Articles Posted in Personal Injury

Attorney Matthew R. Arnold answering the question: “What can you sue for in a personal injury case?”

One woman from Atlanta learned first hand just how dangerous smoking could be. Though the case of Elizabeth Wilkowski is different than you might be expecting given that the danger she saw was not due to lung cancer or other conditions related to cigarette smoking. In her case, an e-cigarette she had been using to cut back on the real stuff exploded and lit a large portion of her living room on fire.

The wild case has received national attention after Wilkowski says she had her eHit electronic cigarette plugged into her computer’s USB port to charge. While plugged in, the device suddenly, and without warning, began shooting flames across the living room, burning a hole in her carpet and sofa. Wilkowski was quick on her feet and moved her pets away from the area while wrapping her hand in a nearby towel so that she could get close enough to the computer to unplug the faulty device.

Wilkowski said once she had unplugged it from the computer the flames finally abated. She has since contacted the store where she purchased the e-cigarette and informed the owners of the incident. The store says it has pulled all eHits off its shelves. A company known as Shenzhen Seego Technology makes the cigarette in China.

While Wilkowski learned a valuable lesson about the dangers lurking in supposedly safe e-cigarettes, the industry is a massive one with more than three million such devices on the market today. Though no one believes exploding cigarettes are common, there have been more disturbing incidents than many people may realize.

Within only the last few months, stories of fires started by exploding e-cigarettes have been reported in California, Oklahoma, Arizona and Florida. Several people say that their houses nearly burned down due to battery explosions that occurred while their electronic cigarettes were charging.

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Attorney Matthew R. Arnold answering the question: “Can I wait a few months to pursue a personal injury claim?”

A recent airline accident at the Bangkok International Airport led to a bizarre cover-up attempt that ended up creating worse media attention than the accident itself. The incident involved a Thai Airways jet that skidded off the runway last week seconds after landing. The accident was thankfully not too severe, with less than 20 people out of the 288 on board suffering injuries.

According to news reports, once the airline had successfully evacuated passengers from the plane, the company almost immediately went to work trying to hide their connection with the crashed jet. Within hours of the crash, maintenance men wielding black paint brushes were spotted painting over the plane’s prominent purple and gold logo. In no time, all the identifying marks on the plane had been covered-up. Thai Airways believed that this attempt at “de-identification” would help avoid thousands of damaging photos being circulated with the company’s logo being associated with a crashed plane.

Unfortunately for Thai Airways, they forgot that this is the era of Instagram. In the current time of instant communication, pictures of the plane before, during and after the cover-up were beamed around the world, subjecting the company to even more negative attention than the relatively minor accident. Passengers began Tweeting images of paint crews and noted how botched the attempt to hide the plane was from a public relations standpoint.

The problem became even worse when a Thai Airways spokesperson came out in defense of the cover-up and said that the actions were only taken in accordance with crisis communication rules of the Star Alliance network it is a part of. Thai Airways said that all Star Alliance members (including United and US Airways) are required to de-identify any airplanes involved in an accident. Almost immediately after making the claim a Star Alliance spokesperson flatly rejected it as untrue, clarifying that no such guidelines exist.

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Attorney Matthew R. Arnold answering the question: “Do I have to sign a release allowing the insurance company to get my medical records?”

City Council members in Raleigh, NC say they are examining the current location of bike lanes and whether the lanes are so tight that bicyclists are actually put in harms way. The reason for the examination is that some bikers have complained about being injured by “dooring”, the term for what happens when a bicyclist runs into an open car door.

To help remedy the problem, a local cycling organization, Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission (BPAC), suggests that laws be changed to say that it is illegal for a motorist to open the door of their vehicle on the side that faces moving traffic unless it is reasonably safe to do so. Though dooring might seem like a minor annoyance, BPAC leaders say that the practice can frequently turn deadly. BPAC says that they hope local lawmakers in North Carolina will make it clear that it is the responsibility of the person opening their door to be sure that the door has sufficient clearance.

BPAC leaders said that they are working at the local level to push for dooring changes given that North Carolina is one of only 10 states across the country without a dooring law already in place. A survey of state laws found that besides North Carolina, the following states lack dooring regulations: Virginia, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Tennessee and West Virginia. Even Alaska, where there are surely few instances of cyclists being endangered on congested streets, has passed an anti-dooring law.

One council member noted that cyclists must also have some responsibility for their own safety and use common sense to stay alert when they see an approaching vehicle has just parked. The city council considered the dooring proposal, but said that before they feel comfortable voting on the issue they would like to have staff gather statistical data on the number of accidents that involve dooring and how best to remedy the problem.

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Attorney Matthew R. Arnold answering the question: “What can you sue for in a personal injury case?”

A young woman from Pennsylvania has broken ground by filing a class action suit against more than a dozen men who were found to have viewed explicit images of her as a young girl. The victim of child pornography, Masha Allen, is now using a law that carries her name to try and collect at least $150,000 from each of 14 different men so far.

Masha’s story is an especially tragic one and begins when she was a five-year-old Russian orphan. Masha was adopted by a divorced Pittsburgh millionaire named Matthew Mancuso. Mancuso claimed at the time that he was adopting her to try and make up for the distance he felt between himself and his teenage daughter, when he was actually seeking to adopt a young girl for sexual purposes. Police say Mancuso, a successful engineer in his 40s, repeatedly raped and sexually abused Masha on camera, sometimes during trips to Disney World. More than 200 sexually explicit images of her were posted online and the FBI says they have since been viewed millions of times.

