South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

On June 12, 2003, plaintiff Joel Alain, 21, was working as a forklift operator for Southeastern Food Supply at its Miami loading dock.While reloading goods inside the trailer section of a Southern Refrigerated Transportation truck, Alain’s forklift fell backward out of the back of the truck, landing on the ground.Alain sued Southern Refrigerated Transportation on a premises liability theory. He claimed that the trailer moved without warning while he was working in it, causing him to fall.

The defense argued that Alain was not paying attention when he fell out of the truck, which never moved. Defense counsel also named Southeastern Food Supply as a Fabre defendant.

Alain claimed to herniations that required a percutaneous discectomy.

He sought $575,000 in damages, which included wage losses and medical bills.

Southern Refrigerated Transportation was found 15% negligent. Alain was found 5% negligent and his former employer, Southeastern Food Supply was found 80% negligent. The jury awarded $192,800, which was reduced to $28,920.

A jury on Thursday awarded nearly $40 million to a man who was paralyzed after a Qwest Communication telephone pole he was working on collapsed in 2004. Andy Blood, 27, an employee of Xcel Energy at the time, sued Qwest saying the company failed to repair their company-owned pole in Adams County. An investigation revealed the utility pole had been erected in 1958 but never inspected.”Hopefully this means a better life,” Blood told the Rocky Mountain News in a telephone interview after the jury’s verdict. “This sends a clear message to Qwest that they need to inspect their poles and do what they promised.”

After a nine-day trial, the The awarded Blood and his wife Carrie $21.5 million in compensatory damages and $18 million in punitive damages against Qwest.

Blood’s lawyer said he believed the jury’s decision was one of the largest injury verdicts for a single person in Colorado’s history.

Qwest spokesman Bob Toevs said: “The circumstances are tragic and our sympathies are with Mr. Blood, however we do plan on appealing the verdict.”

Toevs said the pole that collapsed was not used or serviced by the company at the time of the accident.

Blood, of Henderson, Colo., was working on the pole, which was also used by Xcel, when it broke. He fell 25 feet to the ground, suffering permanent spinal cord injuries, according to the original lawsuit.

The freeway that collapsed after a fiery tanker crash has reopened just 25 days after the accident, though one expert questioned the safety of the new structure.The elevated section of highway that carries traffic from the east end of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was leveled April 29 after a gasoline tanker truck crashed and burned. Officials and commuters initially thought it would take weeks, possibly months, to fix.

But traffic exited the bridge Thursday night and cruised for the first time over a new 165-foot stretch of highway. The lower deck reopened within 10 days of the collapse.

Department of Transportation officials maintain the rebuilt structure is sound.

“We have compromised nothing in terms of integrity, safety and reliability,” said Kevin Thompson, Caltrans state bridge engineer.

But Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a civil engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, questioned that assertion. He argues that Caltrans should replace the structure’s four supporting piers, which he said were also damaged during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Astaneh-Asl, who received a $25,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the collapse, said he saw a crack inside one pier after a sample had been drilled out for testing.

He said he needs more information before he can be convinced the structure can withstand a major earthquake.

“I really am not going to cross that bridge unless Caltrans releases the information about how and why they decided that bridge is safe to open up,” he said.

Caltrans will release such data “as soon as possible,” Thompson said at a news conference Thursday.

Thompson said building new piers would be an unnecessary delay. He said the structure was built to withstand “the maximum credible event” that could be expected to occur. He said he could not give the exact magnitude of earthquake that would constitute such an event because too many factors are involved, but asserted the ramp is safe.

Kent Sasaki, of the engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, which examined the fire-damaged concrete, said during the news conference that most of the damage to the columns was near the surface. He acknowledged there was a crack at the top of one column and said the damaged concrete was replaced.

The construction work was done by Rancho Cordova-based C.C. Myers, Inc., which submitted a low bid of $867,075 for the job, confident it would get the maximum $5 million in bonuses for completion by June 2.

