South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

On Jan. 19, 2005 at about 9 a.m., plaintiff’s decedent Kathleen Donovan, 34, was stopped in traffic on US 101 north of Ventura when her sedan was rear-ended by a pickup driven by Patrick Gallagher, who was in the course and scope of his employment for Gold Coast Erectors. Larry Johnson, who was in the course and scope of his employment with Weatherford USLP, had been driving between Donovan and Gallagher, but swerved out of the lane when Donovan stopped. Donovan sustained fatal injuries.

Plaintiff Constance Donovan, the decedent’s mother, sued Gallagher, Gold Coast Erectors, Johnson and Weatherford USLP, alleging negligence.

Gallagher and Gold Coast Erectors admitted liability but argued that Johnson and Weatherford were also negligent. Gallagher contended that he was driving behind Johnson’s vehicle, which blocked his view of Donovan’s vehicle. Gallagher argued that Johnson did not keep a proper lookout and did not slow appropriately, forcing him to swerve out of the lane when Donovan stopped. Gallagher contended that this was negligent, arguing that it compromised his opportunity to avoid the collision.

Johnson and Weatherford denied liability.

The parties agreed that the case should settle for $1,000,000 but could not agree on the contribution of each defendant. Gallagher argued that Johnson should contribute 25 percent, while Johnson argued that his portion, if any, should be no more than 10 percent.

Kathleen Donovan died at the scene of the accident.

Constance Donovan did not seek any economic damages, as she was not financially dependent on her daughter at the time of her death, but asked the jury for $3.5 to $4.5 million in noneconomic damages.

The jury returned a verdict of $1.2 million in noneconomic damages, apportioning 90 percent of the fault to Gallagher and Gold Coast Erectors and 10 percent to Johnson and Weatherford USLP.

Kathleen Donovan

$1,200,000 Wrongful Death: Non-economic damages

Five children and one adult are recovering from injuries after a Broward County Transit bus they were aboard collided with another vehicle in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office said the bus collided with a silver sedan. The injured were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

The accident caused traffic to back up in the area for hours.

No charges have been filed.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said one person was killed and two were seriously injured in a construction crane collapse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Friday.

The crane hit an apartment building, shredding a corner of the penthouse, before crashing onto the street below.

Bloomberg said seven buildings were evacuated as a precaution.

He said one of the casualties was in the cab of the crane and a second was on the street.

He said he didn’t know about the third person, and he didn’t say who was killed.

It was the city’s second deadly crane accident in 2½ months. Bloomberg called the latest collapse “unacceptable and intolerable” and said the city will investigate.

“We do not know at the moment what happened or why,” Bloomberg said, adding that the crane was inspected and “fully in compliance with building regulations.”

A witness across the street said the collapse sounded “like a thunder clap. Then, an earthquake.”

He said the entire cab came off the crane.

Another witness said there was “a big boom” and suddenly “everybody was yelling and running and calling 911.”

One man heard the “loud bangs” from down the street.

“It sounded catastrophic, and that’s from two blocks away,” he said.

A WNBC-TV helicopter in New York showed a large portion of the crane tumbled onto the building.

Firefighters were combing through the wreckage, searching for survivors.

One body was placed on a gurney and covered in a white sheet. A construction worker knelt over the gurney, gently stroking the sheet.

The foreman himself escaped injury because he’d gone to grab a sandwich. He then ran back to the construction site to take a roll call of his 40 workers. He said everyone was crying.

“These are some hardened men, but they were crying,” he said.

Officials said fire crews pulled other people out of the wreckage. Their conditions were not immediately known.

The accident happened 2½ months after a crane collapse killed seven people about two miles south, near the United Nations.

It demolished a four-story townhouse.

Last month, the city’s buildings commissioner resigned, under fire over a rising number of fatal construction accidents.

A high school football player is dead after collapsing during practice in Southern California.

Irvine police Lt. Rick Handfield says 15-year-old Dylan Bradshaw apparently had an asthma attack during junior varsity practice Wednesday at Northwood High School. A trainer took Bradshaw to the locker room, where he went into cardiac arrest.

The trainer administered CPR and Bradshaw was in critical condition when he was taken to a hospital. He died there, about 90 minutes after collapsing

Appeals courts in New Jersey and Texas have scrapped verdicts against drugmaker Merck stemming from some of the earliest trials involving its once popular painkiller Vioxx.

