South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

On July 29, 2006, plaintiff Heather N. Mobley, 20, a medical records clerk, was driving a sedan on McCormick Road in Orange County when she was struck head on by an oncoming Hummer H2 driven by Javier Trevino. Trevino’s truck ran over Mobley’s car. She died on the scene.

Mobley’s mother, Rita Mobley sued Trevino for his vehicular negligence resulting in her wrongul death. She also sued parents Joel and Maria Trevino for negligent entrustment. The plaintiff alleged Trevino was driving under the influence of alcohol. .

The defendant’s denied the claims.

Heather Mobley died at the scene of the accident. The plaintiffs asked the jury for $5 million in compensatory damages.

After the presentation of evidence, but prior to closing arguments, Judge Sprinkel directed a verdict against the defendants, ruling Javier Trevino was the driver of the Hummer and negligent as a matter of law. The jury then awarded $15 million.

Rita Mobley

$10,000,000 Personal Injury: Punitive Exemplary Damages

$25,000 Personal Injury: Property Damage

$2,500,000 Personal Injury: Past Pain And Suffering

$2,500,000 Personal Injury: Future Pain And Suffering

After the presentation of evidence, but prior to closing arguments, Judge Sprinkel directed a verdict against the defendants, ruling Javier Trevino was the driver of the Hummer and negligent as a matter of law. The jury then awarded $15 million.

Rita Mobley

$10,000,000 Personal Injury: Punitive Exemplary Damages

$25,000 Personal Injury: Property Damage

$2,500,000 Personal Injury: Past Pain And Suffering

$2,500,000 Personal Injury: Future Pain And Suffering

When Patti Kiernan found out she had osteoporosis, she decided it was time to find a more focused workout.

The 61-year-old signed up for a fitness program at her Dallas gym that’s geared specifically for women with health problems. Kiernan liked the four-week Female Focus program so much she’s still in after two years.

“I just felt that this was the right way to go,” said Kiernan, who also began taking medication and saw her bone density improve after a year. “Plus, there were other women in the program who had the same problem.”

More and more clubs are offering exercise programs fine-tuned for people coping with a variety of ailments, said Joe Moore, head of the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association. He said the number of programs has grown along with the number of studies showing the health benefits of exercise.

Medical and fitness experts say that exercise not only elevates the mood and energy levels, but helps control weight - a contributing factor for many diseases.

For breast cancer patients, “being overweight or gaining weight post diagnosis is a huge risk factor” for recurrence, said Colleen Doyle, director of nutrition and physical activity for the American Cancer Society.

Her group and the American College of Sports Medicine are devising a special certification for people who work with cancer patients on exercise programs.

Julie Main developed such a program after she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 36 in 1993. She was inspired after her doctor mentioned that she seemed to be going through treatment better than other patients.

She told him one thing she was doing was continuing to exercise.

“He said, ‘Most of my other patients don’t do that.’ I said, ‘Well, maybe they should,’” Main said.

Now president of West Coast Athletic Clubs with five gyms in California, Main teaches other health clubs how to set up programs similar to her twice-a-week, 10-week program. Her free programs are done in collaboration with the Cancer Center of Santa Barbara and focus on strength-training.

“With cancer, people feel too tired to exercise, but if they exercise the fatigue is less,” said Christine Brown, the Cancer Center’s wellness manager.

In suburban Boston, patients are referred to the Dedham Health and Athletic Complex after they’ve been diagnosed with anything from heart disease to arthritis to diabetes, said Lloyd Gainsboro, co-owner and director of business development.

Sixty-day programs that cost $60 emphasize strength and cardiovascular training and are taught in an area of the gym with more carpet and sofas and fewer “spandex and beautiful bodies,” Gainsboro said.

Participants in the Female Focus program at Dallas’ Cooper Fitness Center pay $580 for an evaluation, eight training sessions, two lectures - one on exercise and another on nutrition - and a workout booklet to help them continue their routine.

Program founder Colette Cole said the evaluation helps her tailor the workouts to each participant and their capabilities.

The program appealed to 47-year-old Gretchen Montgomery, who was feeling some trepidation about resuming exercise after a bout with food poisoning and an emergency hysterectomy in the spring.

“I loved that it wasn’t a room of workout babes,” Montgomery said.

Ellen Orzel did two sessions of the program last spring, about a year after a double mastectomy. After the surgery and treatment, the 49-year-old said she was weaker and carrying 20 extra pounds.

“I was comfortable going in there, knowing I could tell her I had a mastectomy,” she said.

Orzel said she was less sore, stronger and lost about half of the extra weight.

“My whole upper body just really felt so much better,” she said.

Experts say such programs can also serve as a support group.

