Missouri Injury Lawyer Blog

The family of Anastasia Bolton has filed a $5 million wrongful death claim in the case of her September 2010 death, when Bolton was hit and killed by a Metrolink Train after apparently falling asleep on the tracks. The same accident also killed Daniel Atkins of Mission Viejo, California, and injured Silvia Lua of Santa Ana, California.

The basis of the suit is that the area where the victims accessed the tracks was not fenced off, and did not have appropriate signage warning of the presence of train tracks. To quote the suit, the city failed "to maintain proper restriction and/or warning to area of high traffic and inherent danger."

According to Lua, the three had met on the night of the accident to have an adventure of sorts. They began their evening socializing at a bar, although Lua adamantly insists the three of them did not drink there. At that point they wandered around town, trying to contact other friends for a place to stay for the night but failing to do so for assorted reasons. While waiting to get into contact, Bolton began walking near the tracks at the shopping center they had parked at. Lua fell asleep by the tracks due to the late hour, and was awakened by the passing train, suffering moderate injuries (apparently from debris). She further states she couldn't find her friends when she gathered her senses.

Complicating the suit and contradicting Lua's claims that the three did not drink, Bolton and Atkins both had an elevated blood alcohol contact at the time of the accident, Bolton with .1 and Atkins with .07.

The police, perhaps consistent with this finding, elected not to file charges in the matter and closed the case, calling it a tragic accident. The city officials with whom the initial claim of premises liability was filed also dismissed the initial claim as having no ground. There is no word on when the next hearing will be held.

As a southern Illinois car accident attorney, I was saddened to read about the outcome of a trial for an Air Force enlistee accused of drunk, reckless driving and speeding in the death of another airman. Airman First Class Kevin Books, 20, was found guilty of multiple counts at a court martial at Scott Air Force Base, outside Belleville, Ill. Books was accused of being under the influence and speeding when he crashed a car on Interstate 64 in Fairview Heights last summer. The crash killed Airman First Class Jamarrio Beathea, 21, of Elkhart, Ind. Books and two other airmen were not seriously hurt. Books will serve 18 months of confinement, as well as being demoted, discharged without honor and losing his pay.

According to the article, Books had a blood-alcohol level between 0.109 and 0.137 percent at the time of the June 2010 crash. Authorities said he was also speeding at over 100 mph when he tried to exit I-64 at Route 159. When he couldn’t make a turn fast enough, his vehicle careened off the exit ramp and into an embankment, flipping several times. All four of the airmen in the car were wearing seatbelts, but only Beathea was badly injured. After the St. Clair County prosecutor handed the case over to the Air Force, Books pleaded guilty to underage drinking. The court-martial also found him guilty of negligent homicide, drunken driving and reckless operation of a vehicle resulting in injury to others.

This kind of story is always disappointing and saddening to me as a St. Louis car accident lawyer. Drunk driving is responsible for roughly a third of all fatal auto accidents, according to federal statistics, and all of those accidents are completely preventable. Because of bad judgment by Books, his own military career and a very young man’s life are both over. And because I work with families of drunk driving victims every day, I know that the sad consequences often go further. If Beathea had a family to support, for example, his death could be financially catastrophic for them as well as emotionally catastrophic. Prison time may serve justice, but families in that situation must file a lawsuit in order to reclaim any of the financial support they lost with the death,

Continue reading "Airman From Scott AFB Found Guilty of Killing Fellow Airman With Drunk Driving" »

A mother's wrongful death lawsuit against the Bowling Green Kampgrounds of America continues to unfold, with attorneys adding new parties to the lawsuit and taking numerous hours of depositions from witnesses for the defense and plaintiff alike.

Valen Humphrey has charged KOA with acting negligently when her son, Tristan Morrison, then 4, drowned in a pool on KOA property in June of 2009. Currently, Kampground Management Group LLC, Danny and Yvonne Goad, William Paul, Susan Von-Webb and Woodland Group LTD are all named as defendants to the case Humphrey is building on her son's behalf.

Kampground Management Group is operated by the Goads, who ran the facility in question as operators at the time of Tristan's death. Paul and Von-Webb are the owners of the actual property in question. Woodland Group is the company doing business as KOA, and is responsible for the payroll of employees at the park.

In a description that sounds horrifying, witnesses stated that the water in the pool was so dirty that no one had realized Tristan had drowned because they couldn't see his body at first. Someone had to feel for his body with their legs before he was recovered.

According to records, the facility has been cited on multiple occasions for failure to maintain safe conditions for visitors. This has included forced closures of the facility at times. A timeline assembled by the plaintiff shows that these violations are not only recent, either, but rather stretch back as far as 1987.

Humphrey and a relative had been organizing a birthday party for Tristan at the time of his death.