A Texas court scrapped a $26 million verdict against the drugmaker stemming from the first trial. The court found no evidence that Robert Ernst suffered a fatal heart problem from a blood clot triggered by Vioxx. He had been taking the now-withdrawn drug for eight months before being stricken in May 2001.

A New Jersey appeals court separately voided $9 million of the nearly $14 million awarded to John McDarby in 2006 by a jury in Atlantic City. The panel found that New Jersey’s Product Liability Act was pre-empted by the federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.

In 1999, plaintiff William Lynch, a roofer in his 40s, underwent several back procedures after suffering a workplace accident. One of the procedures, a three-level fusion was performed by Dr. Michel Malek. On July 31, 2001, Lynch underwent a functional capacity evaluation test, which determines fitness for work. During the test administered by physical therapist Debbie Sall, Lynch’s back was injured when he pulled a 170-pound sled for a distance of up to 50 feet.

Lynch sued Sall and employee Riverside Medical Center, claiming that he shouldn’t have been made to pull the sled in such a manner. Based on Lynch’s history of back pain, Sall should have added weight incrementally to the sled to perform her evaluation. Lyncha also sued Malek who settled before trial.

Defense counsel contended that Lynch’s injuries did not occur because of the weights. Defense counsel contended that Lynch suffered from “transitional syndrome.” This is a common risk for post-surgical patients. The plaintiff’s injuries were thus a result of the previous surgeries and would have happened regardless of any sort of testing.

Lynch suffered a herniated disc at L2-3. He had a discectomy at L2-3, with the implantation of a spinal cord stimulator. Plaintiff’s counsel sought $209,000 in medical specials and $2,043,000 in lost income.

The jury awarded Lynch $3,363,000 million in damages. Lynch previously settled with Malek for $1.7 million for a total recovery of $5,063,000.

William Lynch

$208,692 Personal Injury: Past Medical Cost

$291,308 Personal Injury: Future Medical Cost

$2,043,000 Personal Injury: lost wages

$410,000 Personal Injury: loss of normal life

$410,000 Personal Injury: pain & suffering

Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested that a drug company based out of Florida recall their dietary supplement.

The drug recalled is known as Xiadafil VIP Tabs and is manufactured by SEI Pharmaceuticals.

Drug Found to be Harmful

According to the FDA, the medication, which is typically sold in eight tablet bottles or blister cards of two tablets, was found to be potentially harmful to patients.

Xiadafil was found to pose threats to a patient’s blood pressure and can also cause other life-threatening illnesses.

The lots that are being recalled reportedly have an expiration date of September 2009.

FDA Warns Consumers About Dietary Supplement

The FDA is now advising consumers not to purchase the dietary supplement and claim that they are prepared to take further legal action if the tablets are not immediately pulled from shelves.

Even though Xiadafil is reportedly sold as being “all natural” the tabs supposedly contain illegal ingredients that carry many risks.

“Because these products are labeled as ‘all natural dietary supplements,’ consumers may assume that they are harmless and pose no health risk” explains Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “But this just isn’t the case.”

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On Oct. 17, 2002, plaintiff Janie Utsey, 77, exited a commuter bus and walked to a crosswalk at the intersection of Westchester and Morrison avenues, in the Bronx. While crossing the street, she stepped out of the crosswalk to avoid another pedestrian but caught her foot in a pothole that was next to the crosswalk. She sustained an injury of a hip.

Utsey sued the city of New York. She alleged that the city was negligent in its maintenance of the intersection and that its negligence created a dangerous condition.

Utsey’s counsel claimed that the city’s department of transportation improperly repaired the pothole some 17 months earlier. He contended that the hole was caused by the department’s failure to seal and fill in the gap with asphaltic cement compound, the proper repair material used for that purpose.

After the conclusion of Utsey’s case, defense counsel moved for dismissal. He argued that Utsey failed to establish that the alleged defect was created upon immediate completion of the department of transportation’s work, as required by recent appellate decisions. The motion was denied.

Defense counsel contended that the gap was created by wear and tear from weather and traffic over 17 months and was not the result of negligent repair work by the department of transportation. He also claimed that the condition was open and obvious and that Utsey was negligent for failing to see and avoid the pothole.

