South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

Explosions and fires at a chemical plant Wednesday killed four people, injured at least 14 and sent debris flying several stories into the air, fire officials and witnesses said.

It was not clear what caused the explosions about 1:30 p.m. at the T2 Laboratories Inc. plant, which makes chemical solvents and fuel additives, said Tom Francis, a fire rescue spokesman.

The chemicals at the plant made the environment “incredibly dangerous for the first responders,” Francis said. “Explosions were generating all kinds of side brush fires and other kinds of blazes.”

Everyone at the plant was accounted for by Wednesday evening.

Hospitals reported one patient in critical condition, three fair and five good. Conditions for the rest were unknown, or it wasn’t clear where they were being treated.

An emergency number listed on the company’s Web site was answered by a woman who said she was an owner’s friend. She said the only details she had were from media reports and then hung up.

Fire officials initially ordered a precautionary evacuation within a half-mile of the plant. But the order was rescinded just after 4 p.m. when firefighters determined that the level of toxicity in the air was no greater than an average house fire, Francis said.

A board member and a six-person investigation team from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board was expected to arrive at the site Thursday morning to begin an investigation.

Derek Pratt, 24, was flying a remote control airplane at a field about a mile away when he heard a series of thudding explosions.

“Those shock waves came straight through these hills,” he told The Florida Times-Union. “It was like a great ball of fire in the air.”

The fire was across the street from a JEA power plant, a spokeswoman with the utility said.

The architect crushed by seven tons of falling debris at Ground Zero is out of intensive care - leaving his loved ones hopeful he’ll be able to walk again.

“The doctors are saying that it’s still too early to tell, they’re telling us that we should be prepared that he won’t walk again - but I don’t accept that,” Robert Woo’s brother Peter told the Daily News.

Robert Woo, 39, was working in a trailer near the future headquarters of Goldman Sachs when a nylon sling failed, dumping 14,000 pounds of metal tubes onto the trailer from the 25th floor.

Woo was in stable condition Wednesday and scheduled to have more surgery to try to repair his injured spine. Surgeons already have inserted pins in his back to fix the damage.

“We’re preparing for the worst and hoping for the best,” Peter Woo said Wednesday. “He has a very strong spirit.”

“They’re doing lots of tests on him - X-rays, MRIs - it’s constant,” he said.

Robert Woo is able to talk, but the pain medication is making him drowsy and dazed.

“He’s a bit better, but he’s still in a lot of pain,” his brother said. “He asks, ‘Why am I here?’ He’s asking for the time and date. He’s asking the same questions that he just asked. It’s the drugs. It confuses him. He still doesn’t know what happened.”

Peter Woo said his brother hasn’t seen his two young sons since the accident. His 2-year-old son Tristan “keeps asking for his father.”

“He’s crying every day. He doesn’t understand,” Peter Woo said. Robert Woo’s other son, Adrian, is just 6 months old.

Peter Woo said the family plans to spend Christmas at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan in Greenwich Village - and several of Robert’s friends from Toronto, where the family is from, plan to fly to New York next week to visit him.

“We’re taking it one day at a time,” Peter Woo said, adding that his family is grateful for good wishes from concerned New Yorkers. “That’s the best thing I want from people. We really appreciate it.”

Peter said his brother was an avid cyclist and he hopes that will help him recover from his massive injuries.

“He loves biking,” he said. “He would tell us he’s going out for a 30-minute bike ride with his nephew - and then come back three hours later.”

Work on the Goldman Sachs building at 200 Murray St. has resumed - except for crane operations - as forensic engineers from the city Buildings Department continue their probe.

Five violations were issued as a result of the accident, including four to the general contractor on the planned 45-story tower, Tishman Construction Corp.

A 44-year-old man died Tuesday after riding a roller coaster at Walt Disney World that simulates a runaway train ride through the Himalayas, authorities said.

Reed, of Navarre, Fla., was pulled unresponsive from the ride, given CPR and pronounced dead at a hospital. He had no visible signs of injury, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said.

Authorities are investigating whether Reed had a previous medical condition, said Jim Solomons, sheriff’s spokesman. An autopsy is planned.

Inspectors found that the ride, Animal Kingdom’s Expedition Everest, was working properly, but Disney kept it closed during further review.

The ride, Expedition Everest, made its debut in 2006 and features an 80-foot drop. Before Tuesday’s death, at least 15 people had died at Disney’s theme parks in Florida and California since 1989, some with previous health conditions.

A Massachusetts woman recently won $2.5 million for damages suffered as a result of medical negligence. The woman underwent nearly seven years of treatment for HIV, even though she did not have the disease.

