Panama City Florida Injury Lawyer Blog

Employment and business losses caused by BP's oil spill are serious, of course, but those losses can be eclipsed by the human misery caused by cancer. BP's oil dispersants have been linked to cancer. Chemical dispersants were used by BP to help clean up the mammoth oil spill. They break up oil into smaller particles that ultimately move the oil from the surface of water or shores into the water column for ultimate distribution elsewhere in smaller concentrations.

Some 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico. And 1.8 million gallons of dispersant were spread by BP during the 3-month long ordeal. The dispersants covered the waters and shores of Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana. Five of the ingredients in the dispersants, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are linked to cancer.

Of course, BP didn't make this information public. It came from a Freedom of Information Act request by the Florida Wildlife Federation, The Gulf Restoration Network, and Earthjustice, among others. Their report, "The Chaos of Clean-Up: Analysis of Potential Health and Environmental Impacts of Chemicals in Dispersant Products" emphasizes the fact that some dispersants are safer than others. An Earthjustice spokesman said, "The testing (for safety) can't be done at the moment of the disaster; it has to be done ahead of time to avoid chaos." That meant that little was done to determine what dispersant should be used in this disaster to provide the utmost safety to the populations along the Gulf coast.

The medical problems from dispersants documented so far include loss of memory, seizures, severe abdominal pain, fatigue, irritability, and other neurological and endocrine problems, but, now, with cancer as a possibility, the stakes are higher. The fault may not lie solely, or at all, with BP. The dispersant manufacturers tend to keep secret the ingredients in their products, possibly because they know their dangers.

The modern 3-point restraint system was designed by my late friend, Nils Bohlin, for Volvo in Sweden. Nils was a great engineer who used a simple idea to save many thousands of lives. I enjoyed our trips together to auto safety conferences and to his farm near Stockholm where we would spend countless hours discussing seatbelt geometry and latching mechanisms. Unfortunately, car and parts manufacturers sometimes put substandard systems and parts in vehicles.

A case in point is that of a young man, who I represent now, paralyzed as a result of a seat belt latch that failed just days ago. His car went out of control at low speed, and he hit a pole. The latch came loose, and he ended up on the floor paralyzed. This is not a rare event. Just a week ago in a neighboring state, a jury awarded $40 million dollars in a similar incident. The seatbelt manufacturer's parts failed, and the seatbelt came loose.

When such a wreck happens, it is important for the people involved to find an attorney knowledgeable about seat belts and their correct design and manufacturing standards to investigate the case. Delay is dangerous, because evidence is lost if the vehicle is bought by the insurance company and sent to a salvage yard. The latch, belt, and attachment points and D-ring must be inspected and photographed before they are destroyed. Evidence of loading against the belt by the body is crucial to establish the fact that the injured or deceased person was in fact wearing the belt at the time of the accident.

I have investigated hundreds of cases involving seat belts and can say with certainty that preservation of the evidence is a critical component of a successful product liability case.

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.

Today's toys are not your parents' toys. Toys have grown in sophistication, but so have their dangers. Most parents have always had the sense to watch for small objects that might choke a child or sharp pieces that might cause harm, but today's toys feature unseen hazards. Now, the danger comes from lead, cadmium, asbestos and other carcinogens undetectable to the eye or small, innocent looking magnets that, once swallowed, can rip a child apart from the inside.

In 2007, 45 million toys had to be recalled. Between 2004 and 2008, toy-related injuries increased 12 percent. This increase has coincided with a marked increase in imported toys, especially from China. The U.S. imports more than 30,000 tons of toys every year from foreign markets, accounting for 95 percent of toys sold. Dangerous products are hitting the market, so during Christmas buying, you must exercise caution.

The vast majority of products recalled last year came from outside the U.S., maybe because foreign manufacturers are able to operate without facing the same rules of accountability that U.S. manufacturers abide by. Unfortunately, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is woefully under-resourced to cope with the flood of products entering our country. Until 2007, the CPSC had only 15 inspectors to monitor all ports in the U.S. for all products and only one employee to conduct safety tests on toys. The result of such corporate negligence and regulatory powerlessness is that dangerous products are sold for years before the public has any idea of their hazards. A Public Citizen analysis of consumer recalls found that companies waited an average of 993 days to inform the CPSC of defects, and the agency then waited another 209 days before informing the public. Four years are lost. During that time children die.