Defense counsel acknowledged that the department of transportation failed to use the cement compound, but he also maintained that it was not required to do so because the pothole was connected to the cement platform of a bus stop.

A city witness who performed the repair also acknowledged that he did not use asphaltic compound to seal potholes on cement. He claimed that the pothole was adjacent to a bus stop in a busy intersection and that using the compound would not only take too much time, it would also have stuck to the shoes of bus passengers boarding and disembarking the bus.

Defense counsel attacked Utsey’s credibility by focusing on statements she made that at the time of her 50-h hearing, usually conducted prior to the filing of a lawsuit against the city. At the hearing, she testified that she was carrying only a purse, but her hospital records indicated that she also carried a cane, which had gotten stuck. Her statements to hospital personnel and to her surgeon made no mention of the roadway, bringing into question where the accident had occurred, defense counsel argued.

Utsey sustained a fracture of her right hip’s femur. The fracture was addressed via open reduction and internal fixation, and she subsequently underwent physical therapy. About seven years later, she underwent replacement of her right hip.

Utsey’s expert orthopedist opined that the fracture and the subsequent hip replacement were causally related to the accident. The hip-replacement surgery, the expert said, was related to an over-reliance on the left leg as a result of the fracture.

Utsey contended that she required daily care from a home care aide, at the cost of $120 per day, and a nurse who provided care once per week, at a $160 daily rate.

Utsey sought recovery of her past and future medical expenses and damages for her past and future pain and suffering.

The jury answered a special interrogatory in the verdict sheet, finding that the city had created a dangerous and hazardous condition immediately upon completing its work 17 months earlier and that the dangerous condition was a substantial cause of Utsey’s injuries. The jury also found that Utsey was not responsible for her injuries. The jury determined that Utsey’s damages totaled $3.8 million.

Janie Utsey

$500,000 Personal Injury: Past Medical Cost

$800,000 Personal Injury: FutureLostEarningsCapability

$1,000,000 Personal Injury: Past Pain And Suffering

$1,500,000 Personal Injury: Future Pain And Suffering

Defense counsel has expressed an intention to move to set aside the verdict. He has indicated that an appeal is a possibility.

Pentagon figures show 40,000 U.S. troops have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder since 2003. But officials believe many more are keeping their illness secret.

Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker says officials have no reliable figures on how many troops have PTSD or how many have sought treatment for it after serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s because officials are encouraging troops to get help – even if they go to civilian therapists and don’t report it to the military. The 40,000 cases are only those the military knows of.

Many troops don’t report getting treatment – or don’t get help – because they’re embarrassed or fear it will hurt their careers. Marines and Army soldiers have been the hardest hit.

Spanish twins who were separated at birth through a hospital error – then reunited as adults through a fluke – are suing for millions in damages, as is a third woman who grew up thinking, erroneously, that she was one of the twins, a lawyer said Tuesday.

The real twins finally met each other in 2001. The case has been working its way through the courts since 2004. A decision is expected soon on whether the three women deserve damages, said Sebastian Socorro Perdomo, a lawyer for one of the twins.

He would not release the names of any of the women, who are all 35 years old.

Socorro Perdomo said in an interview that his client is seeking $4.7 million from the government of the Canary Islands, where the error occurred in 1973 in the city of Las Palmas. The other two women are also suing, he said.

He said his client was taken out of her crib as her twin sister lay in one right next to her, mistakenly replaced by another baby girl, and ultimately raised by the family of that child.

The other two girls were brought up in the mistaken belief they were twin sisters.

“It does not take a lot of effort to put yourself in the position of any of these people in order to understand the damage that has been done,” Socorro Perdomo said.

Of the three, he said his client – taken away from her twin sister and real family – is the most devastated. “Since this discovery, her world has turned a bit upside down,” he said.

“The first right of any child is the right to their own personal and family identity,” he said. “In this case, that right has been violated.”

The error emerged a generation later, through a chance encounter at a clothing store in Las Palmas.

A friend of Socorro Perdomo’s client worked in the shop. When a woman who was the spitting image of that client came in and failed to recognize the employee, the clerk was dumbfounded.

When the dead ringer came by the store a second time, the clerk began to put two and two together and arranged for the women to meet.

DNA tests proved they were identical twins, the lawyer said.