In 1994, the Family Practice Clinic in Fitchburg gave Audrey Serrano, a 45-year-old single mother, a positive diagnosis for HIV, the precursor to AIDS. Serrano received treatment for the disease at UMass Memorial Medical Center from Dr. Kwan K. Lai and others between 1996 and 2003.

Serrano sought another HIV test in 2003 at a different hospital, and the test came back negative.

The Lawsuit
According to the lawsuit, Dr. Lai failed to confirm the HIV positive diagnosis with further tests. The lawsuit accused Dr. Lai of negligence and claimed Serrano suffered depression, weight loss, intestinal troubles and fatigue from taking the unnecessary HIV drug cocktail.

Dr. Lai’s attorney, Joanne Gulliford Hoban, argued that it was not inappropriate for the doctor to rely on the medical history she received from Serrano. However, Serrano’s attorney, David P. Angueira, disagreed.

“It’s common sense. You test the patient. You don’t accept the patient’s self-diagnosis,” Angueira told the jury.

The Verdict
After two days of deliberation, the jury ruled in favor of Serrano. With interest, the verdict is expected to total over $3 million.

“She can’t do it to no one else. Clinic 7 now has to test everyone that comes to their clinic because of me. That’s what they should have done from day one,” Serrano said.

One day after a Miami law firm announced its plans to file a lawsuit against a NASCAR driver accused of assaulting a 62-year-old security guard at the Homestead-Miami Speedway last month, the victim and his attorney spoke about the incident Tuesday. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse in downtown Miami, seeks in excess of $15,000 in damages. The suit alleges Archibold Hutchinson suffered bodily injury; pain and suffering; disability; physical impairment; disfigurement; mental anguish; inconvenience; loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life; aggravation of an existing disease or physical defect; activation of a latent disease or physical defect; expense of hospitalization, medical and nursing care, and treatment in the past; expense of hospitalization, medical and nursing care, and treatment to be so obtained in the future; earnings lost in the past; and loss of ability to earn money in the future.Kahne, 27, is charged with one count of battery against Hutchinson, who was working as a security guard at the speedway for a race Nov. 16 when the incident allegedly occurred.

According to a Homestead police report, Kahne was attempting to access a restricted recreational vehicle parking lot on a golf cart after he finished driving his racecar when Hutchinson stopped him and asked him for credentials.

“He was supposed to have a hard card that would let him proceed through that entrance,” Hutchinson told Local 10. “(Kahne said) that he didn’t have it and he didn’t need it because he was a driver. I told him I had been instructed specifically to ask for the hard card and not to let anybody in.”

The report said Kahne then got out of the golf cart and tried to walk through the gate. When Hutchinson blocked the entrance and asked Kahne for credentials again, Kahne pushed Hutchinson to the ground, according to the report.

“He was not pushed once, but pushed two times,” said Russell Dohan, an attorney with Goldberg & Dohan. “The first time he was pushed, he did not fall. He remained polite and calm. The second time he was pushed by Mr. Kahne, he did fall.”

The report said Kahne was stopped and detained by law enforcement officers who witnessed the incident. Several of the witnesses said in their sworn affidavits that Kahne was “unremorseful” and showed “no respect toward authority.”

He was arrested later that day and released on the signed condition that he appears in court. His arraignment is scheduled for January.

Although the report said Hutchinson was treated at the speedway’s medical facility for minor bruises and abrasions, Dohan said his client was also taken to Homestead Hospital and has been receiving treatment for his back injuries by an orthopedic surgeon ever since.

Asked if he would consider dropping the suit if Kahne apologized, Hutchinson said he couldn’t say right now. He also said he would have filed a lawsuit even if someone else had pushed him.

“Yes, why not?” Hutchinson said. “I mean, if I felt that I was injured while performing my duties, yes.”

Dohan said Hutchinson hasn’t been able to return to work because of his injuries and has “been getting attacked” by NASCAR fans on Web site blogs.

Miami police and Miami-Dade County school officials are looking into how a 5-year-old kindergarten student at Morningside Elementary was able to leave the school campus alone Monday afternoon, Local 10’s Glenna Milberg reported. Less than half an hour after the school’s 3 p.m. dismissal, Isaiah Devon Laguerre was hit by a car as he attempted to cross Biscayne Boulevard toward his home. He died Tuesday at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center, where he had been listed in critical condition.As classes were dismissed Tuesday, the school’s crossing guard managed traffic in front of the school. Teachers and school administrators escorted students from the building. Parents and buses waited outside to take the children to their homes.

The school’s principal declined to comment to reporters, but Miami-Dade County Public Schools officials said its policies do not allow kindergarten-age children to leave school unaccompanied.

On Monday, Isaiah and some other students were scheduled to be picked up for a tutoring session off campus by representatives from a private company contracted by the district to provide tutoring services. No one with the district could say whether Isaiah was properly transferred from the care of an adult at the school to the care of an adult with the tutoring program.