In this report, I cannot do justice to a description of how effective our civil justice system is in stemming this tide of dangerous imports by bringing lawsuits to make it too expensive for the bad manufacturers and importers to continue their activities, but I can tell you some things to look for to avoid dangerous toys for your children or grandchildren during the Christmas buying season. In a nutshell, avoid Chinese products. Look at the labels telling where a product is made. If it was made in China, strongly consider rejecting it. Those products often contain lead, asbestos, or other components that can be fatal. Products containing magnets are also horribly dangerous. Magnets can come off and be swallowed. Then, with other magnets that are swallowed, they cause constrictions in the intestines that can result in death. Also products containing darts and small parts like balls can cause children to choke. Be cautious when shopping for toys to keep your kids safe.

Most hip implant surgeries are uneventful, but last week I told you about problems associated with one brand of hip implants often used by orthopedic surgeons in this area and promised to go into more detail this week. Hip replacements are usually done to cure the pain of painful arthritis that occurs naturally or after trauma like that experienced in auto accidents. One manufacturer has had considerable trouble with its implants because of the way they are made.

Depending on where you come from its name is pronounced "De-pwee" or "De-pie." Either way, it's a Johnson & Johnson company whose product is a metal on metal design that has a cup that's too shallow for the ball. The result is loose fragments of metal floating in the joint and loosening of the implant. The loosening and the metal fragments cause damage that often result in another painful and very costly surgery to replace the DePuy implant with a better designed implant.

Patients who have the DePuy ASR or ASR XL models can have crunching or popping noises in the hip, difficulty standing or walking, hip fracture or dislocation, unusual fatigue, muscle inflammation or infection, and death of some of the muscle tissue around the implant.

That's not the whole story. Excessive friction between the metal cup and the metal ball release cobalt and chromium ions into the body causing, among other things, heavy metal toxicity or aseptic lymphocytic vasculitis associated lesions resulting in bone loss. Metallosis causes its own unpleasant consequences. Among them are spontaneous dislocation, nerve palsy, groin and thigh pain, fatigue, and intense pain at the site of the hip replacement.

An orthopedic center at the University of Oxford, England, found that benign tumors called pseudotumors can form around the hip prosthesis. Additionally, progressive bone deterioration is not uncommon. Metalosis can also result in muscle necrosis, that is, muscle death, around the site of the surgery. The release of metal ions in the blood stream, caused by the metal on metal construction of hip implants, is of great concern due to potential long term toxicology including immune system changes, chromosomal damage, and cancer according to researchers at Cambridge University. It is known that the metal ion levels from this type of prosthetic design are significantly higher than normal values in the body, and changes in the immune system to cobalt and chromium ions were in fact detected by researchers at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Surgery for a fractured thigh bone or other bones and accelerated future revisions nearly completes the list of problems, so if you have one of these implants and are having any adverse symptoms, it is in your best interest to consult with your orthopedic surgeon as soon as possible.

Hip implants are routinely done these days to counteract the painful effects of arthritis. What was unusual until recently was the failure of the implants. They usually perform admirably. However, enter DePuy, a Johnson and Johnson company, and things changed. It engineered, manufactured, and promoted a hip implant that has been a catastrophe.

This is not unlike the situation with drugs and other medical devices that were inadequately tested before they were put on the market or that the manufacturers delayed recalling after learning their products were dangerous. In the case of the DePuy hip implants, which are identified as the DePuy ASR and the DePuy ASR XL models, the problems are so bad that people who have gotten those implants are having to get another surgery to replace the defective implants.