Thankfully the FBI located Masha back in 2003, at age 10. She’s now 20 and testified before Congress about how law enforcement failed her by never checking up on her wellbeing. In response, Congress passed a law that allowed for lawsuits against the sometimes-wealthy individuals who view child pornography. The law notes that victims are injured every time their images are illegally accessed, thus allowing even viewers and not just the actual perpetrators to be held liable.

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Attorney Matthew R. Arnold answering the question: “What can you sue for in a personal injury case?”

Though the issue may have slipped the minds of many people, the Toyota sudden acceleration case is back in the news as a federal judge this week finally approved a $1.6 billion settlement with the automaker. The approval was formally announced Friday in a major class-action lawsuit filed against Toyota.

The suit was filed to ensure that vehicle owners who suffered financial harm due to the recall were compensated. The settlement means that anyone who sold their vehicle at a loss through trade-in and resale programs will receive money from Toyota, a number ranging anywhere between $125 and $10,000, depending on the amount of depreciation.

The settlement marks the end of one major string of lawsuits against Toyota that began in in 2010. However, the recent settlement does not represent the end of all litigation surrounding the sudden acceleration issue meaning Toyota still faces potential billions more in payouts. The recent settlement does not cover those who suffered injuries or died as a result of the defect, likely even more expensive cases.

Another part of the settlement agreement means that Toyota will have to install safety upgrades in 3.2 million vehicles. The company will also create two $250 million funds to pay owners who are not eligible for safety upgrades and those who sold their cars at a loss. The terms of the settlement agreement also means that Toyota will pay $30 million for automotive safety research regarding unintended acceleration. Finally, the company agreed to create a special customer service program that allows eligible Toyota owners to have free repairs on certain parts for the next 10 years.

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Attorney Matthew R. Arnold answering the question: “May I choose my own doctor in a person injury case?”

Terrible news hit papers this week as reports surfaced of a deck collapse at an oceanfront condo located in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. The collapse occurred while some 25 people were gathered on the second-story deck watching the sun go down over the water.

Authorities say the deck collapse resulted in serious injuries to 20 people, one so severe the person had to be taken by helicopter to a hospital in Wilmington. Police say the injuries include broken arms, legs and ankles as well as serious cuts to the face and body. According to early reports, the condo is privately owned but used as a rental property and was rented to a couple that had friends over for the holiday weekend.

Officials say they are investigating exactly what happened and what may have led to the deck collapse, but early reports indicate that it may simply have been too much weight. When the second-story deck collapsed it gave way and fell 12 feet onto the concrete patio below. In many deck collapse cases, weight, structural insecurity, bug infestations and poor maintenance contribute to the collapse.

Local authorities, including the mayor, Debbie Smith, have said that the recent deck collapse should serve as a reason to spur a change in laws regarding deck safety. Smith says she has been fighting for years to make more stringent building standards for oceanfront decks, saying that the decks in seaside communities like Ocean Isle are frequently used by large groups and need to be stronger to reflect that increased use. Smith says that while local governments have tried to increase building codes, they have frequently found themselves stymied by North Carolina state law, which has much looser definitions for what constitutes a safe deck.

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Attorney Matthew R. Arnold answering the question: “What can you sue for in a personal injury case?”

A bad accident on the Charlotte Motor Speedway took place this weekend at the Coca-Cola 600 when a heavy nylon rope that was holding a Fox Sports overhead television camera fell from the grandstands and landed on the surface of the track.

The freak accident left 10 fans at the Speedway injured and three requiring hospitalization for those injuries. Officials say that two of the fans were taken to the Carolinas Medical Center in Concord and one was taken to the University Medical Center.

Fox Sports has said that it has not been able to identify the cause of the accident and says that until it does it will indefinitely suspend the use of the camera system. The camera consists of three ropes and two guide ropes that are used to move the camera back and forth. A spokesperson says the drive rope failed and then fell to the track. Thankfully, the other ropes were able to hold the camera in place, which spared fans from even more serious injuries.

The rope even caused problems for drivers when it fell on the track and wrapped around Kyle Busch’s car. Busch said he never saw the rope itself, but did hear a very loud thud next to his right front tire, thinking maybe the tire blew out. The rope caused his car to slow down until officials delayed the race to clean the track and tend to injured fans.

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Attorney Matthew R. Arnold answering the question: “What should I do if I have been injured by another party but I can’t afford a lawyer?”

In a worrisome press release, officials with the U.S. FDA have discovered potentially life-threatening safety issues at more than 30 specialized pharmacies across the country. The issues were uncovered after an investigation prompted by the tainted steroid medications that were found at a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy.

One frightening example was one Florida pharmacy where the FDA said it had discovered black particles in several vials of injectable medication. At another facility, inspectors found rust and mold in what were designated “clean rooms.” Still other facilities had sterilization issues or workers with tears in their gloves, all serious safety lapses that could lead to yet another deadly outbreak.

The series of inspections took place across the country over the last two or three months, the result of a major enforcement effort by the FDA that targeted small compounding pharmacies in the wake of the deadly fungal meningitis outbreak. The outbreak was caused by unsterile conditions at the New England Compounding Center and led to ore than 50 deaths and more than 700 people seriously injured.

In it’s statement, the FDA also revealed that several of the pharmacies targeted by investigators at first refused to grant access to the FDA, refusing to allow entry to their facilities or to view their records. Eventually the FDA prevailed, but the episode highlighted not only the deficiencies that exist in some operations, but the real challenge the agency must overcome at those facilities where cooperating with regulators is clearly not a priority.

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