Accident

Speeding truck driver jackknifes, flips truck on US 74, killing sheriff’s deputy

November 20, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question ” Is a tractor-trailer accident the same as an automobile accident?”

A Union County Sheriff’s Deputy was killed early Wednesday morning after a tractor-trailer jackknifed and tipped over, falling on the deputy’s car and crushing him to death.

The deputy—identified by the Union County Sheriff’s Office as Sgt. Jeffrey Wayne Greene—was sitting in the left-hand turn lane on westbound U.S. 74 at the intersection of S. Sutherland Avenue in Monroe when a truck came barreling over a low hill in the right lane.

The truck’s driver—Eddie Ray Weeks of Fayetteville-based Weeks Trucking—swerved to avoid striking a tanker truck stopped in the right lane, causing Weeks’ truck to jackknife as it slid forward, falling on Sgt. Greene’s patrol vehicle and partially on a Kia vehicle sitting in the left traffic lane.

Weeks and the driver of the Kia were taken to nearby Carolinas Medical Center-Monroe for treatment. State Troopers said Sgt. Greene was crushed inside his vehicle and died on the scene.

Weeks will be taken after his release from the hospital to the Union County Jail, where law-enforcement officials said he would be charged with misdemeanor death by vehicle.

Mayor, city councilman, fire chief charged with DWI, sued by victims of crash he caused

November 13, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “Can I wait a few months to pursue a personal injury claim?”

A former mayor and Murrieta, California city councilman is facing a personal injury lawsuit brought by four teenage cheerleaders who were injured in a rear end automobile crash on October 16.

The girls allege that the vehicle in which they were riding was struck by a pickup truck being driven by then-Mayor Alan Long. The cheerleaders say Long was drunk when he caused the crash. Long was arrested at the crash scene and was charged with felony drunken driving.

Long’s blood-alcohol content at the time of the crash was .08, according to the Riverside County District Attorney’s office. Officers concluded that Long was impaired after he failed field sobriety tests. Long is due to be arraigned on a charge of driving while under the influence of alcohol causing bodily injury on December 11.

The cheerleaders, who range in age from 14 to 17 and attend Murrieta Valley High School, suffered “severe personal injuries” that necessitated medical treatment and have caused them to incur medical expenses and to lose earnings, according to their lawsuit.

They were waiting to make a left turn at around 8:15 p.m. on October 16 when Long approached from the rear in a full-size pickup truck and plowed into the back of the girls’ car, according to Murrieta police Lieutenant Julie Hoxmeier.

Causation, foreseeability vexing issues for lawyers, litigants

November 6, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “Are the laws or rules applying to a wrongful death claim different from a personal injury not involving death?”

This may sound like a simple question, but did the person you want to sue cause your injuries? If so, were your injuries a reasonably foreseeable result of the person’s actions?

If not, you may be out of luck in your personal injury case.

The issue of causation can lead personal injury litigants and their lawyers into a labyrinthine maze of legal concepts fit for a law school-level philosophy course. While the issues and doctrines that accompany causation and so-called “foreseeability” may be complex, the practical day-to-day application of these principles mean the difference in who wins and who loses in personal injury lawsuits.

In many cases, causation and foreseeability are not issues of contention. An analysis of a recent Australian case shows how the issues can arise, however, even in cases involving relatively straightforward facts.

A driver’s negligence caused a motor-vehicle accident. A person injured his neck in the accident. Several witnesses testified regarding the driver’s negligence and a police officer concluded the driver was at fault. The issue of whether the driver caused the person’s whiplash injury was uncontested.

Spike in bicyclist deaths has two-wheeled travelers ducking for cover

October 23, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question ” If an incident report was filled out, do I have a right to receive a copy?”

Scenes and outtakes from countless television shows and movies have shown cyclists speeding past people jogging or skating alongside the sands of Southern California beaches. Many of these have featured the twenty-or-so mile paved Marvin Braude Bicycle Path that runs from Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles south to Torrance.