The cost of replacement is many thousands of dollars, and the unfortunate victims of DePuy's and Johnson and Johnson's carelessness experience a great deal of pain with the corrective surgery. Unfortunately, those problems are merely the tip of the iceberg. The DePuy implants are constructed of 2 parts, a metal ball and a metal socket. That is, they are metal on metal implants. Other implant manufacturers make metal to polyethylene implants. The difference is significant. Early metal on metal designs of the 1950s and 1960s were encouraging in terms of stability and low wear but, as a whole, didn't meet expectations for design and manufacturing reasons irrelevant to their problems today.

As the early manufacturing difficulties were resolved, their popularity again increased in the mid-1990's, but a DePuy implant is different from other metal on metal implants. The DePuy design has an obvious design defect. The cup is too shallow for the ball. What happens as a result? According to researchers who presented papers at the 2010 meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, three serious negative events occur with metal on metal systems when the cups are too small. They are production of a higher amount of metal ions in the joint, an increased failure rate of implants due to the additional metal debris there, and less tolerance to suboptimal positioning of the implant by the surgeon. Hundreds, maybe thousands of these implants that were just recalled by DePuy a few months ago, are being worn by total hip replacement patients in this area now. This is of concern not only because of the profound pain they can cause but also because of grave health problems that can be caused by the metal ion release of the metal on metal construction. I will give you those details next time. In the meantime, if you want more information about what to do if you have one of these implants, call or email me.

Every year, without exception, we hear about tort reform as legislative and congressional sessions approach. Should we applaud or fear? I'll give you my perspective and some examples. I admit my leanings against tort reform, because I have been a personal injury attorney representing badly hurt people for many years. As a result of that experience, I have also been privy to the huge abuses of those huge corporations called insurance companies. They are the AIG's of our world. When AIG was bailed out by our government from financial ruin, it was known to be so bad that it had to change its name. Let's reveal it. Now, it's known as Chartis Insurance.

Back to the question, should we applaud or fear the cries by some legislators for tort reform? Well, let's go beyond the recent Toyota unexpected acceleration claims to the more recent broad spread salmonella infections from contaminated eggs. It's now recognized that the egg farms' practices were despicable. Feces, rats, and every other known form of contamination were present. It's no wonder that people across this country got deathly sick.

Regulation is crucial to a level playing field for consumers, particularly in this era of growing corporate power. However, regulation alone has never been enough. Consumer agencies like the FDA, the Consumer Product Safety Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have been swamped by huge workloads. They cannot keep up. Furthermore, lobbyists for the corporations are skilled at weakening and fending off regulations that would protect consumers. Against this, for example, the FDA's caseload by the mid-2000s extended to more than 11,000 drugs, over 100 new drugs a year, and products spanning medical devices to vaccines. It cannot do everything.

Another example of the inability of government alone to thwart, prevent, or obtain compensation for bad products that are rampant in the market is that during last month, I was a leader in obtaining a settlement of millions of dollars in a case, because the government was unable to regulate the manufacturers of the product, guarantee the safety of people exposed to it, or get compensation for the injured people. As a result of the inability of government to ensure safety, consumers are increasingly left with the courts not only to compensate them when the regulatory system fails to protect them but also to deter manufacturers from cutting corners in the future.

The annual tort reform crusade by manufacturers weakens our efforts for public safety. Strong product liability laws remain vital to public safety and health, no matter how passionate the political debate on tort reform.

About a million cribs made by Simplicity Inc. were recalled by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) due to a potential for entrapment and suffocation to infants. The recalled cribs were sold between January 1998 and May 2007 and include the models Simplicity Aspen 3 in 1, Aspen 4 in 1, Pooh 4 in 1, Crib N Changer Combo, Nursery in a Box, and Chelsea. There were also several crib models sold under the Graco logo including Aspen 3 in 1, Ultra 4 in 1, Ultra 5 in 1, Trio and Whitney.

The USPC determined the drop-side can detach from the crib creating a dangerous gap leading to potential entrapment and suffocation of infants. Unfortunately, because of this crib hazard, there have been several deaths and many injuries. Due to the crib design, some parents are installing the drop-side upside down, causing it to eventually detach from the crib end.

If you have one of these crib models, review the CPSC recall alert to learn how it can be fixed and how to go about it, which may include a free repair.

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