If you’re planning on filing a lawsuit, you probably have what you believe to be evidence that you were wronged in some regard. Understanding evidence, however, does take some real legal knowledge. In fact, you may find that, upon meeting with your attorney, they don’t really believe that the things you consider to be evidence […]
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Police Sued Over Privacy Violations
CNN reported that a police department in Washington is facing a lawsuit over violating the rights of inmates. The reporting details that 11 women and 1 man are suing a police department over alleged instances where the inmates—who were all arrested on suspicion of drunk driving—were recorded while they were undressing and using the toilet. […]
Frivolous Lawsuits Get too Much Publicity
The idea behind a lawsuit is to give a person who was wronged because of another person’s negligence away to get compensated. This can include suing manufacturers for putting dangerous products out on the market when they should’ve known better, suing motorists who are prone to driving dangerously and end up hurting or killing someone […]
Dog Bites and Liability
Unfortunately, many dog owners are not responsible with their animals. In fact, it’s quite reasonable to argue that the biggest cause of dog bites has nothing to do with dogs, but with the people who are in charge of taking care of those dogs. There are differences on a state-by-state basis as to how much […]
Daycare Worker Arrested for Raping Children
For parents with children in daycare, a nightmare scenario seems to be unfolding in Ohio. According to NewsOK, a daycare worker has been arrested on two counts of rape. The woman, according to the article, had engaged in sexual conduct with an infant and made a video of herself doing it. Police claim that they […]
Class Action Against LinkedIn Reveals Importance of TOS
If you’ve gotten emails that appear to be from a friend of yours but that were actually from LinkedIn giving a pitch for the website, you’re not alone. In fact, a lawsuit has been filed against the business social networking website alleging that the company breaks into email accounts, uses the contact list to send […]
Can You Sue a Company for Mishandling Your Information?
Today, it’s not uncommon for companies with whom people do very casual business – cellular phone companies, Internet service providers, etc. – to have some very sensitive information about their clients. For example, Social Security numbers are routinely used as forms of identification and many companies require that information in order to open an account. […]
Why Do Personal Injury Attorneys Turn Down Cases?
There are instances when a personal injury attorney may turn down your claim. This may leave you wondering if there is any hope for justice but, keep in mind the fact that civil lawsuits are not really about justice; they’re about compensation. If you’ve been turned down as a client by an attorney, some or […]
How Do You Sue on Behalf of a Child
Some of the largest jury awards are actually handed out to children. These occur in cases involving medical malpractice during birth, car accidents that permanently damage a child and in other cases. Obviously, a child cannot enter into a contract or take any other legal action of their own accord. Parents are the ones who […]
Fosamax Linked to Eye Problems, CMAJ
The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) has published a study linking bisphosphonates with inflammatory eye disease. The study, published in April 2012, showed a link between bisphosphonate drugs and uveitis and scleritis. These two inflammatory eye diseases were linked to first time users of the drug, according to the study. Bisphosphonate drugs such as Fosamax have already been linked to side effects that have led to lawsuits.
The Diseases
The increased risk of inflammatory eye disease was only linked to first time users. There are other side effects of bisphosphonate drugs, however, that have been reported in many different users. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, there have been over 3,000 product liability claims filed against Merck, the manufacturer of Fosamax, due to effects on the jaw and other bones.
Bisphosphonates have been linked to decay in the jawbone, which can end up causing disfigurement and requiring surgeries. It is also linked to degradation in the femur, causing fractures. This has led to the many product liability claims filed against the company. Bisphosphonate drugs are generally prescribed to postmenopausal women as a treatment for osteoporosis. They are also prescribed for the treatment of Paget’s disease.
Drugs and Liability
Whether or not somebody who suffered a side effect from a drug has legitimate reason to sue depends upon, in part, whether or not they were warned about the dangers of the drug. Many product liability claims have emerged in the wake of side effects that people had no idea were risks associated with a pharmaceutical and, in some cases, the pharmaceutical companies were aware of the risks.