The defense appears to be making a rather jumbled attempt at its side of the case. On the one hand, they are claiming that Humphrey and/or Morrison were trespassing on KOA grounds at the time of the accident. Further, they argue that Humphrey shouldn't be able to file the suit at all because she is somehow unfit to administer her son's estate.

The case is likely to continue growing in scope as more details come to light.

As a southern Illinois personal injury attorney, I was interested to see an article on unaddressed workplace hazards faced by domestic workers — people who work in other people’s homes. The paper by Washington University in St. Louis law professor Peggy Smith discusses hazards to workers including cleaners, childcare workers and home care workers for the disabled and elderly. As UPI reported March 11, Smith writes that workers in private homes are exposed to harmful chemicals, abusive employment practices and, in the case of home health aides, musculoskeletal injuries from lifting clients who need help with tasks like using the bathroom.

Smith, an employment law expert, makes her arguments in an upcoming paper for the Canadian Journal of Women & the Law. She cites a survey of California domestic workers in which two-thirds said they considered their jobs hazardous. Domestic workers who clean were more likely than industrial cleaners to report physical and respiratory reactions to cleaning chemicals, and were more likely to use cleaners that had irritants. Home health aides also reported more health problems than their counterparts in hospitals and nursing homes. In fact, Smith wrote, this category of worker reported more debilitating musculoskeletal problems than any other group of U.S. workers, including steel mill workers and coal miners. She called on the federal government to ensure workers are better trained, placement agencies to inspect homes and private employers to provide safety equipment like rubber gloves.

I might go even further, as a St. Louis personal injury lawyer, and suggest guidelines or even regulations from OSHA about basic safety for domestic workers. As the press release from the university notes, domestic workers are completely exempt from federal workplace safety laws — which accounts for much of the disparity in health outcomes between domestic workers and their industrial counterparts. Going through a placement agency alleviates only some of those concerns. Domestic workers who are injured or sickened on the job may be able to hold their employers responsible for creating hazardous conditions (sometimes through homeowners’ insurance), but a set of guidelines would provide clear safety standards, giving employers a guideline for compliance and workers more assurance that their basic safety is being protected.

Continue reading "Domestic Workers Unprotected From Workplace Hazards, Law Professor Argues" »

The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled that a psychiatrist's testimony is admissible in a wrongful death case against an orthopedic surgeon, and that the lower level courts should not have dismissed the evidence from consideration.

Gerald Kivland filed a medical liability lawsuit in 2005, naming Robert Gaines and the Colombia Orthopaedic Group LLP as defendants. The suit alleged that Dr. Gaines performed spinal surgery on Kivland that resulted in chronic pain and paralysis from the waist down. In 2006, Kivland committed suicide, and his family chose to continue the lawsuit, amending the charges from medical liability to wrongful death due to a decreased quality of life.

Gaines has acknowledged responsibility for the paralysis, but has flatly denied any responsibility for Kivland's death.

Psychiatrist Michael Jarvis gave a deposition during discovery that Kivland's death was not a voluntary act, but a desperate involuntary response to the pain and suffering caused by the badly-handled surgery.

Claiming that Kivland's suicide was an independent act for which Gaines could not be responsible, Gaines' attorneys moved that the judge disqualify the witness and dismiss the case. Gary Oxenhandler, a Boone County Circuit Judge, agreed and did so.

However, in a unanimous decision, the state supreme court overturned the ruling early last month.

"Whether [the witness's] opinion is to be believed or accepted is for the jury, not the court" to decide, the high court said. "It does not matter if the circuit court disagrees with the expert's opinion and believes suicide was the decedent's voluntary decision. This is not a sufficient reason to exclude the testimony."

In short, this means that the lawsuit can resume for a second time at the county court level. Attorneys for Dr. Gaines had not responded to inquiries as of press time, but the Kivland family indicated their desire to continue moving the case forward.

Back in December, I wrote about the guilty plea of a former Sunset Hills police officer in the deaths of four students and serious injury to a fifth. That’s why, as a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer, I was interested to see a March 10 report from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the officer’s sentence. Christine Miller, 43, was sentenced to eight years in prison for the deaths of Anita Lakshmi Veerapaneni; Anusha Anumolu; Priya Muppavarapu; and Satya Subhakar Chinta. She also received a seven-year sentence, to run concurrently, for second-degree assault on survivor Nitesh Adusumilli. The prosecution in the case had asked for a 20-year sentence; the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney called the eight-year sentence inappropriate under the circumstances.