“There’s no substitute for the camaraderie that forms among those that know what the other is going through,” said Brown of the Santa Barbara center.

Dr. John Pippen, a cancer specialist at Baylor University Medical Center, said that he tells his breast cancer patients to try to walk three to five hours a week.

“To me, it’s killing several birds with one stone - preventing osteoporosis, reducing cancer risk, perhaps most important of all, reducing cardiovascular risk,” Pippen said.

And while joining a fitness club might help keeping up with an exercise routine, he said it’s not necessary.

“You can just start at your own front door with your comfortable walking shoes and away you go,” he said.

Federal air safety investigators say they hope to wrap up their work in a couple of days at the scene of a deadly weekend helicopter crash that killed four people in suburban Washington.

The crash, one of a growing number of air ambulance accidents that has prompted aviation officials to begin planning a public hearing, happened after the pilot twice radioed for help in foggy weather.

The bodies have been removed from the site, but the wreckage remained Sunday night, National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman said.

The medical helicopter was carrying victims of a Saturday night traffic accident when it went down around midnight in a suburban Washington park. It was the deadliest medevac helicopter accident in Maryland since the State Police began flying those missions nearly 40 years ago, and the eighth fatal medical helicopter crash in the last 12 months nationwide.

About 30 people have died in such crashes during that period, Hersman said.

Medical aircraft crashes have been increasing since the 1990s, in part because it is a booming business, fueled by the closing of emergency rooms in rural areas and an aging population, according to the National EMS Pilots Association.

However, the state-run program in Maryland does not charge for its services and has been known for its safety record. It has had just three other fatal helicopter crashes in four decades.

“We are the only operation in the country that has the multiple mission of medevac, search and rescue, law enforcement, homeland security,” State Police spokesman Greg Shipley said.

Killed in the crash Sunday were pilot Stephen Bunker, 59; flight paramedic Mickey Lippy, 34; emergency medical technician Tanya Mallard, 39; and 18-year-old Ashley Younger. Younger and Jordan Wells, who survived the crash, were involved in the traffic accident in Charles County.

The helicopter was on a roughly 25-mile trip from the traffic accident to the hospital when the aircraft radioed late Saturday that it would land at Andrews Air Force Base instead because conditions were “not favorable” at the hospital.

As they approached, the pilot radioed that he was having trouble assessing his surroundings. At 11:55 p.m., he again asked for assistance with the landing and that was the last air traffic controllers heard from him, Hersman said.

The chopper crashed around midnight, three miles from the base, Hersman said.

The NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration were investigating the cause of the crash.

Rescue workers found the heavily damaged chopper lying on its side, pinned under a large tree that had to be removed with a chain saw.

Hersman said this type of aircraft is not required to carry a voice recorder or data recorder, and this particular helicopter had neither.

She said American Eurocopter, which built the craft, and Turbomeca, which manufactured the engine, are helping with the investigation.

The recent increase in medical helicopter accidents has triggered the safety board to hold a public hearing on the matter, Hersman said, though no date had been set.

A federal investigation in 2006 found there were 55 air ambulance accidents from 2002 to 2005, prompting the safety board to issue four recommendations, including higher standards for medical aircraft and more stringent decision-making in determining whether to fly in bad weather.

Crashes in Texas, Wisconsin and Arizona, where two medical helicopters were in a fiery collision in June, have underscored the dangers of the medical flights. Some have questioned whether it would be safer to transport patients by ground ambulance.

Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, an emergency medicine physician who teaches at the University of Nevada and has researched accident rates of medical helicopters, said Sunday the Maryland medevac system has a good safety record, but medical flights are overused nationwide.

“We’ve just gotten into a situation here in the United States where we think that the helicopters are a panacea,” Bledsoe said. “And they are an important tool, but they are just a tool. We vastly overuse them, patients don’t benefit and they are expensive.”

There is a tendency to fly in questionable weather, he said. In many cases, the flights aren’t justified because the distance to the nearest hospital is not that great or the injuries are not severe enough, he said.

A recent state legislative audit faulted the police agency for failing to document maintenance needs and costs for its fleet of 12 twin-engine helicopters. The helicopter that crashed was bought in 1989, the second-oldest in the fleet, which is paid for, in part, by an annual charge on residents’ vehicle registration. It had been inspected Wednesday, State Police Superintendent Terrence Sheridan said.

State Police have grounded all of their flights until the cause of the crash can be determined. Other states and private companies will cover Maryland in the meantime, Sheridan said.

An aunt of Mallard, the medical technician killed in the crash, said she was proud of her niece’s work.

“I lost someone I truly, truly love, I’m sorry for everybody else’s loss,” Cheri Douglas said. “My family is truly, truly hurt.”