“We didn’t cut any corners at all as far as quality,” Caltrans senior bridge engineer Peter Stryker said.

In a warning to healthcare professionals yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration said that Novartis AG drug Exjade may cause acute renal failure and death.

Exjade is an FDA approved drug used to remove excess iron in patients two and older who must undergo regular blood transfusions or who have blood conditions that lead to iron buildup. The drug was approved in November 2005, and has since been used to treat over 13,000 patients.

Novartis post-marketing reports, however, show that the drug may cause kidney failure and death. The company said it has received reports of acute renal failure in patients treated with Exjade. Eight of those cases resulted in death.

Even though some of the patients who experienced kidney complications while taking Exjade had existing illnesses or blood disorders, Novartis acknowledged that Exjade’s role could not be excluded.

The drug’s label was updated last December to include information about kidney failure and complications reported in patients who were given Exjade. Earlier in May, Novartis sent a letter to medical professionals outlining the updated information.

On Aug. 14, 2004, plaintiff Samantha Chesney, 14, went to Allure, a hair salon, to have highlights put in her hair. Highlights are done by placing tinfoil in the person’s hair and by using peroxide and other chemicals, which is only supposed to touch the hair. After the highlight chemicals were placed in Samantha’s hair, she complained that it felt hot. She ultimately contended that her scalp was burned.Samantha’s father, John Chesney, acting as Samantha’s parent and natural guardian, sued Allure. He alleged that the defendant’s employees negligently performed the hair highlights.Allure commenced a third-party claim against the chemical’s distributor, Piermarco Group Imports Ltd. Allure alleged that the highlight product was defective.

Plaintiff’s counsel claimed that Allure negligently applied the chemicals and failed to properly protect Samantha’s scalp. He contended that the defendant’s employees either didn’t apply the tinfoil to her hair properly or improperly applied the chemicals to her head.

Allure denied burning Samantha’s scalp and had no explanation of how her scalp was burned. Allure’s employees claimed that they remembered her complaining that it felt hot, but that they saw no damage of Samantha’s hair.

Plaintiff’s counsel claimed that Samantha sustained third-degree chemical burns of her scalp. The burns caused a lesion the size of a half dollar and caused scarring and hair loss. Samantha underwent four cosmetic surgeries, but she claimed that she is permanently disfigured. She also claimed that she suffers embarrassment and pain associated with her injuries.

Samantha’s father sought recovery of Samantha’s future medical expenses and damages for Samantha’s past and future pain and suffering.

Piermarco Group Imports’ counsel moved for summary judgment. During pendency of that motion, the parties agreed to a $235,000 settlement. Allure’s insurer agreed to contribute $210,000, and Piermarco Group Imports’ insurer agreed to contribute $25,000.

A woman blinded when a piece of particleboard came off a U-Haul trailer and smashed through her windshield on the freeway was at least partly to blame because she was intoxicated at the time, attorneys for U-Haul say.Newly obtained medical records show that Maria Federici of Renton was drunk when the February 2004 accident occurred, lawyers said in court documents filed in King County Superior Court. Lab tests performed at Harborview Medical Center indicate her blood-alcohol level was 0.124 percent, or about one and a half times the legal limit of .08, the documents say.

Federici was left blinded and disfigured when an entertainment center fell off an open U-Haul trailer on Interstate 405 and part of it smashed into her windshield.

The accident prompted a new law to strengthen penalties for driving with an unsecured load.

In February 2006, Federici sued U-Haul, alleging it failed to warn renters that large items could fall out of an open trailer, as well as the man who was pulling the trailer and a Bellevue business that rented the trailer.

However, U-Haul attorneys said records show Federici was negligent and that her drinking was the reason she was following the trailer too closely and failed to apply her brakes or maneuver her car to avoid the crash.

The lab report was made available to attorneys in the ongoing lawsuit, which is set for trial in September. Federici is seeking unspecified damages for medical expenses, lost earnings, distress and loss of enjoyment of life.

