South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

Authorities said two people died Friday morning when a car lost control and hit a stoplight, causing its concrete pole to fall on another vehicle.

It happened at about 2:30 a.m. at the intersection of Northwest Seventh Street and 21st Avenue near the Orange Bowl in Miami.

Authorities said the driver of a black Nissan Maxima was speeding and lost control of the car. It slammed into the concrete traffic light pole, knocking it down.

The pole then fell on a red Mazda that was passing by, crushing the vehicle and killing the driver.

“The driver of the red Mazda also died as a result of the pole that came crashing down, basically crushing him inside of his vehicle,” said Ignatius Carroll of Miami Fire Rescue.

Carroll said it was a miracle that the passenger in the Mazda did not die.

“In the passenger side of this Mazda was a female. She somehow was pushed forward and that caused her to be situated in a little pocket area that was not damaged by the pole,” Carroll said.

The woman was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital and is expected to survive.

The driver of the Maxima was ejected from his vehicle and died at the scene. Police said they believe the car was traveling at least 80 mph when the crash happened. They are investigating to determine whether alcohol was a factor.

The victims have not been identified.

A Chicago truck driver was convicted Wednesday of reckless homicide charges for crashing his semitrailer into a tour bus in 2003, killing eight women.Vincente Zepeda was also found guilty of failing to inspect and maintain his vehicle. He faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced Jan. 24, and his driver’s license will be revoked.

Zepeda, 53, declined to comment after the verdict, but defense attorney Donald Rendler-Kaplan said he expects to appeal the decision if the judge does not reconsider.

“I truly believe the judge is incorrect in her ruling,” Rendler-Kaplan said. “(The crash) was a misjudgment, a miscalculation, not a criminal act.”

Zepeda’s semitrailer struck the small bus from behind, causing a five-vehicle pileup on Interstate 90 at the Hampshire-Marengo toll plaza.

Prosecutors said Zepeda was driving too fast and was not paying attention to the road.

Stacy Neria used to run six miles a day, six days a week - but she never trained on Sundays out of deference to her husband and to God.Now, Neria relies heavily on her husband and faith as she struggles to push forward after a hit-and-run accident left her with brain damage and paralyzed from the neck down.

The 35-year-old mother of three was jogging with three other women on April 8, 2006, when she was struck by a car from behind. Her friend, avid runner and mother Carol Daniel, 42, was paralyzed as well, but did not suffer brain damage.

The women and their husbands held a news conference Wednesday to discuss a settlement of about $50 million they received this week from the city of Dana Point. Their attorney argued that the bike lane they were running in was poorly marked and far too wide, leading motorists to believe it was another driving lane.

The driver of the car, William Todd Bradshaw, pleaded guilty to felony hit-and-run causing permanent injury, and is serving four years in prison.

The money will go toward the millions of dollars in medical expenses the two women will rack up in their lifetimes, things their insurance doesn’t cover: 24-hour nursing care, intensive physical and speech therapy and possible experimental treatments.

“This is a bittersweet thing. We might have celebrated for 15 minutes or so, but that was it,” said Craig Daniel, Carol’s husband. “The reality continues and it’s been very tough.”

Neria and Daniel cannot do anything for themselves and Neria only recently began speaking again. She directs her motorized wheelchair with a joystick that she pushes with her chin.

Neria wore flip flops decorated with silver beaded flowers and had carefully painted toenails and a butterfly clip holding back her blonde hair. Her husband, Chris, adjusted her hands and gently brushed back her hair before pointing out that he had applied her red lipstick.

“He is amazing,” said a smiling Neria, a hair stylist before the accident.

Daniel uses her right hand, which has some movement, to guide her wheelchair. She was covered in a blanket and wore Ugg boots because she’s always cold. She declined to comment at the news conference, but said afterward that she just focuses on one day at a time.

“I’m coping, barely. That’s all I can say,” said Craig Daniel, who has three children with his wife.

Both husbands said their insurance does not cover 24-hour nursing care and they were forced to quit their jobs to care for their wives full-time.

“She hasn’t had that much therapy lately because the money hasn’t been there,” Craig Daniel said. “The insurance hasn’t been covering it.”

