Blog - CGWC

According to an investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer recently, regulators often overlook neglect and abuse when monitoring and inspecting long term care facilities, such as assisted living facilities and nursing homes, ignoring signs of physical and psychological abuse, as well as outright neglect.

On Vietnam veteran with mental health problems was tortured for two months at a privately run nursing home. After one beating, he was hospitalized and called it a blessing to have been beaten so badly as it was his "ticket into a hospital - and out of hell." He had been savagely kicked, manhandled, and overdosed with psychotropic drugs. The couple who ran the facility also forced residents to do menial labor, fed them spoiled food, robbed them of their money, and beat them physically when they complained. Two residents died when they did not received needed medical attention.

State records showed state regulators investigated detailed complaints against the facility repeatedly over a two year period, rejecting the claims as unfounded. In Pennsylvania and most states, state regulators often miss beatings, neglect, and psychological abuse at such facilities. Bureaucrats often too easily accept the reassurances of those they regulate that residents somehow harm themselves or suffered from unavoidable accidents. In addition, inspections are often short and haphazard, as well as far too brief. Residents are often afraid to tell the truth, fearing retaliation by facility owners or caregivers. Operators and caregivers become immersed in a culture of cruelty, becoming desensitized at the care, or lack thereof, provided in the facility.

Reckless or negligent operation of nursing homes and assisted living facilities maniefests itself in ways that haunt any average American as inexcusable: malnutrition, dehydration, bedsores, weight loss, asphyxiation in bedrails or at unsupervised mealtimes, unexplained injuries, falls and even physical and sexual abuse. If you have a loved one in a nursing home or assisted living facility, always be vigilant to notice the signs of abuse and neglect. If a loved one is injured or killed in a nursing home, seek the advice of an experienced nursing home abuse and neglect attorney.

According to the Insurance Information Institute air bags can be dangerous and care should be taken to avoid air bag injuries in automobile accidents. Deploying air bags can cause serious injuries or death when small children or small adults sit unbelted. This is also especially true of pregant or small elderly drivers, who sit too close to the steering wheel in order to reach the pedals, and infants in rear facing seats. Defective airbags or poorly designed airbag systems can deploy without warning or at the wrong time or circumstance, causing serious injuries or death.

While the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration touts airbags for saving thousands of lives each year, by preventing deaths of drivers and passenger by 30% and 27% respectively, airbags can also be deadly. Until the automotive industry takes the action necessary to design better airbags, a little knowledge can help prevent air bag injuries.

Accidents involving tractor trailers involve many potential legal issues that are often overlooked by attorneys representing victims and their families. Issues such as the lack of compliance with federal motor carrier regulations designed to protect the public from fatigued drivers, excessive and unsafe payloads, poor truck or trailer maintenance, etc.

Likewise, families are often unaware that injuries or death may have been avoided by underride protection. Many large tractor trailers are almost, but not quite, high enough for a typical passenger car to pass under the trailer. When a collision occurs, this can result in the top half of a vehicle, and the occupants' upper bodies and heads, colliding with the trailer while the bottom half of the car rides under the trailer. Neither seatbelts nor airbags are of much use in preventing serious injury or death in such accidents. The front of the car doesn't collide with any portion of the trailer and the impact is absorbed by the windshield and an occupant's heads and upper torso.

While there are no federal regulations requiring installation of underride guards to design against the consequences of an underride accident, manufacturers and distributors of trailers are not free of the responsibility to sell a reasonably safe product. By failing to design trailers with underride protection, the sellers are placing defective and unreasonably dangerous products on U.S. highways. In Texas, a jury recently awarded $ 38.5 million for designing a truck without underride protection when one woman was killed and another sustained brain injuries in such an accident. Neither the jury nor the court allowed the manufacturer to evade liability by hiding behind the lack of government regulations requiring underride guards.

Recently, a national survey of teenage drivers revealed what teens do when driving, suggesting that distractions often cause accidents and, regrettably, tragic consequences for their families. While about 90% of teens say they don't drink and drive, 9 out of 10 admit they've seen passengers distracting the driver or drivers using cell phone. Many admit they don't always wear their safety belts.

Due to peer pressure and desire for social acceptance, teens don't want to be seen as uncool by telling friends to buckle up or sit back and quit distracting the teen driver. In addition, teens see adults, including their parents, drive while engaged in cell phone calls, putting on makeup or eating, routinely.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says 7,500 teenagers were involved in fatal automobile accidents in 2005. Speeding is more common than substance abuse as a contributing cause of these accidents, and about 70% of these motor vehicle accidents involve teens who are either fatigued or in highly emotional states for some reason. In other words, they're distracted from driving.

Teenage drivers are involved in 6,000 to 8,000 auto accidents annually, about 4 times the rate for older drivers. Driver distraction is a contributing cause in many such accidents.

Teen drivers need to be educated to this fact and the fact that safe driving doesn't stop with designating a driver who won't drink that evening. They must also pay attention and avoid distractions in order to avoid tragedy. One website dedicated to educating teenage drivers to the dangers of driving while distracted is Journey Safe, which admonishes teen drivers to buckle up, turn off their phones, turn down the music, and drive safely.

According to the Insurance Information Institute, motorcycling has become more and more popular in recent years and appeals now to older and more affluent riders than in the past. Sales of two wheelers reached almost 1.2 million in 2005. Not surprisingly, the fatality rate for motorcyclists has also been climbing dramatically, in 2005 reaching the highest level since 1986. There has been a particularly dramatic rise in deaths of those age 40 and up from motorcycle accidents.