Representatives from the tutoring company did not return phone calls.

The Laguerre’s apartment is located two blocks south and two blocks east of the elementary school. Any route from the school to the apartment crosses Biscayne Boulevard, typically congested during weekday afternoons.

The Laguerre family’s neighbors said Isaiah’s mother is raising three children, including an infant, and is with them constantly.

“Every morning, I’m out here to go to work at 8:30, and I see her with the kids taking them to school,” said Daniel Ruiz, who lives upstairs from the family.

On Sept. 8, 2004, plaintiff Karim Khosravi, 65, a retired accountant, was climbing a ladder at his home when he fell and injured his back. He was taken to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, where he was seen and examined by emergency room personnel. He was admitted through the trauma service with incomplete paraplegia and started on a spine injury steroid protocol. An orthopedic spine surgeon, Hieu Ball, saw the patient that evening and recommended surgery to decompress the T10-T11 space, an area that corresponds to the lower back, if the patient did not improve by the following morning.The next day, Khosravi experienced profound weakness of his lower extremities and was taken to surgery to address a posterior-based stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal cord caused by calcium deposit. Ball performed a laminectomy, where the lamina of the vertebra is removed to relieve pressure on the spinal cord. He also performed a partial discectomy, the removal of herniated disc material, with fusion. Following surgery, he was a complete paraplegic and was returned to the operating room for re-exploration to rule out the possibility of hematoma/disc fragments. No cause of the paraplegia was identified.

Several days later, Ball performed an anterior spinal fusion with discectomy to remove additional disc material on the anterior side of the cord. There was little or no improvement. Khosravi developed complete paraplegia at T8-9 (the lower back).

Khosravi sued Ball and several other parties, including John Muir Medical Center, which was dismissed prior to trial. Plaintiff claimed that the initial procedure should have been done anteriorly and that the posterior laminectomy caused an ischemic event, blood loss to the spinal cord, that led to the paraplegia. At trial, he asked for a jury verdict of $2.5 million for past and future medical costs and $3.6 million in pain and suffering.

Ball argued that Khosravi ’s condition was not caused by negligent medical care, but by the fall itself, abetted by preexisting stenosis. At trial, the jury was shown a CT that had been performed in May 2004 for pneumonia that indicated the preexisting stenosis. It was compared to an MRI taken the day of the fall that showed the cord injury from the fall. Another MRI, taken a day later, showed decompression following the first surgery at T10-11.

After the fall, Khosravi was rushed to John Muir Medical Center with partial paraplegia. A day after undergoing surgery, he experienced a profound weakness of his lower extremities and was taken to surgery to address a posterior based stenosis. He was given a laminectomy and a partial discectomy and developed complete paraplegia. Several days later, he underwent an anterior spinal fusion with discectomy to remove additional disc material on the anterior side of the cord. There was little or no improvement. Defendant claimed the paraplegia was caused by plaintiff’ fall, abetted by preexisting stenosis.

A jury found defendant not liable for plaintiff’s injuries.

A garbage truck crashed into an overpass in the U.S. state of Ohio Tuesday, killing the driver and rupturing a gas line that forced homes to be evacuated.The truck hit the understructure of the bridge and gashed a natural gas line, said Fire Chief Rich Brannon of the Vienna Volunteer Fire Department. Several other vehicles were involved in the crash.

The crash scene “looks like pickup sticks,” Brannon said.

Holes and bent beams in the bridge created potentially unsafe conditions because there are gas lines in it, the Ohio Department of Transportation said.

It was not immediately clear how many people were evacuated. The gas was shut off and people were permitted to return to their homes.

The crash happened at 4:39 a.m. about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Cleveland.

Lawyers for a motorcyclist’s daughter have sued a woman who drove the wrong way on State Road 50, causing an accident that killed him.

The lawsuit, filed by Jay Kauffman’s fiance, Brandi Keogh, on behalf of their infant daughter, Kyla, alleges negligence by Lillian May Miller and seeks to recover “probable income” that the project designer would have earned if he had survived the crash Sept. 11, 2006.

Miller, 56, pleaded guilty earlier this year to vehicular homicide.

She told investigators she was tired from baby-sitting a rambunctious grandson all weekend.

Despite her plea in the criminal case, Miller denied negligence in the accident, according to a response filed in Circuit Court.

Neither she nor her lawyer, Kevin Knight, could be reached for comment.

The response “adds insult to injury,” said Jason Odom, lawyer for Keogh and Kauffman’s daughter, Kyla, who was 3 weeks old when her father died.

“We’re trying to achieve justice for Brandi and Kyla,” said Odom, an associate with Gould Cooksey Fennell in Vero Beach.