Chris Neria, once a regional sales manager, said it takes him up to five hours each morning to bathe, dress and feed his wife, including putting on her makeup and doing her hair. He also wakes up every two hours in the night to turn her body in the bed to avoid bed sores and other complications.

“You’re humbled because this job - taking care of yourself and three little kids and your wife - is impossible,” he said. “You’re really not capable, no one is capable, of handling that dynamic.”

The Nerias have found comfort in their church, their faith and in small hints of progress: Neria can now speak in a stilted whisper, she can swallow, she can take a sip of water and she can breathe on her own. But she still sobbed when asked what she missed most about her life before the accident.

“I miss being the wife and the mom that I was and what I always wanted to be,” she said in a hoarse, hesitant whisper.

An exploding cell phone battery is suspected by police in the death of a South Korean worker Wednesday, though the phone’s manufacturer said it was highly unlikely.

The man, identified only by his family name Suh, was found dead at his workplace in a quarry Wednesday morning and his mobile phone battery was melted in his shirt pocket, a police official in Cheongwon told The Associated Press.

“We presume that the cell phone battery exploded,” the police official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still under way.

Kim Hoon, a doctor who examined the body, agreed.

“He sustained an injury that is similar to a burn in the left chest and his ribs and spine were broken,” Yonhap news agency quoted Kim as saying. “It is presumed that pressure caused by the explosion damaged his heart and lungs, leading to his death.”

Kim was not immediately available for comment.

Police said the phone was made by South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc., the world’s fifth-biggest handset maker.

An LG official confirmed its product was involved in the accident but said the company would not comment directly on the incident because the cause was not confirmed. However, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to company policy, said such a fatal explosion would be virtually impossible.

A man who was wandering aimlessly along Interstate 95 was confronted by police and stunned with a Taser gun following a brief standoff in the middle of traffic Thursday morning. The incident, which happened shortly before 10 a.m. in the northbound lanes of I-95 just north of the Stirling Road exit, was captured on a traffic camera.The man, who appeared to be barefoot and carrying a knife, could be seen pacing back and forth on the interstate and at one point he tried to jump onto a moving truck.

A Florida Department of Transportation Road Ranger stopped first and could be seen talking to the man, and moments later a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy arrived. A second deputy in plain clothes soon followed.

Both deputies had their weapons drawn when one of them stunned the man. He immediately dropped to the pavement and was taken into custody.

Traffic slowed as the incident unfolded.

It was unclear why the man was in the middle of the highway.

Tests of hundreds of airline passengers show that no one caught tuberculosis while flying earlier this year with an infected man who caused an international health scare when he flew to Europe for his wedding.About 250 U.S. passengers aboard a May 12 Air France flight from Atlanta to Paris have been tested for tuberculosis, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. None - including 25 sitting nearest to TB patient Andrew Speaker - appear to have been infected during the flight.

Canadian health officials, who were responsible for investigating Speaker’s return flight from Prague, Czech Republic, to Montreal on May 24, also found no evidence Speaker, an Atlanta attorney, spread the disease.

“We are six months out now from the time of exposure and there still continues to be no evidence of transmission,” said Dr. Tom Wong, director of the community acquired infections division of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The Canadian agency focused on the 29 passengers seated closest to Speaker on the Czech Air flight, Wong said.

“I’m relieved that the results came back that way,” Speaker told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday.

Speaker also said he hopes the test results give “a sense of peace and closure for the people who may have been concerned.”

Speaker became the focus of a federal investigation and prompted an international uproar in May when he went ahead with the wedding trip after health officials said they had advised him not to fly. CDC officials notified him while he was there that tests indicated he had extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis; later tests found only the less dangerous multidrug-resistant TB.

Rather than check into a European hospital, Speaker flew to Canada, drove across the border and turned himself in at a U.S. hospital. For a few days, he held the designation as the first American quarantined by the federal government since 1963. He was later transferred to the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver. He was released from the hospital in July after successfully completing inpatient treatment and returned to Georgia.

“I feel like I’ve always felt,” Speaker said Tuesday. “I feel fine.”

A third judge has been assigned to preside over the criminal case and resulting guilty plea from BP PLC’s deadly 2005 plant explosion after the previous two recused themselves because of personal connections in the case.Meanwhile, attorneys representing victims of the blast continue to object to the $50 million (€33.62 million) fine BP has agreed to pay as part of the plea agreement resulting from a federal investigation of the blast. One attorney for victims is suggesting the fine should be $1 billion (€670 million).