On Sept. 27, 2000, plaintiff Kimberly Kallestad, 24, occupation not given, sought treatment from oral surgeon Patrick Collins in Spokane after experiencing left jaw pain following a Jan. 11, 2000, sledding accident. Kallestad’s pain in part originated from a slightly displaced soft-tissue disc in her left jaw joint that was causing her discomfort. Nine months after her accident, Kallestad continued to have pain.

Kallestad alleged that Collins told her that his success rate with conservative, non-surgical treatment was over 95 percent.

Through Sept. 6, 2001, Kallestad underwent four open-jaw surgeries interspersed with multiple intra-articular steroid injections to both sides of her jaw. Kallestad’s condition worsened to the point of causing irreparable damage. She was diagnosed with chronic pain syndrome.

Kallestad sued Collins and his practice, Drs. Maxwell, Higuchi, Collins & Skinner, P.S., for medical malpractice, claiming that he failed to fully disclose actual surgical procedures accurately and failed to identify the known risks of such. He failed to inform Kallestad of the material risks of his invasive and irreversible surgical procedures. He failed to inform of various alternatives to such treatment, which did not carry such risk, and which may have resolved the pain and disc displacement over time absent invasive surgery. These arguments were further supported by oral surgery experts Daniel Laskin and Charles Syers.

Defense counsel contended that Collins’ treatment met or exceeded the standard of care and he provided informed consent.

Kallestad, who was an athlete, said that the “deep, debilitating pain” prevented her from leading a normal, active life, and as a result she was forced to relinquish her dreams of becoming a lawyer. She sought an unspecified amount for past and future pain and suffering.

Defense argued that plaintiff’s damages were excessive and that she was able to maintain a sedentary profession. The defense’s psychologist opined that there is no organic or medical condition causing Kallestad’s pain, which was psychologically induced. This opinion was further supported by the defense’s neurology experts.

The jury found for plaintiff, awarding her $14,877,525.

The West Nile virus season is on track to be the mildest in seven years, with less than a third the number of serious cases as last year’s total, U.S. health officials said.

As of Tuesday, there were 368 severe cases, with 18 deaths, according to preliminary reports. Mississippi and California were hardest hit, together accounting for nearly half the cases.

Most West Nile infections are reported in August and September, so health officials believe the worst of the season is probably over.

It’s not clear why this season has been so mild, said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s the fewest cases since 2001, when the mosquito-borne virus was still emerging in the United States and was only reported in 10 states.

Mosquitoes often pick up the virus from birds they bite and then spread it to people. Perhaps the weather in some areas of the country was not as favorable for mosquito-breeding as in years past, some experts said.

West Nile virus was first reported in the United States in 1999 in New York, then gradually spread across the country.

About one in five infected people get sick. One in 150 will develop severe symptoms including neck stiffness, disorientation, coma and paralysis.

For all of 2007, more than 1,200 cases of severe West Nile illness were reported, and 124 deaths. The peaks occurred in 2002 and 2003, when severe illnesses numbered nearly 3,000 and deaths surpassed 260.

A Delta Air Lines flight bound for Los Angeles has returned to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport after an engine indicator line came on minutes after takeoff.

Delta spokeswoman Betsy Talton said the light came on shortly after Flight 941 took off at 11:10 a.m. Friday. She says the pilot shut down one of the plane’s engines as a precaution and returned to the airport.

Talton says the Boeing 767-300 holds 262 passengers. She did not know how many people were on board.

The plane returned safely. Passengers were scheduled to depart Atlanta on another plane at 1:50 p.m.

A Cadbury spokesman announced Monday its Chinese made chocolates are tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.

Preliminary test results could not point out just how much of the chemical the chocolates contained.

China has been hit hard by a recent food safety scandal after melamine was discovered in baby milk powder.

Four deaths have been blamed on the tainted milk, and some 54,000 children have developed kidney stones or other illnesses.

Cadbury has not said if they plan to announce a recall.

A woman living in Illinois filed an asbestos lawsuit on behalf of her husband who died of lung cancer. Lorena Gilmore claims her husband, Franklin Gilmore, was wrongfully exposed to the toxic carcinogen while working for the 74 defendant corporations.

Gilmore filed the lawsuit Sept. 22 in Madison County Circuit Court.

Husband Exposed to Asbestos at Work

The lawsuit claims that Franklin was diagnosed with asbestos-caused lung cancer May 23 and died June 17 after being wrongfullu exposed to asbestos. Franklin allegedly worked as a cooper for National Distilleries in 1957, as a laborer for Crescent Forge from 1958 to 1964, and as a laborer at Caterpillar in East Peoria from 1964 to 1994.

Lorena claims that her husband’s exposure was foreseeable and could have been prevented if the defendants had warned him of the harmful effects and provided him with the necessary safety gear and training. She also claims that his disease is a direct result of their negligence.