Cyclists may enjoy a relative safety on the seaside paths, but inland things have gotten downright tragic for bicycle riders. California saw 338 cyclists killed in collisions with motor vehicles between 2010 and 2012, according to a report issued Monday by the Governors Highway Safety Association. Florida lagged not far behind Golden State, reporting 329 cyclists killed in collisions with motor vehicles in the same period.

Bicyclist deaths nationwide increased by 16-percent between 2010 and 2012, according to the report, but Florida and California reported the largest increases in deaths.

Allen Williams, a scientist who worked at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, compiled the report. He observed what he described as “remarkable changes” in the profile of those killed in crashes involving bicycles and cars. Adult males accounted for 74-percent of bicyclists killed in 2012. In 1975, by comparison, only 21-percent of bicyclists killed were adults of either gender.

Two-thirds of bicyclists killed in 2012 were not wearing helmets, while nearly a third of those killed registered a blood-alcohol content of .08 or more.

Woman “virtually decapitated” by lap belt awarded $12.5 million

October 21, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “What if the accident was my fault?”

A 17-year-old girl who was “virtually decapitated” at the waist when she “jackknifed” over the lap belt in a 1996 Toyota 4Runner has been awarded $12.5 million by a California jury. If she had brought suit in North Carolina, her case would have been dismissed.

Toyota spokeswoman Carly Shaffner said the carmaker respected the jury’s time and consideration, but she remained confident that plaintiff Chelsie Hill’s injuries “were not the result of a defect in the 1996 Toyota 4Runner.” The jury reached the opposite conclusion after four hours of deliberations.

Hill—now 22—was a passenger in the February 21, 2010 crash in Monterey, California. Driver Aaron Corn, who was only 18 at the time and was driving while under the influence of alcohol, struck a tree while driving 30 miles per hour. The jury found that Corn was five-percent responsible for Hill’s injuries and that Hill was five-percent at fault for getting into a car with a drunken driver.

Dr. Robert Lieberson, the neurosurgeon who treated Hill after the crash, said the lap belt severed the girl at her midsection, and she was only held together by her skin. Lieberson and others testified that Hill used the belt properly.

Hill’s attorney suggested that Toyota chose to install the least safe and least expensive restraint system in the seat. Videos shown to the jury depicting dummies compared crashes involving lap belts against those with shoulder belts. Test dummies with lap-only belts jackknifed violently in crashes, while dummies in lap-and-shoulder belts remained upright.

Wife of N.C. inmate who died of thirst after solitary confinement prepares to seek justice

October 16, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “What exactly is a wrongful death claim?”

The wife of an inmate who died of dehydration after two stints in solitary confinement has hired an attorney to pursue potential legal claims, the inmate’s sister has revealed.

Prison officials accused 54-year-old inmate Michael Anthony Kerr of flooding his cell, according to an autopsy released in September. Prison staff are permitted to switch off the water flowing to an inmate’s sink and toilet if the inmate is found to have misused “plumbing facilities,” according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety.

Kerr died on March 12 after he was found unresponsive in the back of a van while being transported from Alexander Correctional Institution in Taylorsville to a mental hospital at Raleigh’s Central Prison.

It is unclear whether prison officials turned off the water to Kerr’s cell. Records obtained by the Associated Press showed that Kerr was placed in “administrative segregation” in February. He was cited twice—on the 21^st and again on the 24^th of February—for flooding his cell. Kerr was also cited for disobeying orders and for “lock tampering,” although, according to WCNC, inmates can be cited for lock tampering if they “repeatedly bang on the steel doors of their cells.”

Kerr was moved into “disciplinary segregation,” or solitary confinement, on February 25. Medical Examiner Dr. Susan E. Venuti, who conducted Kerr’s autopsy, said that she was allowed to read an internal prison report regarding Kerr’s death, but she was not allowed to make a copy of the report. She said the report failed to answer key questions such as when Kerr had last consumed food or water. Venuti could not even classify whether Kerr’s death was natural, accidental or the result of a homicide, given the lack of information.