When people end up being injured or killed because of the risks of a particular drug and they weren’t warned ahead of time that starting a drug therapy would mean putting themselves at risk, they sometime sue. Some of the more famous drugs that have been the subject of lawsuits include Accutane, Paxil and Vioxx.
Filing a lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company because of having been harmed due to the side effects of a drug requires that you speak with a product liability attorney. A Houston product liability attorney will generally take these claims on contingency, which means that you don’t actually have to pay them anything if they fail to win your claim. This obviously means that your attorney isn’t likely to bother taking your claim unless they’re sure you’re going to win, which is a good reason to have confidence in your case if the attorney takes it.
You may be offered a settlement by a drug company if you were injured. Don’t take one of these without speaking to a product liability attorney first; you may be giving up an opportunity to get a jury award or a larger settlement.
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Car Wreck Emphasizes Dangers of Wet Roads
A Corpus Christi man hydroplaned into a sign, according to reports on KRISTV.com, emphasizing the danger of wet roads and losing control. According to the report, the man got off easy, only sliding into the sign and not needing to go to the hospital for injuries. The report details that the police did give him a ticket for failing to control his speed. Wet roads present unique hazards that one needs to be aware of whenever they are encountered.
Hydroplaning
Hydroplaning is a potentially deadly situation that causes a driver to lose control of their vehicle. It happens when you hit a patch of water and, as you travel over it, that water causes your tires to lose contact with the road. Hydroplaning can happen in different degrees. In some cases, only one tire will lose contact with the road, but in others, more than one tire, or all four tires, can lose contact with the road simultaneously.
When a vehicle hydroplanes, because it has no traction with the road, steering and braking have little effect. If this happens, you may feel your vehicle start to drift, you may experience a lack of control with the steering wheel or, if your drive wheels hydroplane, you may hear your engine rev very loudly as those drive wheels accelerate in the absence of any resistance.
A hydroplaning vehicle can quickly slide off the road, go into a spin or, if it happens to be a corner, end up going over the edge of the corner.
Stopping the Hydroplane
The difficult part about stopping a hydroplaning vehicle comes from the fact that your normal controls have no real effect. Slowing down may reduce the water pressure under the tires, allowing the car to gain traction again. Steering will generally do very little and, in some cases, it may lead to the vehicle going into an uncontrolled skid. If this happens, remember to turn into the skid, and then turn out of it once you’ve regained control. What you want to avoid is having the back end of the car pass up the front.
Being Safe
During heavy rains, be wary of road conditions where the surface is obviously wet. Watch out for the ruts that sometimes form in blacktop roads, as they tend to fill up with water and can create hydroplaning hazards. Remember that you don’t have to be going particularly fast to hydroplane. On the Houston city streets, the water can easily get deep enough at times to cause you to hydroplane.
If You’re Hit
People who drive too fast can sometimes end up causing hydroplane related accidents due to their own negligence. If this happens to you, contact a Houston personal injury attorney about filing a lawsuit to recover your financial and medical damages.
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Amputation Leads to Malpractice Lawsuit
A man whose gangrenous toe was not treated in time ended up having to go through a below-the-knee amputation due to the spread of the infection, according to a lawsuit. The lawsuit, reported in SETexasRecord.com, was filed in Jefferson County over an incident that occurred in 2009.
The lawsuit alleges that the patient went to a podiatry clinic with gangrene in his toe. There was no treatment offered at that time, according to the report, and, upon a later visit, the toe was amputated. The infection had spread and, a week after the operation, the patient was forced to have his leg amputated below the knee due to that infection. The lawsuit alleges that the patient’s condition was not treated in time. The patient suffered from diabetes, peripheral vascular disease and renal disease.
The patient in this claim is suing for the medical expenses he endured, pain, impairment, disfigurement, mental anguish and lost wages.