Federici’s Kirkland attorney, Simon Forgette, said she wasn’t impaired and that witnesses saw her driving in a safe manner that night.

Forgette called the test results irrelevant.

“We don’t believe it’s scientifically valid or admissible. There is no evidence she could have done anything to prevent what happened,” Forgette said. “According to the eyewitnesses, there was apparently no time to react.”

A terminal skin cancer patient whose doctor missed his symptoms won a $5.7 million malpractice judgment from a San Diego Superior Court jury Friday.Under a 1975 law, the money Regis M. Reilly and his wife actually stand to collect will be reduced to about $2 million, his lawyer, N. Denise Asher, said yesterday.

Beyond the money, the verdict is significant because “my clients can hear someone tell them that they have heard them and they understand,” Asher said.

“This was a particularly wicked cancer,” Asher said. “It grew very fast and it needed to be caught immediately.”

Reilly, 54, said in his lawsuit against dermatologist James C. Powers that the doctor failed to biopsy a cyst when Reilly went to see him for bumps on his shoulder in August 2006.

“Essentially, the doctor just missed it,” Asher said.

By the time Reilly was referred to another doctor in December, Asher said, the cancer had spread. She said Reilly underwent surgery to remove the cancer from his shoulder three times but it had metastasized to other parts of his body and was determined to be terminal.

Had the cancer been caught in its early stages, Asher said there was a 95 percent chance that Reilly would have recovered. He is now confined to his home and receives 24-hour care.

On Aug. 29, 2001, plaintiff Gelnice Petit-Doss, 18, a deaf student, was struck by a pickup truck driven by Antwaun Snell after she exited a school bus in Broward County. Snell illegally passed the stopped school bus as he was fleeing Fort Lauderdale Police narcotics officers. The school bus had stopped on the left side of a residential street because a car was parked on the right side, which is where the bus usually stopped. After stopping, the bus driver walked Petit-Doss off of the bus. Petit-Doss was struck by the pickup soon after the bus driver was back behind the wheel.Petit-Doss sued the School Board for Broward County for negligent training. Petit-Doss also sued Snell and the owner of the truck for vehicular negligence, both of whom settled for an undisclosed amount prior to trial. Petit-Doss initially sued the city of Ft. Lauderdale, alleging that the officers performed an illegal pursuit, but the plaintiff voluntarily dismissed the city. Defense counsel for the county brought in Snell as a Fabre defendant.Plaintiff’s counsel claimed that the school board did not properly train the bus driver in procedures for unloading a deaf student from the bus. The driver also lacked a means to communicate with a deaf student, according to plaintiff’s counsel, and therefore couldn’t warn a deaf student of any hazards.

Plaintiff’s counsel also contended that the bus driver should not have unloaded Petit-Doss on the left side of the street, which resulted in the plaintiff being dropped off in the middle of the street. The bus driver violated Florida statute which stated that the bus should have parked on the right hand side, so the plaintiff would be dropped off curbside.

Defense counsel contended that the actions of the bus driver were reasonable. The accident took place on a quiet residential street with a 25-mph posted speed limit. The bus driver carefully unloaded the student and looked both ways before opening the door.

Defense counsel pointed out that the bus driver had been on the job for 20 years and had a clean record in terms of complaints and injuries. The bus driver’s regular route was blocked by the car parked on the right, and she was well within her discretion, according to school board procedures to deviate from the route.

Petit-Doss sustained an ankle fracture that required three surgeries, including the implementation of plates and screws. She also sustained a fractured clavicle, loss of three of her front teeth as well as multiple lacerations, surgical scars and abrasions. Petit-Doss stated she suffers from headaches, eye injuries and neurological deficits. She also tore her rotator cuff, which will require surgery. Plaintiff’s counsel also argued that Petit-Doss’ ankle requires continual therapy and will likely need to have the joint fused in the future.