Golfer who accused Eddie Murphy of inflating his handicap has lawsuit sunk

October 14, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “Can I wait a few months to pursue a personal injury claim?”

A 77-year-old Irish golfer who sued Eddie Murphy after a golf club told him he had a 13 handicap watched Ireland’s High and Supreme Courts sink his lawsuit last week.

The golfer, a retired insurance official from Dublin named Thomas Talbot, sued the Golfing Union of Ireland, the Hermitage Golf Club and Hermitage Officer Eddie Murphy in 2004 after the golf club sent Talbot a certificate showing he had a 13 handicap and was entitled to “General Play (Handicap Building).”

Talbot felt his handicap was lower. By assigning him a 13 handicap, he believed, the golf club accused him of cheating.

Irish Supreme Court Justice Daniel Herbert rejected Talbot’s claim. While the justice conceded that the words “Handicap Building” could have been interpreted by fellow golfers to mean that Talbot was inflating his handicap, “the words were only published in a limited form to a computer programmer who designed software for the club, including for handicap records.” The limited, intra-club publication of the words meant that it “enjoyed qualified privilege from being sued,” Justice Herbert said.

Man accused of sex assault of mentally disabled woman wins $1 million in defamation suit

October 7, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “What constitutes nursing home negligence?”

A four-year-long pursuit of justice ended last month for a former Orangeburg, South Carolina nursing home employee who was accused of attempting to rape a mentally handicapped woman in 2010.

Then-54-year-old Ralph C. Williams was charged in June of 2010 with third-degree criminal sexual conduct and abuse of a vulnerable adult. At the time, an employee at the Orangeburg Nursing Home called Capt. Mike Adams of the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety to report that she saw Mr. Williams on top of a 42-year-old female patient with his “scrub pants down and appeared to be starting to have sex with (the patient).”

Williams was acquitted of the criminal charges in 2012. As it turned out, he was the victim of false allegations lodged against him by Patricia Johnson, Josette Peppers and UniHealth Post Acute Care, LLC, an Orangeburg jury found. Johnson, Peppers and UniHealth were named as defendants in a defamation lawsuit Williams brought to clear his name.

Defamation, in general, is defined as any statement—written or spoken—that damages a person’s reputation. The statement must be “published;” in other words, the defamatory statement must be made to a third party or third parties. The plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit must prove that he or she was damaged by the alleged defamatory statement or statements.

“White lesbian mother” sues sperm bank for sending her African-American man’s sperm

October 2, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “What exactly is a wrongful death claim?”

A Uniontown, Ohio mother claims she and her partner must move out of their “all-white hometown” so that their mixed-race daughter will be accepted.

Jennifer Cramblett, described by the Daily Mail as a “white lesbian mother,” is suing the Chicago-based Midwest Sperm Bank because, she says, it sent her the wrong sperm samples. She said that she and her partner, Amanda Zinkon, picked a blonde-haired, blue-eyed sperm donor so that their baby would look like Ms. Zinkon.

However, when Cramblett’s order was processed, a clerk accidentally transposed the numbers on her order and sent her vials of sperm donated by an African-American man.

Cramblett said she and Zinkon love their daughter, but they are considering moving to a more diverse community. In her lawsuit, she complained that Payton—the daughter—“has hair typical of an African-American girl.” Cramblett said she must travel to “a black neighborhood” to get the girl a proper cut, “where she is obviously different in appearance, and not overtly welcome.”

Cramblett said many members of her family are openly racist. She said she did not meet a black person until she went to college and worries she is not up to the task of raising a mixed-race child, since she “has limited cultural competency relative to African-Americans.” Cramblett fears when Payton reaches school age, she will be the only non-white child in her class.

Marijuana now legal, so failed drug test not grounds for termination, employee argues

September 30, 2014 | AS Personal Injury Lawyers