U.S. District Judge David Hittner was assigned to the case last week after his counterpart in Houston, Gray Miller, removed himself because he was a partner in a Houston law firm that has represented BP in blast-related litigation.

On Tuesday, Hittner issued a brief order recusing himself as well. The order offered no explanation for his action. Hittner declined to comment.

But a person familiar with the case told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Hittner removed himself because he is friends with a Houston psychiatrist who has worked as an expert witness for BP in civil litigation resulting from the blast.

Last month, BP and the Justice Department agreed that the London-based company would pay a $50 million (€33.62 million) fine and plead guilty to a felony for its role in the explosion that killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 others.

BP had been scheduled to formally enter a guilty plea in court on Tuesday. But the reassignment of judges has delayed that. Attorneys were set to discuss the status of the case at a court hearing on Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal, who now presides over the matter.

The fine and plea were part of an agreement by BP to pay $373 million (€250.77 million) to settle various criminal and civil charges.

During Wednesday’s hearing, attorneys were expected to discuss various court documents that have been filed in the past week by lawyers representing blast victims who are calling for the plea agreement to be rejected because the fine is insufficient.

Attorney David Perry on Monday filed additional court documents objecting to the plea agreement, accusing BP of violating an agreement connected to a $21 million (€14.12 million) fine issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The explosion at the plant, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of Houston, occurred after a piece of equipment called a blowdown drum overfilled with highly flammable liquid hydrocarbons.

The excess liquid and vapor hydrocarbons then were vented from the drum and ignited as the isomerization unit - a device that boosts the octane in gasoline - started up. Alarms and gauges that were supposed to warn of the overfilled equipment didn’t work properly.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, one of several agencies that probed the accident, found BP fostered bad management at the plant and that cost-cutting moves by BP were factors in the explosion.

The number of serious injuries and deaths due to ATV accidents is more than twice what it was ten years ago, according to U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) statistics.

Among the most common injuries sustained by ATV riders are broken bones, brain injuries, hemorrhages, and skull fractures, a new study reports.

“Parents need to understand that ATVs are not toys. We tend to think short-term and believe that we’re giving children a toy or some kind of entertainment with an ATV. But, remember, a trip to the ER is in no way recreational,” said Dr. Chetan Shah, lead author of the study.

A Decade of Research

Shah and his colleagues at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock have been collecting data on children treated for ATV-related injuries at their hospital over the past decade.

During that time, the doctors treated 455 children between the ages of 6 months and 19 years old—318 boys and 137 girls, with an average age of about 11. The injuries included:

• Six deaths
• 77 fractures to the skull
• 62 hemorrhages
• 53 brain injuries
• 12 spine fractures, 3 with damage to the spinal cord
• 32 lung injuries
• 11 amputations

Additionally, 159 children suffered fractures to their extremities, most frequently a leg bone.

Injuries Doubled

These statistics are from a single Arkansas hospital. CPSC statistics show that 467 people died from injuries caused by ATV accidents in 2005, up from 200 in 1995. Emergency room visits were also up—from 52,200 in 1995 to 136,700 in 2005.

“I think parents probably don’t have a real picture of the consequences and the injuries these machines can cause,” Shah said at a meeting of the Radiological Society of North America on Monday.

A hospital in Rhode Island received a reprimand and a $50,000 fine from the state Department of Health after a doctor performed surgery on the wrong side of a patient’s brain. It was the third brain surgery error to occur at the hospital this year.“We are extremely concerned about this continuing pattern,” said David R. Gifford, director of the state health department.

The Most Recent Mistake

According to the health department, an 82-year-old patient survived an operation on the wrong side of the brain last Friday. Rhode Island Hospital’s chief resident was conducting the surgery.

A Patient Death

Two similar incidents happened at the hospital earlier this year—first in February and then again in August. Both procedures were performed by different doctors. The patient who underwent neurosurgery in February survived, but the second time it happened, the patient died.

Safety Measures Needed

At that time, the state ordered the hospital to take safety measures to prevent such incidents in the future. In response to this most recent mistake, the hospital issued a statement saying it was reconsidering its policies and procedures.