Missouri Injury Lawyer Blog

As a southern Illinois medical malpractice attorney, I was surprised to see a recent article about an Energy woman who died of burns from an unexpected fire during surgery. Janice McCall, 65, was in surgery at Heartland Regional Medical Center Sept. 2 when a flash fire ignited and burned her, the Southern reported Sept. 16. After the incident, McCall was moved to Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. She died six days after the fire in Tennessee; the state’s death certificate lists thermal burns as the cause of her death.

The hospital did not respond to calls for comment, although it did issue a press release Sept. 15 to say that operating room personnel put the fire out right away. Marion Fire Chief Jack Reed, who visited the hospital after learning about the incident through news reports, said it wasn’t clear what started the fire, although McCall’s hospital gown may have been involved. Administrators told Reed that the fire lasted 10 to 15 seconds. Flash fires are so named because they appear and disappear suddenly, consuming their fuel quickly. Reed and hospital administrators plan to investigate the cause further. The family has hired an attorney; the article implied that he would request medical records and other documentation for the incident.

According to the article, the flash fire was not a freak accident. Various experts estimate that there are 100 to 600 such fires each year, killing one or two patients annually. One culprit is the use of highly flammable pure oxygen to patients in surgery, which can be ignited by a surgical tool like an electronic scalpel. Once the fire starts, it can be exacerbated by the use of disposable synthetic fabrics, which help maintain a sterile environment for surgery, but are also flammable.

As a St. Louis medical malpractice attorney, I believe the evidence strongly suggests that medical malpractice may have been involved. The Tennessee authorities clearly believe that burns caused McCall’s death -- and of course, there would be no burns if there had been no fire. Whether the fire was a result of medical negligence is harder to say from the evidence available in the article. Medical malpractice is defined as mistakes so serious that they fail to meet the standards of care for the community. Fire is not part of anyone’s plan for surgery; it’s not hard to believe that mistakes that cause a fire on an anesthetized patient’s body could meet that standard. But it’s impossible to say without a thorough and unbiased investigation, which is why I hope McCall’s family gets such an investigation.

Continue reading "Burn Injuries From Fire During Surgery Killed Southern Illinois Woman, Report Says" »

Last week, I wrote about the sentencing of a man with five prior drunk driving convictions who stayed free -- long enough to kill a couple and their unborn child in another crash. On Sept. 13, I was pleased to see that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had followed up, after a fashion, with a special report on just how multiple DWI offenders like that one manage to stay on the road. According to the newspaper, the answer is complicated -- but failures by nearly every part of the justice system play a role. The Post-Dispatch listed poor record-keeping, omissions and confusion by police, outdated laws and slowness by the courts as major reasons why chronic drunk drivers keep their driving privileges.

Under Missouri law, drivers charged with a third or subsequent DWI should be charged with a felony. But according to an analysis by the Post-Dispatch, 105 of the 275 such arrests in 2008 in a six-county region around St. Louis did not result in any felony charge. In two-thirds of those cases, county prosecutors said police simply never asked them to file it as a felony. In order to do that, police need to show that the offense is a third DWI, something that incomplete databases don’t always do. Under certain circumstances, even a known conviction doesn’t count if it was tried by a judge who was not an attorney, which confuses police and prosecutors. And requests for court records to prove that it’s a third offense can take months to receive, the newspaper said, leading some prosecutors to file charges as misdemeanors before the case is too old to prosecute at all.

The article goes into detail about one chronic drunk driver named Michael O’Fallon. Until early August of this year, the Eureka man had four prior drunk driving convictions, all in Missouri. Because of incomplete records, none of those had been prosecuted as felonies, and O’Fallon had served no jail time. Then, on Aug. 3, O’Fallon swerved his car head-on into the path of the Colombini family’s van. The crash sent wife Jamie Colombini and the family’s 16-year-old daughter, Amanda, to the hospital. Jamie Colombini and her husband, Andy, may both need back surgery. Their children are still shaken up by the incident; Amanda has her driver’s license but was afraid to use it. O’Fallon, meanwhile, checked himself into an inpatient addiction treatment program -- but because the wheels of justice turn slowly, he does not yet face any charges.