Malpractice Lawsuits
Right now in Texas, medical malpractice lawsuits are the subject of heated political debates. This tends to create a situation where most of the information in the media about medical malpractice lawsuits have to do with politics than it has to do with the patients who are wronged by physicians. This lawsuit has yet to be heard, but there are many instances when patients do not receive the care that they need in a timely fashion and who do, therefore, end up going through much more serious and disfiguring treatments to deal with the consequences of that. In many cases, these are the same instances where those patients end up hiring a personal injury attorney to represent them.
Are they Frivolous?
It is likely that some people are considering political dimensions when they are considering whether they should file a medical malpractice claim. A medical malpractice claim, in reality, is not a political thing. A medical malpractice claim is a patient’s right when a doctor is in breach of their duty to that patient. In some cases, the breach of duty is egregious and the patient ends up suffering horrendous pain, disfigurement or permanent impairment because of that malpractice.
Medical malpractice claims can help people who were injured by negligent physicians to recover the costs of their medical treatments, their lost wages, compensation for their pain and suffering and more. These lawsuits are oftentimes the only ways that patients have to get any compensation at all for what they’ve been put through.
If you are considering a medical malpractice lawsuit, talk to a Houston personal injury attorney about the matter. Don’t worry about what media or politicians have to say about medical malpractice lawsuits; if you are injured, they are among your rights and sometimes are your best option.
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Pradaxa Lawsuits Move Forward
Lawsuits over the blood-thinning drug Pradaxa will be allowed to go forward, after a federal judge’s ruling. There are in excess of 100 lawsuits pending at present and they are slated to be handled under multidistrict litigation. The drug’s manufacturer, Boehringer Ingelheim had attempted to get a judge to dismiss the lawsuits, but they will move forward.
The Side Effects
The principal side effect over which the lawsuits have been filed involves internal bleeding. Following an FDA investigation into the drug and prior reports of deaths associated with its use, people began filing lawsuits over the side effects. According to reports, this drug has been prescribed in over 70 nations. It is used in the treatment of people who suffer blood clots and who are at risk of suffering a stroke who have arterial fibrillation. USA Today reported in August of 2012 that there were 542 deaths associated with Pradaxa last year and that 3,781 reports of side effects had been filed in total.
Because of the large number of cases, this is being handled as multidistrict litigation. If you have suffered Pradaxa side effects that do not fit the model of the cases being tried in the multidistrict litigation claim, you could still potentially file a lawsuit over the side effects that you suffered.
Contacting an Attorney
If you have suffered unexpected side effects from a pharmaceutical treatment, the best thing you can do is contact an attorney. If the side effects that you suffered match an ongoing multidistrict litigation claim, you may be able to get onto that claim to get compensation for what you have been put through or to get compensation for the wrongful death of a loved one. If not, the attorney will be able to look at your unique situation and to determine whether filing a lawsuit would be an appropriate course of action for you.
Moving Fast
There are limitations on how long you have to sue if you are injured by a pharmaceutical drug. This is why it’s important to talk with an attorney as soon as possible. If you delay too long, you may miss your opportunity to sue at all. Even if you don’t decide to go ahead and file a lawsuit, sitting down with an attorney and letting them know your situation is highly advisable. They can at least let you know how long you have to wait to determine whether you want to file a lawsuit.
Remember that some drugs do have side effects that are widely known and that are risks associated with being treated with those drugs. Some pharmaceuticals, however, turn out to have deadly side effects that patients never knew about and, if this happened to you, seriously consider contacting a Houston product liability attorney.
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Texas a Dangerous Place for Truck Wrecks
Of all the vehicles on the road, the last ones you want to be in a wreck with are semis. Unfortunately, by living in Texas, you’re living in the state with the highest number of truck accidents every year. According to numbers spanning from 2004-2008, Texas led the nation in accidents involving semi trucks. There are surprising facts about these accidents that actually add to how disturbing this number is.
Good Conditions
Most traffic accidents involving a semi that cause a fatality happen in good weather. In fact, almost 85% of them do. This means that, even though most people are very wary around semis in bad weather, there is actually a lot of risk involved in being near these vehicles in good conditions.