Plaintiff’s counsel asked for $80,000 in past medical bills and $75,000 in future medical costs. Plaintiff’s counsel asked the jury for $900,000 for total damages.

Defense counsel did not present any expert medical testimony, instead choosing to focus their case on liability.

The jury found that the school board was 20% liable, the plaintiff was 10% liable and Snell was 70% liable. The jury awarded $250,000 which was reduced to $50,000.

Defense counsel is seeking costs and fees, pursuant to an offer of judgment and non-binding arbitration. Plaintiff’s counsel has filed motions for a new trial and a directed verdict.

A television anchor in Winston-Salem who faces three charges for a fatal wreck now also is being sued by the father of the man who died in the wreck.The wrongful death lawsuit was filed last week in Forsyth County Superior Court against WXII anchor Tolly Carr and three bars that the lawsuit says served Carr the night in March that Casey Bokhoven, 26, was killed.

Thomas Comerford, an attorney for Bokhoven’s father, Howard Bokhoven, filed the lawsuit.

Casey Bokhoven was killed March 11. Police said Carr drove through a construction zone, ran off the road and hit Bokhoven. He was indicted April 23 on three charges: felony death by motor vehicle, felony serious injury by vehicle and DWI.

Police said Carr’s blood-alcohol content was .13 percent about four hours after the wreck. The legal legal limit for driving in North Carolina is .08 percent.

After years of legal skirmishes, the public can finally hear the gripping soundtrack for one of Canada’s worst aviation disasters - the 1998 crash of a Swissair plane that killed all 229 people on board.The Swissair Flight 111 air traffic control tapes, which had been kept sealed since the crash, were released to The Canadian Press on Monday following a court battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The hours of recordings for the flight, which was headed from New York to Geneva, include the 12 critical minutes, starting as the plane’s crew reports smoke in the cockpit and ending with a last desperate transmission as the aircraft makes a high-speed nose dives into St. Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia, near Halifax.

“Swissair one eleven heavy is declaring emergency,” says one of the pilots in a heavy Swiss-German accent, as the second pilot makes a nearly simultaneous transmission in the cockpit confusion: “We are declaring emergency now.”

“Heavy” refers to any large aircraft, such as the Swissair flight, which went down on Sept. 2, 1998.

The voices of the Swiss pilots - Urs Zimmermann, 50, and co-pilot Stephan Loew, 36 - become slightly muffled in the recordings when they don their oxygen masks. The official transcripts do not indicate which pilot is speaking at any time.

Ten minutes later, as smoke billows through the cockpit and a massive electrical failure disables all flight controls, including the lights, there is another harrowing transmission: “Eleven heavy we starting to dump (fuel) now we have to land immediate.”

There is a slight urgency in his voice as one pilot makes a final, repetitive transmission: “And we are declaring emergency now Swissair one eleven.”

The MD-11 aircraft flew for about six more minutes before it slammed into the dark, choppy sea off Nova Scotia at 10:31 p.m. local time.

Hitting the water at about 350 mph (563 kph) everyone aboard died instantly and the fuselage shattered into millions of pieces. The tremendous impact caused seismographic needles to flutter in Halifax and Moncton, as if an earthquake had hit.

Vic Gerden, chief investigator into the crash, said families of the victims were briefed frequently at the time of the disaster but have not previously heard the audio.

Within days of the tragedy, the safety board released transcripts of the air traffic control recordings but steadfastly refused to release the audio itself, saying it contained personal information.

An investigation by Canada’s Transportation Safety Board blamed flammable insulation that allowed a small electrical fire to spread uncontrolled, melting the cockpit ceiling, shorting out all power and leaving the crew helpless to avert the disaster.

Miles Gerety, who lost his brother Pierce in the crash, predicted that hearing the tapes will be painful for the victims’ families.

“These things bring an event back to people, the family members, who’ve put a lot of time and distance between the crash … and their losses,” he said in an interview from his home in Redding, Connectictut. “I think it would be hard to hear.”