Panama City Florida Injury Lawyer Blog

Recent statistics show that three out of four car seats for children are not used correctly to give optimum protection. Protecting children is a high priority for parents, so why are so many child safety seats in cars used incorrectly?

Car seat manufacturers do a poor job of educating and training parents to properly secure their child's seat inside their vehicles. Frankly, they are more interested in selling the seats than they are in seeing that they are used correctly. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is helping parents to keep their children from being among the thousands of children who are injured or killed each year because they aren't properly secured in their child seat. NHTSA suggests that parents should have their car seats initially installed or inspected at a child safety seat inspection station.

Common problems fall into three groups.

1. Parents are confused about how to correctly install their child's seat.


2. Parents do not realize that not all vehicles and child seats are created equally and that not every child's seat fits correctly in every vehicle.


3. Parents do not realize their vehicle is equipped with a LATCH system or don't understand how to use LATCH.

LATCH stands for lower anchors and tethers for children. The LATCH system has made installing child safety seats easier and safer. LATCH is required on all child safety seats and most vehicles manufactured after September 1, 2002. I urge you to throw away seats manufactured before that date that you may have been given by family members or friends.

LATCH-equipped child seats fasten directly to the seat using lower anchors and a tether anchor. The lower anchor straps are attached to the rear of the child safety seat. An upper tether strap is located at the top rear of convertible seats, forward facing seats, and combination seats. The rear seat is universally considered the safest place for children of any age to ride. If possible, they should be placed in the rear center seat location which is furthest from all possible collision sites within the vehicle.

An old saying advises us that "one can be penny wise but pound foolish." In the tough economic environment today, hardly anyone questions the need to save money. We save our own money, and we expect governments to do the same. But when the government tries to save money, a balance has to be struck between the value of reducing its debt and the hardship it can inflict on its people.

A case in point is the work done by the Legal Services Corporation that has legal aid clinics for indigent people in the various states. Indigents are people who need legal services but don't have the money to pay for them. Many of us practicing law give countless hours at no charge every year to people who need help, but we can't do everything. That's where the Legal Aid Corporation comes in to provide care to many others who need it. It gets funding from state bar associations and from the federal and state governments.

Congress is now considering a proposal to strip seventy million dollars from Legal Services. The Wisconsin governor who just pushed through the law eliminating collective bargaining for public employees has proposed a serious reduction in Wisconsin's funding for legal services. Texas' current plan is to cut twenty three million dollars from legal aid funding. What will be the effect of cuts like these that most states, including Florida, are considering? Hardship, and maybe violence. If people don't have access to the courts, there's only one way left for them to settle disputes, the way it was done in the old days by fists, knives, or long, long ago, by swords. That would have its own costs measured in medical bills, criminal prosecutions, and housing the guilty in prisons.

So one has to ask, how wise is it to cut legal aid funding and to inflict hardship on the backs of those who need but can't afford legal help like an abused wife, a legal immigrant just getting a start, or a bedridden cancer victim whose home is being foreclosed? Now, the issue is before you to consider. You decide.

Every year at this time, the legislature, whether in Florida, Alabama, or Timbucktu, considers bills designed to limit somebody's responsibility for their carelessness that hurts others in car accidents, in nursing homes, or in countless other ways. Invariably, the bills' sponsors justify the proposed legislation on the ground that the beneficiaries of the legislation, typically a special interest of one sort or another, are entitled to relief from frivolous suits.

Let me tell you the argument against giving immunity to wrongdoers, and you make the decision about who is right. Since the issue is whether there are really enough frivolous suits that get through the court system to justify immunizing someone who might hurt you or your family from suit, I want to list just a few of the safeguards that presently exist in the law to keep the frivolous suits from succeeding. If there aren't enough safeguards, then, maybe the special interest legislation is appropriate. However, if enough do exist, one has to question whether the special interests' lobbyists have been too effective in trying to change laws to protect their negligent clients.

First, in both the federal and state court systems, every defendant has the right to move for summary judgment. If the judge grants the motion, the case is thrown out of court before trial. Summary judgment is granted if there is no material fact entitling the injured person to a verdict. Judges take these motions seriously and routinely toss out cases that don't have merit. Second, various laws impose serious sanctions on lawyers who file frivolous cases.

In Florida, Chapter 57 of the statutes states that if a lawyer knowingly files a frivolous case, that is, one not supported by the law or facts, that lawyer and his client must pay the other side's attorney's fee and costs. Similarly, in the federal court system, Rule 11 is a powerful tool to deter the filing of frivolous cases. As with Florida's chapter 57, the lawyer filing a nonmeritorious case is in serious trouble.

Now, armed with this knowledge, you can decide if the legislature would be right to give additional immunities that would aid special interests to avoid legitimate responsibility for injuries they cause.

Single car accidents seem to result in more fatalities than other types of accidents, so, generally, we can't ask the driver what happened. We reconstruct the accident by looking at witness marks on the wrecked vehicle, physical marks on the road, and pieces of evidence that must be collected quickly after a wreck to avoid their loss. If days and weeks pass, they can be lost, so early, careful investigation is essential.

Often, single car accidents are caused by product liability defects. Badly manufactured tires that de-tread, seatbelts that don't work, door latches that fail when they shouldn't, and roofs that collapse and intrude into the occupant space. These are typically design or manufacturing defects that cause serious injuries and deaths. Over eighty percent of the product liability claims I investigate are single vehicle accidents.

A red flag that usually tips families off to have an accident investigated pops up when the occupant receives injuries greater than would be expected from the severity of the wreck. One case that I remember so well is the death of a woman in her 40s from a fairly minor accident. Her car door popped open, and she was partially ejected, held in place only by her seatbelt. But she extended far enough outside the vehicle that when the car rotated from the impact against an obstacle, the open door slammed on her.

In a crash test later conducted by the manufacturer after I filed suit for the door latch failure, it tried to show that its latch would hold the door closed at the speed and angle at which the accident occurred. I inspected the crash test vehicle on hot asphalt under blazing summer sun outside Phoenix, because the manufacturer didn't want me to have the comfort of its air conditioned test facility a hundred feet away. Careful examination over some hours revealed that the test was conducted with the door being bolted to the adjacent B-pillar. The case settled highly in favor of my client, the driver's husband.

The moral of this story is this. When you hear of a single vehicle accident, don't assume that the driver caused the wreck or the injuries that occurred. Investigate, especially if the victim is your family member.