Driving a semi truck in bad conditions is something that requires tremendous skill and experience and everyone likely understands that. What’s less apparent is that it takes a great deal of skill and experience to drive a semi safely in good conditions. The weight, long trailers and limited visibility in these vehicles make them hard to drive and even normal conditions can be dangerous.
Rural Areas
If you’re driving around Houston, you’ll see plenty of semis. If you’re in the rural areas around the city, you’ll see fewer, but over 60% of semi accidents occur in rural areas. When you’re out enjoying the beautiful country around Houston, remember to be careful. There are some things that you can do to keep yourself safe.
If a semi is riding up on you on a two-lane highway, try to make it as easy for them to pass you as possible. Even if they’re speeding, the farther you are away from them the better off you’ll be, so let them by. Slow down if you have to.
If you’re on a two-lane road and you want to pass a semi, use extra caution. If you’re alongside a car and have to abort a pass, it’s pretty easy. You just accelerate to complete it or brake to drop back and get back in your lane. When you’re alongside a semi, it might be much harder to do this, as the vehicle is much longer and you might not have time to take either action to avoid a head-on collision.
If you’re injured by a truck driver, talk to a Houston truck accident lawyer. The trucking company or driver – or both – may well have been negligent and caused your injuries because of that negligence. If this is the case, the attorney may be able to get you compensation from a jury award or a settlement. Never take a settlement from a trucking company without asking an attorney first.
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How Slip and Fall Injuries Are Investigated
Slip and fall injuries are among the most common and, unfortunately, quite devastating types of injuries that people sue over. These types of injuries can occur at private residences and commercial establishments. Lawsuits over these incidents are more frequently filed over injuries that occur in commercial spaces, though some residential property owners find themselves being sued over such injuries. If you have been injured in a slip and fall accident, you may want to talk to an attorney about it. They have resources that can help to get you compensation, in some cases.
What They Look For
What a personal injury attorney will be looking for if you want to bring in a slip and fall injury claim is an instance of negligence. This would mean unreasonably putting someone at risk by action or inaction. In a slip and fall accident, a common form of negligence is not placing signage on wet floors, causing people to unknowingly step on them and fall, potentially injuring or killing themselves.
If the slip and fall injury occurred in the workplace, the attorney may start looking for OSHA violations or other instances where the employer was negligent and where the employer essentially set up a situation where it was inevitable that one of their employees was going to get injured or worse. Attorneys can utilize experts to make determinations as to whether or not you were put at unreasonable risk.
For example, if you had taken a tumble down the stairway because the stair railing had broken loose, the attorney might hire a building inspector to see if it was ever up to code in the first place. They would likely also look into whether there had been complaints filed about it in the past as well as whether the property owner had ever taken action to remedy the situation. Attorneys are very good at investigating these matters, so you don’t have to worry about having your entire case mapped out in your head when you come into the attorney’s office for the first time.
Should You Sue?
The first thing you need to understand about slip and fall injuries is that they are sometimes extremely damaging. Lives are continuously lost in slip and fall injuries, particularly in cases where people end up taking a tumble from a height or when they fall on an extremely hard surface, such as the tile flooring used in retail establishments.
If you have been injured in a slip and fall injury and you believe that the property owner was negligent and that they put you at risk, talking to an attorney is a good idea. A Houston personal injury attorney will let you know whether your case is worth pursuing.
Call us for a FREE consultation at 713-771-5453
Doctor Gets Hit with $6 Million Jury Award
A doctor in Fayetteville will have to pay $6 million over a wrongful death lawsuit, according to SFGate.
This lawsuit is similar to many others, though still tragic. The doctor in question, according to the lawsuit, left a surgical sponge in the deceased woman’s body after closing a surgery. The sponge remained there for 10 weeks. This led to the woman suffering from infections and other ailments.
The woman was receiving the surgery to remove cancer from her colon and her rectum. Because she became ill after the surgery, she was unable to go through other cancer treatments.
