Missouri Injury Lawyer Blog

As a southern Illinois traffic accident attorney, I was pleased to see that an Illinois jury brought back a large verdict in a drunk driving lawsuit that killed a woman from Batchtown. The Belleville News-Democrat reported Nov. 23 that Jerica Klocke, 19, died as a passenger on the back of a motorcycle driven by Donald Adcock, 24, of Carrollton. Adcock also died in the September 2007 crash. He had been drinking at a bar in Eldred before the crash, and Klocke’s family brought the suit against the bar under Illinois dram shop law. After a two-day trial in Jersey County, the jury returned a verdict of $549,954.11. However, damages cats set down by Illinois law mean the verdict will be reduced substantially, probably to a little more than $100,000.

Under dram shop laws, businesses that serve alcohol are legally responsible for not serving any more alcohol to someone who is already visibly intoxicated. That was the charge against the bar in the Klocke family’s lawsuit. Adcock allegedly spent 30 to 60 minutes at another establishment, then moved to the bar for several more hours. Klocke had just lost her grandmother and wanted to visit a girlfriend, so a friend arranged a ride for her on the back of Adcock’s motorcycle. Witnesses testified that Adcock did not appear intoxicated, but after the crash, a blood test indicated that he had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.15, nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08.

I’m sorry that this young woman’s family will see such a dramatic reduction in their damages -- but I’m glad the jury sent a message that enabling drunk driving is not acceptable. As a Missouri drunk driving accident lawyer, I help clients hold drunk drivers (rather than bars and restaurants) legally responsible for causing catastrophic traffic accidents. As all drivers must realize by now, drinking and driving kills, by impairing drivers’ judgment, vision, motor skills and even consciousness. This puts not only the drunk drivers themselves, but all of the motorists around them, at an unnecessary and unacceptable risk. That’s especially worth remembering right now, because the holiday season means more drivers in Missouri and Illinois are likely to have been drinking at parties or family gatherings.

Continue reading "Family of Woman Killed in Drunk Driving Crash Wins Half Million in Court" »

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Posted In: Auto Accidents

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As a Missouri defective product lawyer, I was very interested when the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of Maclaren strollers Nov. 9. Maclaren, a British manufacturer of high-end baby products, agreed to recall ten years’ worth of umbrella strollers after the CPSC received reports of at least 12 children who had lost fingertips because their fingers were caught in the hinges of the folding stroller. (Families that own the strollers can find more information about the recall and keeping their children safe at Maclaren’s Web site or by calling 1-877-688-2326.) A few days later, on Nov. 12, the New York Post reported that the manufacturer had known about the flaw since at least 2004 but didn’t warn consumers or regulatory agencies.

The recall covers every Maclaren stroller sold in the United States since 1999, which comes out to about a million strollers from several lines. According to the Post, about half of those strollers were sold after Maclaren learned about the problem through a lawsuit filed by a Connecticut woman whose toddler lost his right pinky. Jane DeWinter was at a store, testing the one-handed folding and unfolding mechanism offered by Maclaren, when her 23-month-old son Carlos stuck his hand in the hinge. Despite two surgeries, doctors couldn’t reattach the finger. A safety engineer testified at the DeWinters’ trial that the scissor-like hinge design violates federal safety guidelines for children’s products. He also said Maclaren had a legal obligation to report the incident to the federal government. According to the Post, the manufacturer did not report the flaw, setting it up for a potential $1 million in fines.

The newspaper said that Maclaren argued that the DeWinters’ accident was the mother’s own fault for failing to watch her son’s hands. As a St. Louis product defects attorney, I can confirm that consumers do have a legal obligation to take reasonable care to avoid foreseeable dangers in products. However, this doesn’t excuse manufacturers from knowingly designing children’s products that are not safe to use around children. It’s not news that children young enough to be in strollers are not very sophisticated about the dangers of hinges, electricity, small objects and other things adults use regularly. That’s why federal law requires no choking hazards in toys for children under a certain age, and why we don’t hold children responsible for failing to avoid dangers that are obvious to adults. It’s not hard to foresee that a scissor-like hinge within grabbing distance might pose a threat to small children, especially if it’s designed to be opened and closed one-handed -- inviting use by distracted, busy adults.

Continue reading "High-End Manufacturer Recalls Umbrella Strollers for Finger Amputation Risk" »

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Posted In: Product Liability

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a Los Angeles Times report on the recall of 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles. Officially, the recall is because of defective floor mats that can cause accelerators to get stuck open, causing unintentional acceleration that can propel the vehicle uncontrollably and cause serious accidents. A total of 19 deaths have been reported because of this safety flaw. In the older post, I wrote that the Times suggested advanced features in newer vehicles -- or problems with those features -- may have caused or exacerbated some of the problems. On Nov. 8, the newspaper made an even more disturbing report suggesting that regulators may not have investigated the problem thoroughly.