In a handwritten statement to Groveland police, Miller said she left home without her glasses to drive to a convenience store for coffee and cigarettes about 5:30 a.m. Her license required her to wear corrective lenses.

She turned right from Timber Village Road and headed west in the eastbound lanes of S.R. 50.

The police investigation said Kauffman, 28, headed to work from his home in Groveland, was traveling about 55 mph, the posted speed on the four-lane divided highway.

Police theorized he may not have seen the wrong-way car, a 1988 Mercury Grand Marquis, because of a slight crest in the roadway. He was struck head-on.

Investigators said Kauffman was wearing a helmet but died two hours later at South Lake Hospital of severe internal injuries.

Miller was sentenced in March by Circuit Judge Mark Nacke to serve 120 hours of community service and 10 years of probation. The judge also ordered her to pay $5,341 to Mark and Glenda Kauffman of Groveland, reimbursing them the cost of their son’s funeral expenses.

When Angela Silva looks at her left forearm, she is both empowered and sickened by the deep scars. They are the permanent reminders of how a mother saved her baby from a vicious pit bull attack.”These are my battle scars,” Silva said, glancing down at the purplish marks that run down from her elbow. “I’m proud I was able to save my son’s life. But they’re also a reminder of people’s ignorance and what happened to me that day. I know everything happens for a reason. But I’m just trying to find a reason for this.”

It’s been almost four months since Swisher, the pit bull from next door, charged into Silva’s garage in Fremont as she was cleaning out her car and lunged for 7-month-old Thomas Jr. Thinking quickly, she hid T.J. in a garbage can to protect him and used her left arm as a shield. That horrific moment comes back each time a stranger stares at her gashes, or when it takes what seems like forever to click on hoop earrings or change T.J.’s diapers, relying mostly on her one good hand.

The image of Swisher chomping down, again and again, is almost always there. It’s too difficult to discuss it with her 12-year-old daughter, Julesa, who called 9-1-1 and wrapped her mother’s bloody arm in towels after two contractors, power tools in hand, ran across the street to shoo away the dog.

Silva, 32, still doesn’t know whether she’ll regain complete use of her left wrist and hand, or whether her months when the swelling goes down and her surgeon will decide whether he can repair her tendons. For now, her doctor has warned her not to drive.

While Silva considers herself a fighter with a positive attitude, she is haunted by fears she can’t shake.

She has yet to take a walk outside. She moved several neighborhoods away to get away from the dog’s owners. She gets fresh air by sitting on her porch swing, surrounded by a new wooden fence that her boyfriend, Tom Ekman, built.

“She used to be really, really outgoing,” said her father, Mike Silva, 61. “Now she’s a little more cautious, I’m not sure if she’s going to get back to her old self. If she does, it’ll take a while.”

Sleep isn’t the same any more, either. Her dreams are filled with visions of mad dogs.

And her financial situation is a mess. The medical bills are piling up, and she’s unsure of how she’ll pay them.

Silva hasn’t been able to return to her job teaching special education for the Fremont Unified School District. And because she is part time, she isn’t covered by the district’s health insurance.

In the days after the attack, the community raised $12,000 for her. But that money was quickly spent. Half was spent on a round of hospital expenses, the rest on moving away from Swisher’s owners, who are facing three felony charges.

The dog’s owners, Charles Shelby Jr., 27, and Kristi Willis, 24, are scheduled to appear in court Thursday. They face two felony counts of failure to control their animal which caused serious injury and one count of conspiracy because they allegedly hid Swisher for two days after the attack.

The maximum penalty is three years in prison. Authorities euthanized Swisher shortly after he was found.

Neither Willis nor Shelby returned a note on their door seeking comment. Shelby’s attorney, Susan Farrow, from the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office, didn’t return phone calls. Willis’ lawyer, Cory Fuller, declined to say much about the case.

Silva intends to sue Willis’ insurance company because Willis was supposed to have taken out a policy on the dog after police deemed Swisher dangerous last spring when it attacked another neighbor.

Looking at her scars reminds Silva about the good and bad in people, too. While she is bitter about what happened, she is also heartened by the kindness of family, friends and strangers. Colleagues from Irvington High School still bring her meals once a week. Her father quit his job as a driver for a senior center to watch T.J. while she goes to Silver Creek Fitness and Physical Therapy — she’s the clinic’s first pro bono client — three times a week.

And as the holidays roll around, Silva insists she’s not going to feel sorry for herself. Instead, she’s focusing on the good things. Her boyfriend tells her each day what a hero she is. Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman sent her a bravery award. And, most importantly to her, T.J. survived without a scratch.

“This year, Christmas is going to be different,” she said. “But not for the worse, actually, for the better. I see things in a new light. Every day is a gift.”