Botched Surgeries
Surgery is far more advanced today than it was even a decade ago. Some surgeries that were formerly life-threatening ordeals are now actually rather safe, relatively speaking. There is still the potential that a surgery can go catastrophically wrong, however, and sometimes it does because of physician negligence. The unfortunate woman whose death spurred the lawsuit described above is not the only person to have an instrument left in her body following a surgery.
Some surgeries are not botched in this manner, but are incorrect for the condition that’s being treated or are the wrong surgery entirely. These surgeries, even when they don’t end up taking someone’s life, cause all of the trauma, distress and financial hardships that go along with having any surgery, and sometimes cause those things to a much more significant degree.
Getting Help
If you find out that something was done incorrectly during a surgery and it requires a surgical correction to fix the problem itself, you’re obviously in a very bad situation and one that was not any of your own doing. You’ll be out wages from missed work, there will be pain and suffering involved and it may mean that an existing condition doesn’t’ get the treatment it needs or that it actually gets worse.
Consider contacting an attorney if you’ve been the victim of this type of malpractice. The attorney, if you have a good claim, can get started on filing your case and make sure you don’t end up missing your window of opportunity to sue. A good Houston medical malpractice lawyer will be able to go figure out who was responsible for the negligence that brought you to suffer and can help you figure out how much to seek in damages. Talk to an attorney today; the initial consultation is generally free of charge.
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Alcohol Implicated in Deadly Crash
A deadly crash in Temple has police getting ready to charge the surviving driver with intoxicated manslaughter. The crash occurred on Saturday night, during the last weekend of September and took the life of a 35-year-old woman. She was pronounced dead at the scene after having been involved in a head-on collision with an SUV driven by a 21-year-old man from Nixon, Texas.
The driver of the other SUV suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was brought to the hospital, according to a report in ABC News. Following treatment, police are planning on charging him with intoxicated manslaughter and taking him to the Bell County Jail. In the article, it’s stated that police believe that he was traveling at a high rate of speed.
Drunk Drivers
There are many hazards on the roadways, but hardly any of them are as characteristically deadly as are drunk drivers. They drive unpredictably, they drive too fast or too slow for the road that they’re on, they sometimes swerve into oncoming traffic and they all too often take people’s lives. Drunken driving, of course, is a criminal offense. When somebody ends up losing their life because of a drunk driver, charges such as the intoxicated manslaughter charge mentioned above may be pressed against the driver. The victims in these cases have other options, as well.
Suing
A wrongful death lawsuit is a type of lawsuit filed by the survivors of the victim against the party whose negligence cost that victim their life. Drunken driving is, in many cases, something that a skillful personal injury attorney can use to argue negligence. If you ended up losing a loved one due to a car crash with a driver who had too much to drink, you may want to consider contacting one of these attorneys about filing a lawsuit.
There is nothing callous or opportunistic about filing such a lawsuit. When families lose someone, they may be faced with horrible financial hardships, there is the obvious emotional devastation of having someone taken from you in such an avoidable and pointless way, and the driver who caused all this hardship is liable, in many cases, for criminal charges as well as for the damages they caused in the financial sense.
Settlements
There are some families who find themselves losing a family member or suffering horrific physical or financial damages due to a drunk driver who are offered a settlement, sometimes because the drunk driver or their family happens to be wealthy. Never take such a settlement without consulting a lawyer first. Unless your attorney has helped you to negotiate a suitable, useful and respectful settlement, you should always consider such money to be go-away money. Talk to a Houston personal injury attorney so you know your rights as well as what you should do about the situation.
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Yaz Lawsuits Still Piling Up
Yaz is a hormonal contraceptive that has been the subject of many lawsuits, including an ongoing class action lawsuit. New lawsuits are being filed over this drug regularly, including one that was recently filed in Illinois and that will be added to the class action lawsuit. This lawsuit is all too familiar in its allegations. The woman suing is alleging that she was brought to real and permanent harm by using the drug and is seeking compensation. These lawsuits also allege that the defendants should have known how dangerous the drug was and that they were negligent in not taking action.