Since 2001, the Times said, more than 1,000 vehicle owners have reported unintended acceleration events to Toyota or to federal regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The complaints triggered eight investigations, which ultimately ended in two recalls affecting a combined total of 85,000 vehicles. However, the Times charged, NHTSA and Toyota officials responsible for investigating safety problems systematically excluded numerous reports because of how they were written, or because reports didn’t match the agencies’ ideas about how the vehicles performed. This made the problem look much smaller than some say it actually is, the newspaper said. As a result, a serious safety problem that may have existed as early as the 2001 model year is only now being addressed.

For example, the NHTSA threw out reports in which owners didn’t speculate on the cause of the problem. The agency also discarded incident reports saying that brakes didn’t stop the vehicle, because its official position is that brakes always overcome engines. Toyota itself, in reports submitted to the NHTSA, excluded reports of acceleration lasting more than a few seconds because it believed its vehicle design made this impossible. Selective exclusions like these allowed the NHTSA to close at least five investigations for “not enough reported problems.” This included an investigation of Lexus vehicles in which the agency discarded 36 out of 37 reports. The newspaper included several anecdotes from Toyota and Lexus owners who experienced the problems firsthand, including a retired engineer who lost his wife of 46 years when his 2005 Camry accelerated over a cliff in central California.

As a St. Louis car crash attorney, I am concerned about what this could mean for the millions of Toyota owners in Missouri and southern Illinois, and around the United States. If federal regulators failed to thoroughly investigate this problem -- whether the problem was intentional or not -- they may have left millions of people exposed to these extremely dangerous acceleration accidents. In fact, if problems with the vehicles’ on-board computers or mechanics are the real culprit, rather than floor mats, nearly every late-model Toyota and Lexus is impossible to make safe without extensive retrofitting. That means millions of Americans are exposed to deadly accidents that strike at random times, and regardless of how safe the driver might be. It also means that Toyota and Lexus owners may need to garage their vehicles in order to avoid catastrophic crashes, an expensive and inconvenient proposition.

Continue reading "Regulators Failed to Consider Many Cases of Unintended Acceleration in Toyotas" »

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Posted In: Auto Accidents , Product Liability

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As a Missouri car crash lawyer, I have followed the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s series on problems with Missouri drunk driving laws with great interest. On Nov. 1, the newspaper published a third installment in the series, on the revocation of driver’s licenses for drivers who refuse to take a breath test. Like many states, Missouri has an “implied consent” law allowing the Department of Revenue to take away the driver’s licenses of people who refuse an alcohol or drug test -- in Missouri, they lose their licenses for a year. But according to the Post-Dispatch, prosecutors routinely fail to enforce the rule, often restoring licenses to drivers as part of a plea bargain. As a result, the newspaper said, more than 10,000 drivers who refused the breathalyzer have kept their licenses since 2000.

The driver’s license suspension is officially separate from the DWI case against an allegedly drunk driver. Drivers may defend themselves in the criminal case, but they can also appeal the one-year license suspension in civil court. Many drivers do so, which requires an attorney to represent the DOR in the case. Unfortunately, the DOR does not have enough attorneys to handle every case; county prosecutors are typically brought in as substitutes. And those prosecutors often tell the court to that drivers should keep their licenses, in exchange for guilty pleas in the underlying DWI cases -- an act that the Post-Dispatch describes as “giving up.” Records reported by the newspaper found that prosecutors in St. Louis city and county allowed test refuses to keep their licenses in about half of all cases between July of 2008 and July of 2009. Statewide, that rate was 8% -- but after including cases reported as outright losses in court, it was 50%.

This type of plea deal was extended to driver William Downs in 2007 after he was arrested for DWI and refused a breath or blood test. He had been arrested twice before for drug crimes and his live-in girlfriend had called to complain that he had stolen her painkillers. However, when it was time for his license suspension case, St. Charles County prosecutors told the court that he should keep his license, in exchange for a guilty plea and a promise to get addiction testing. Three weeks later, Downs took drugs, climbed into his pickup truck and drove down Interstate 70, where he rear-ended a smaller pickup driven by Charles Fullhage, an agricultural engineering professor at the University of Missouri. Fullhage died, and Downs is now in prison.

As a St. Louis auto accident lawyer, I’m disappointed that Missouri is letting so many drunk drivers slip through the cracks. As the article points out, part of the problem can be attributed to funding -- DOR attorneys have a much higher rate of license suspensions, but the state hasn’t provided money to hire more. But just as importantly, prosecutors shouldn’t, and shouldn’t be able to, use license suspensions as part of plea bargains in the supposedly separate DWI cases. In other states with automatic license suspension, even an acquittal of the drunk driving charge won’t necessarily save the driver’s license. Until Missouri is willing to change its laws, its spending or both, we may pay the price in lives.

Continue reading "Report Shows Automatic License Suspension for Accused Drunk Drivers Isn’t Automatic" »

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