Wife Seeks Compensation

Lorena claims that her husband’s illness and death has resulted in a substantial amount of financial loss. She is suing the defendant companies for the cost of medical and hospital bills, funeral costs and lost wages. She is also seeking compensation for the physical pain and mental anguish Franklin underwent before his death and for her own personal emotional pain and suffering.

Lorena is seeks $150,000 in economic damages and $150,000 in compensatory damages, to include the cost of the lawsuit. She is also suing Ferris Kimball Company, Sprinkmann Sons Corporation, Sprinkmann Sons Insulation and Young Insulation Group of St. Louis for punitive damages in an effort to prevent future negligence by the companies.

On Aug. 18, 2005, plaintiff Debra Matthews, 50, an unemployed developmental aide who was receiving disability benefits, attempted to board a subway train that was stopped in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue station. The train’s doors closed on her while she was entering the train, and she fell and sustained injuries of an ankle, her face and a leg.

Matthews sued the train’s operator, the New York City Transit Authority. She alleged that the train’s conductor was negligent in his or her operation of the train’s doors. She further alleged that the New York City Transit Authority was liable for the conductor’s actions and that it negligently failed to properly supervise and train the conductor. She also alleged that the New York City Transit Authority negligently failed to ensure that the train’s doors were safe.

Matthews claimed that the conductor failed to ensure that the doors could be safely closed. She contended that the conductor never warned that the doors were about to close.

Matthews’ counsel also claimed that the conductor was not properly supervised or trained, that the doors’ edges were not covered by an adequate layer of padding, and that the New York City Transit Authority failed to adequately maintain and repair the doors.

Defense counsel contended that Matthews’ counsel could not affirmatively establish that there had ever been prior problems with regard to the opening or closing of the train’s doors or that the conductor failed to make appropriate announcements. He also contended that Matthews’ counsel could not establish that the doors’ warning bells failed to sound in Matthews’ car or indicate how long the doors stayed open before they allegedly closed on her.

Based on observations of New York City Transit Authority personnel and a responding police officer and on admissions Matthews made to an emergency medical technician and a physician’s assistant, defense counsel argued that the accident was likely caused by Matthews’ intoxication. She had allegedly consumed about one pint of vodka earlier on the day of the accident. Defense counsel contended that this intoxication would have impaired her ability to understand and recall the events in question.

Matthews was transported to Long Island College Hospital, in Brooklyn. She underwent minor treatment.

Matthews ultimately claimed that she sustained an extra-articular chip fracture of her right ankle’s malleolus, which is the ankle’s bony protuberance; tears of the same ankle’s anterior and posterior talofibular ligaments; a tear of the same ankle’s calcaneofibular ligament; a spiral fracture of the distal portion of her right leg’s fibula; and lacerations of the inner and outer portions of her lips. Her lacerations were addressed via the application of 10 sutures. Matthews also claimed that her injured ankle developed effusion, which is a buildup of a joint’s lubricating fluid. She contended that she was homebound and bedridden during the several weeks that followed the accident. She also contended that her injuries prevented her performance of about three months of work.

Matthews further claimed that she suffers a permanent residual reduction of her right ankle’s range of motion, and she contended that she bears a permanent residual scar of a lip. She sought recovery of her past medical expenses, her past lost earnings, and damages for her past and future pain and suffering.

Defense counsel contended that Matthews merely sustained a sprain of her right ankle. He claimed that her right leg’s spiral fracture preexisted the accident.

The jury rendered a defense verdict. It found that the New York City Transit Authority was not liable for the accident.

Judge James Starkey denied plaintiff’s counsel’s oral motion for a new trial.

Shia LaBeouf won’t be charged with a DUI in the car crash that sent him to the hospital with a crushed hand, the L.A. County District Attorney’s office announced Thursday,  but the “Indiana Jones” star could still have his license suspended.

LaBeouf appeared intoxicated after the early-morning incident on July 27, and was slapped with the misdemeanor charges while still at the hospital.

“After reviewing the case, we’ve declined to file any charges due to insufficient evidence,” DA spokeswoman Jane Robison told People magazine.

The other driver in the crash, who ran a red light, now faces criminal charges, said Robison.

LaBeouf will report to a DMV hearing Friday to determine whether he’ll keep his driver’s license, a penalty incurred for refusing to submit to a blood alcohol test.

The actor, who sustained injuries to his head, left hand and knee, sported a white wrist guard at the premiere of his new movie “Eagle Eye” last week.

LaBeouf wasn’t the only one who got in trouble during the car crash. His passenger, “Transformers” co-star Isabel Lucas, was dumped by beau Adrian Grenier after he discovered she was in the car with Shia.