Dangerous Drugs
Lawsuits over dangerous drugs fall under the category of product liability lawsuits. These lawsuits, however, are oftentimes much more distressing in their circumstances than are most product liability suits. Bad drug lawsuits involve cases where people have suffered blood clots, strokes and heart attacks, in the case of hormonal contraceptives. Lawsuits over SSRI anti-depressants involve homicide, suicide, birth defects and more. These lawsuits are oftentimes chilling in what they imply: Sometimes drugs are known to be dangerous and drug makers just keep pumping them out onto the market in a quest for profits.
What if You’re Injured?
These claims can be very complex. In some cases, your injuries may be so similar to the injuries that the claimants in the class action suits are alleging that your case can be added to that class action. In other cases, you may have suffered entirely other injuries due to using the drug and, therefore, you’ll end up filing your own claim. Your attorney will have to have access to experts and all the relevant information about past cases and your own case to argue one of these claims successfully. If you have a good attorney, however, you may end up winning a jury award or a settlement that could help pay for your recovery costs.
Don’t Take It
Pharmaceutical companies are some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. Some of them rake in literally billions of dollars in profit every year on just one of their drugs. This makes it intimidating to go after them. If they’re intimidating you or, if you’re so convinced that you don’t stand a chance against them that you’re dissuaded from taking any action at all, talk to an attorney.
How Attorneys Help
First, attorneys are not intimidated by drug companies. The law doesn’t care how much money you have or how powerful you are. Everyone is equal under the law. If someone wronged you by selling you a dangerous drug and injured you because of doing so, an attorney will be able to look at your claim objectively and, if it’s good, they may take you on as a client so you can get compensated for being wronged.
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Three Car Crash Takes Life
YourHoustonNews.com reports that a car wreck on 105 W. left one person dead. The crash took place at approximately 7:30 AM the week of October 1 and involved a pickup truck and two passenger vehicles. At the time of the report, there was no hard and fast explanation for the accident – which apparently involved a head-on collision – but visibility conditions and road conditions were suspected to have played a part in the deadly collision. Firefighters at the scene had to remove the passenger door of one of the vehicles involved and part of the front of the vehicle to get the driver free.
Bad Conditions, Bad Wrecks
Even in a city with a relatively moderate climate such as Houston, the weather can get foul enough to make roads very dangerous at times. In the vast majority of cases, drivers are very sensible about this and slow down, turn on their headlights when necessary and give themselves a little bit of extra space between their vehicle and the vehicles in front of them. There are those drivers, however, we do not act responsibly in these situations and who end up causing crashes.
Watch Out
When the roads are wet, the braking distance for any vehicle increases. This is simply a part of physics and there is nothing your braking system can do about it. You have less traction on a wet road and, therefore, need more time and space to stop effectively. Additionally, wet conditions usually mean less lighting and, even during the daylight hours, that sometimes means that you have to turn on your headlights to remain appropriately visible. Be sure you follow this basic rule: if your windshield wipers are on your headlights should be on, as well.
One of the real hazards of wet conditions is the fact that they can make headlights and streetlights reflect off the road surface, making driving confusing for some people. If you’re having a hard time seeing in any regard, make certain that you slow down. If necessary, pull off to the side of the road and wait for the weather to pass. If you have difficulty with halos showing up around headlights and streetlights or if your windshield wipers are not functioning correctly, don’t chance it and try to make it home or to wherever you’re going. Pull over.
Negligence
Driving too fast in these conditions is sometimes a form of negligence over which juries will offer compensation. If you were injured or your property has been destroyed because a driver was negligent in not slowing down as much as they should have given the conditions, contact a Houston personal injury attorney. The accident may have been unavoidable but, in some cases, a little bit of caution could’ve gone a long way and you should never have suffered the injuries or property damages you did.
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