearly establish that our right to a fair trial and due process of law were systematically undermined by the trial judge’s bias and many improper rulings.”

D’Ulisse worked in the brake shop from 1960 to 1964 and then worked there part time during some of his 36 years as a city police officer, Kristal said. He stripped worn linings from brakes and installed new ones.

A family that was forced to move out of their home when a neighbor blew up his multi-million dollar East Side New York townhouse, killing himself and demolishing their house in the process, is suing the man’s estate.

According to court papers, Michael and Ann Conry’s neighboring apartment and its contents were demolished when their neighbor’s house exploded on June 10, 2006. Michael Conry, his wife, and their young son were forced to move to an apartment a few blocks away, said Jeremy E. Deutsch, their lawyer.

Only a narrow driveway and a single wall separated their apartment from Bartha’s estate.

Dr. Nicholas Bartha, 66, was seriously burned in the blast. He died five days later.

Authorties say Bartha caused the explosion to destroy his house so that his wife – who he was in the process of divorcing – would not benefit from its sale.

According to Deutsch, none of the family was injured because no one was home, but the apartment and many of their possessions, including china, antique furniture, and family pictures were destroyed.

The lawsuit claims that the explosion caused damage to their apartment’s walls, floors, ceilings, and windows, rendering the place uninhabitable.

The lawsuit names Bartha’s estate, and his daughter, Maria Serena Bartha, who is the estate’s administrator, as defendants.

The Conrys seek unspecified damages. They claim that Bartha was “reckless, careless and negligent and acted with wanton disregard” when he blew up his house.

This is the fourth known lawsuit filed against the Bartha Estate since the blast.

 31-year-old Colorado woman filed a product liability lawsuit against the makers of the popular birth control patch Ortho Evra after she developed pulmonary embolism (lung blood clots) and deep vein thrombosis (leg blood clots) she claims was caused by the contraceptive.Injuries Sustained

The woman began wearing the Ortho Evra patch in 2004. Nine months later, she was hospitalized after she suffered severe blood clots in her lung and leg—an adverse event that has been directly linked to the use of Ortho Evra.

As a result of her serious injuries, the plaintiff will never be able to use hormone therapy contraceptives and/or treatments for the duration of her life. Furthermore, she is more likely to develop future medical complications including infection in her lung as a result of damaged tissue.

J&J’s Liability

According to the lawsuit, the makers of the birth control patch, Johnson & Johnson, should have been aware that their product significantly increased the risk of stroke, blood clots, pulmonary embolism, and death.

The lawsuit claims that J&J acted negligently and recklessly when they failed to warn consumers of the severe risks of Ortho Evra.

In September 2006, J&J revised their product label to include a stronger warning about the increased risk of blood clots, stroke, and death with the use of the patch in comparison to the contraceptive pill.

Studies have found that because the patch is placed on the skin and goes directly to the bloodstream, users are being exposed to 60 percent more estrogen than those who take the pill form, significantly increasing their risk of serious injury or death.

The city and the widow of a police officer mistakenly shot by another officer in 2004 have reached a tentative $1.75 million settlement of a civil suit over the death.The City Council will be asked Monday to approve the settlement reached after negotiations with attorneys for Denise L. Wise, who filed suit against the city and the other officer.

“It’s an agreement that was reached in the best interest of both parties,” Mayor Tom McMahon said. Under the agreement, the city will pay a total of $750,000 in three installments and an insurance policy will pay $1 million.

Michael Wise II, 32, of Myerstown, and two other patrolmen were working undercover on June 4, 2004, when a gunfight erupted. Officer James Palange arrived on the scene and mistakenly fired at the undercover officers.

Prosecutors charged another man, Andrew Lee Smith, accusing him of firing a shot that started the gunfight with police. Smith was acquitted of murder but convicted of involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault and sentenced to 13 1/2 to 27 years in state prison.

Palange was fired but appealed the dismissal, saying in court papers that he had not known there were undercover officers in his patrol area. The appeal was delayed by the lawsuit and is expected to resume if the settlement is approved.

The families of three patients who died in Tucson hospitals have filed lawsuits in Pima County Superior Court.The suits accuse the hospitals of negligence and substandard care. 

The first suit was filed against Northwest Medical Center. It alleges hospital staff failed to prevent the death of 90-year-old Martha Oakley. She fell getting out of bed after taking a prescription drug known to cause dizziness. 

The second lawsuit was filed against St. Joseph’s Hospital and Carondelet Health Network. 

That suit alleges 62-year-old Imelda Gallegos should never have been released from the hospital after being admitted for chest and stomach pain. Gallegos died after being released and readmitted to the hospital. 

The third lawsuit was filed against Carondelet Health Network and St. Mary’s Hospital. 

It alleges hospital staff didn’t do enough to prevent fatal blood clots following the gallbladder surgery of Moises Dabdoub.

A teenager who died after falling through the gap between a commuter train and a station platform had been drinking and pulled away from people who tried to help her, a state panel concluded.A lawyer for the teen’s family called the report a “cover up.”

Natalie Smead died Aug. 5 while taking a Long Island Rail Road train with a group of friends into New York City. She fell through the gap while getting off a westbound train at Woodside Station and was trying to climb up on the other side of the platform when she was struck by an eastbound train.

The state Public Transportation Safety Board’s report released Monday said that the Long Island Rail Road was in compliance with government safety standards and that Smead, 18, had a blood alcohol level of 0.23, a level associated with severe impairment.

It said her group had been drinking before and during their trip from Merrick, on Long Island. After she fell into the gap, Smead was told to stay put and someone took her hand, but she pulled away and crawled under the platform to another track, into the path of the other train, according to the report.

“This was certainly a tragic and terrible accident and our heartfelt condolences go out to Ms. Smead’s family, but there’s also a level of personal responsibility when you ride public transportation,” said state Transportation Commissioner Thomas Madison,

A lawyer for the teen’s family, Robert Sullivan, called the report a “cover up” rife with omissions to protect the Long Island Rail Road. The family has filed a notice of intent to sue. Smead was from Northfield, Minn.

Railroad officials said it is the only known fatality attributed to someone falling through the gap, although nearly 130 commuters have been injured by slipping through gaps since 2004.