As a St. Louis auto accident attorney, I hope this report will inspire our state’s lawmakers to streamline and modernize the systems named in the article and bureaucracies to shape up. These systems are in place specifically to help law enforcement and prosecutors identify repeat offenders -- but they can only do that if their tools are working properly. Because they are not, chronic intoxicated drivers like O’Fallon and others profiled in the article are allowed to stay on the street, where they could catastrophically injure or even kill the innocent people they happen to pass. Governments may have to struggle through budget problems to find money for a project like this, but as a Missouri car crash lawyer, I believe saving lives is worth that struggle.

Continue reading "Bureaucracy, Poor Communication and Bad Rules Keep Repeat DWI Offenders on the Road" »

A Granite City man received the maximum prison sentence for causing a car wreck that killed a couple and their unborn child, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Sept. 8. Donald W. Canterbury pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 28 years in prison for killing Adam Zimmer and Lindsay Arnold-Zimmer, who was five months pregnant at the time. Law enforcement said Canterbury had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.246, more than three times the legal limit in Missouri and Illinois, when he rear-ended the Zimmers’ car at a high speed, pushing them into oncoming traffic. He is required to serve at least 85% of his sentence, or about 23 years and 10 months.

The case attracted media attention after it was discovered that Canterbury had five prior convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol -- including one in Madison County in January of this year. He was sentenced to court supervision for that most recent DUI, but according to the prosecutor in the case, he may have gotten a more severe punishment if prosecutors had realized it was not his first drunk driving conviction. His history may have influenced the decision to give him the maximum possible sentence for the charges he faced, including two counts of aggravated DUI resulting in death, four counts of aggravated DUI resulting in great bodily injury and one count of reckless homicide of an unborn child.

The prosecutor in the case used the sentencing to call for a nationwide database of driving records, which would allow law enforcement to identify problem drivers like Canterbury. There may be practical and civil rights considerations to work out before starting such a database, but as a St. Louis drunk driving accident attorney, I would support giving law enforcement such a tool. Federal statistics show that people with past drunk driving convictions are routinely around 20% of all drivers involved in fatal DUI accidents. Identifying them would allow law enforcement to revoke their driving privileges after they demonstrate that they cannot be trusted. As things stand, courts may be able to give out harsh sentences after the fact -- but it would be better to prevent these terrible, unnecessary deaths in the first place.

Continue reading "Driver Sentenced in Pontoon Beach DUI Crash That Killed Couple and Unborn Baby" »

A group of highway safety officials from around the nation planned to endorsed a ban on text messaging while driving, the New York Times reported Aug. 30. The Governors Highway Safety Association, a group of leaders from state highway safety agencies such as MODot, called for the ban at the beginning of its weeklong annual meeting in Savannah, Georgia. Calling text messaging a form of distracted driving, Chairman Vernon F. Betkey Jr. said in a press release that a ban on texting and driving in all 50 states, and for people of all ages, would tell the public that the practice is dangerous and unacceptable.

The association’s press release said its action was directly influenced by a recent study on texting and driving from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Using cameras mounted in the cabs of long-haul trucks, the Institute found that truckers had a 23 times greater chance of crashing, or almost crashing, when they were sending text messages. In fact, the study found that they took their eyes off the road for an average of five seconds every time they texted -- enough time for a truck to travel the length of a football field at highway speed. The association said it still had concerns about how texting bans would be enforced, but supported a project by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it hopes will help develop good enforcement strategies.

As a Missouri auto accident lawyer who has long been interested in issues of text messaging while driving, I believe public interest in this issue has snowballed in the past few months. The Times has devoted several articles to texting while driving recently, federal legislation mandating a nationwide ban is being considered, and multiple state legislatures have recently considered or passed a ban on texting for at least some drivers. That includes a law here in Missouri that took effect on Aug. 28, making it illegal for drivers under 21 to text while driving -- and an Illinois law, effective Jan. 1, banning the practice for all drivers. And as the Times notes, a growing body of research supports those bans. If texting while driving is eventually banned nationwide -- and followed up with serious enforcement -- I believe lives will be saved.

Continue reading "Association of State Highway Agencies Endorses Ban on Texting and Driving" »