Over 4,500 motorcycle enthusiasts died in motorcycle crashes in 2005, up 13% from 2004. This 12%increase was the largest since 1977! Fatalities from motorcycle accidents has increased for the last 8 years consecutively.

According to the latest data, a biker in 2005 was 34 times more likely to die in an accident than an occupant of a passenger car, per vehicle mile traveled. Bikers were 8 times more likely to be injured.

The death rate for motorcyclists was 4.8 times that of automobile operators and passengers in 2004.

Motorcycling is fun and should be. But safety must come first. Think and plan the safest routes on your crusing days. Avoid heavy traffic if you can. A motorcyclist is no match for a four wheel vehicle if a crash occurs.

According to an investigative report by CNN, auto insurers play hardball in defending minor automobile accident claims, regardless of the severity of the injuries claimed and even if the accident was clearly the fault of their policyholder.

CNN reviewed more than 6,000 documents and court records and interviewed former insurance company employees and accident victims to find that the message from auto insurers is crystal clear in so-called MIST (minor impact soft tissue injury) cases. If you challenge them, you will be left with no option but to go to court and they will drag you through the wringer. In an affidavit in a New Mexico lawsuit, one of the insurance companies' former employees testified that the strategy is to drive lawyers out of these cases by making the process so time-consuming and so expensive, that lawyers will start choosing to turn such clients away.

While the insurance companies are engaged in an orchestrated effort to make it appear to the public that the victims are trying to defraud insurers, CNN says it is profit, not fraud, that motivates insurers to play hardball on these cases. According to former Allstate and State Farm employee Jim Mathis, "The profits are good, and as long as the community, the public, allows this to occur, the insurance companies will get richer and people...will not get a fair and reasonable settlement."

Trials are risky business and many many completely legitimate MIST claims are lost at trial as a result of these hardball tactics. Make sure your attorney has experience taking cases to trial and a reputation that the insurance companies must consider when evaluating your claim.

The fierce Groundhog Day Tornado Storm that so quickly struck parts of Central Florida, particularly in Lake, Sumter and Volusian Counties, damaged or destroyed approximately 1,500 homes. The Villages, Lady Lake, and Deland, among other Central Florida towns sustained major damage to property, as well as, tragically, loss of life.

While the total damage estimate has not yet been tallied, damage estimates from Volusion County are $ 80 million with approximately 500 damaged properties. Lake County officials estimate about $ 10 million in property damage to about 100 homes. These damage estimates are preliminary and probably cover only about half the property damage done by this unforgettable and unforgivable Groundhog Day Tornado storm.

Sadly, many lost their lives. Officials in communities with fabricated homes and trailer parks should reconsider utilizing emergency tornado alarm warning systems for those vulnerable areas. Property wouldn't be saved, but lives might be.

Despite history making record profits, it is unfortunately predictable that homeowners insurance companies providing coverage for the damaged homes will not live up to their contract obligations to pay victims of these storms. Colling Gilbert Wright & Carter handle all types of insurance disputes, including storm damage disputes with homeowners insurance carriers. Often, if disputes lead to litigation, the homeowner is entitled to have the insurance company pay his/her attorneys' fees.

Insurance contracts are among the most complex of legal agreements in American society, and experienced legal counsel is necessary to assure homeowners reap the benefits of the insurance coverage they paid for when Mother Nature strikes. Remember, the insurance companies look at the big picture, that they are looking at over $ 100 million in property damage losses they are obligated to pay!! So, they set out, in the beginning, to save their company and shareholders money when they begin receiving claims. These insurance companies employe fulltime professionals, and homeowners need to know that experienced and skilled insurance dispute attorneys are their best source of professional help.

According to the wealth of current research by those who make it their business to grade the healthcare industry, approximately 200,000 people die annually in hospitals alone as a result of medical mistakes. This does not even include negligence in medical office settings and elsewhere outside of hospitals. This is almost 5 times the number of people who die in automobile accidents (approximately 43,000). In fact, it's more than those dying in automobile accidents, in workplace accidents, of AIDS, of breast cancer and in the Vietnam War COMBINED.

In fact, the number of deaths from medical negligence, in hospitals alone, is the equivalent of two jumbo jets full of passengers colliding in mid-air each day of the year. The hard economic cost of medical negligence exceeds $ 60 Billion, including lost income, disability, loss of household services, and health care expenses. Not included in this $ 60 Billion is the economic loss to those medical malpractice victims who survive, and the pain and suffering, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life of medical malpractice victims.

But rather than address the obvious deficiencies in the quality of medical services delivered in America, legislatures have chosen to restrict the rights of patients to sue or the money damages they can recover when they find themselves victims of medical negligence. Nothing has been done to determine the cause of this abysmal failure in the delivery of competent and quality health care, and the epidemic has continued, leaving in its wake innocent patients with limited rights of recovering compensation for their losses. Indeed, the idea that denying a patient's right to legal recourse will somehow reduce the incidence of medical negligence lacks logic and common sense.

Recent tort reform legislation in Florida make an attorney's job in obtaining recovery for medical negligence victims legally and economically impractical in many, many meritorious cases while doing nothing to improve the quality of care delivered or to reduce the incidence of medical negligence.