Al five victims were Indian nationals in Missouri and Illinois for work and school; Adusumilli and Veerapaneni were engaged to be married. According to the article and past reports, Miller had had five drinks at a Sunset Hills bar the night of the wreck. She was driving the wrong way down Dougherty Ferry Road when Adusumilli made a legal right turn onto the road, on the way home from a trip to dinner and a bowling alley. The two vehicles crashed head-on, badly injuring Adusumilli and Miller and killing the others. Adusumilli testified at trial that he feels survivor’s guilt and couldn’t remember the crash for the first few days after it happened. Miller herself told the victims’ families, who had come from India, that she was remorseful. She sustained severe head injuries and used a wheelchair in court.

To me, as a Missouri car crash attorney, this sad story just underscores how easily drunk driving can cause preventable, senseless tragedies. Four young people are dead, another is injured and lost his fiancé, and a fifth person is permanently disabled and imprisoned, with her career at an end. I don’t know if the families of the victims agree with prosecutors that the sentence was unreasonably low — but if they do, they still have the option of pursuing auto accident lawsuits against Miller and her auto insurance company. A lawsuit can’t bring back the victims, unfortunately, but it can help the families deal with the financial and emotional damages the accident caused. In this case, that could include the considerable financial outlay it took them to come to St. Louis from India and bring their children’s bodies home.

Continue reading "Former Police Officer Gets 8 Years in Prison for DUI Deaths of Four Students" »

Peoria-based OSF St. Francis Healthcare Systems has agreed to a $5 million settlement deal with the estate of Richard J. Berry of Streator, Ill., in a wrongful death lawsuit stemming from his death in 2009. The settlement was approved by circuit Judge Joseph Hettel earlier this week, with Hettel dismissing the remaining case once both parties agreed to the settlement.

Berry was involved in an accident with a tractor-trailer driven by the hospital on December 16, 2009. Berry was driving northbound on state highway 23 near the Route 17 intersection. The driver of the tractor-trailer, David deFrance of Canton, Ill., was traveling eastbound on 17. DeFrance failed to stop at an intersection and struck Berry's car at full speed. Berry was killed immediately in the impact. It isn't clear exactly when the suit was filed, but the litigation appears to have taken less time than some notable wrongful death cases.

According to the Chicago firm representing Berry, this settlement marks a historic note in the LaSalle district. It is the largest single wrongful death settlement for the area in anyone's memory.

Berry's surviving family includes his wife, Rebecca Berry, and his three adult children, John Berry, Martha Berry King and Robert Berry. He was a partner at the law firm Myers, Berry, O'Conor & Kuzma. His family remembers him as a devoted husband and loving father, while his colleagues speak of an advocate fiercely dedicated to his clients' rights and cases.

The hospital is operated by the Order of Saint Francis, a religious charitable institution. It is the fourth-largest hospital in the state of Illinois, employing more than 800 physicians and serving more than 600 patient beds. The hospital boasts that it is the only level 1 trauma center for the state. In a time of fiscal belt-tightening, it seems regrettable that such an obviously worthy institution can lose so much based on one driver's negligence, but it must be remembered that the Berry family lost far more.

As a St. Louis auto accident lawyer, I’ve written here at least once before about the installation of guard cables along highways in Missouri, which MoDOT sees as a life-saver but others do not. That issue moved a bit to the west this week when Kansas City’s KCTV reported March 1 on the issue of guard cables in neighboring Kansas, where the cables are deployed only where the state Department of Transportation believes they’re cost-effective. The report included an interview with Tara Coffman, who lost her husband in 2006 when a tractor-trailer crossed the center of a Kansas state highway and hit his car head-on. Justin Coffman was 28 at the time and the father of a new baby son.

Guard cables have been used in Missouri for 12 years, with the program expanded between 2005 and 2008. MoDOT believes the cables have saved substantial amounts of lives. One spokesperson pointed to accident statistics showing that just two people died in areas with new guard cables in the year following their installation. Before installation, the same areas saw 55 fatalities. A MoDOT spokesperson told the station the agency installs cables wherever fatalities are high. By contrast, Kansas performed a cost-benefit analysis and decided to put its first guard cables in only two places, not including the road on which Justin Coffman died. An engineering manager for KDOT said the cost makes it harder for the agency to provide other services that generate more complaints, like smoothing out potholes.

As a Missouri car crash attorney, I doubt that complaining to KDOT is a priority for families of people killed in crossover accidents. I agree strongly with the MoDOT spokesperson, who acknowledged that the price of installing guard cables is high — but said “I know that every one of those numbers has a name.” Federal statistics show that head-on accidents, the type a crossover is most likely to produce, are more than 25 percent of all fatal accidents. And Missouri recently recorded its lowest numbers of traffic accidents since the 1950s, which tracks a national trend but may be partly because of a decrease in deadly crossover accidents.

Continue reading "Kansas City Report Compares Missouri’s Guard Cables to Lack of Divider in Kansas" »

As a St. Louis auto accident lawyer, I’ve written here at least once before about the installation of guard cables along highways in Missouri, which MoDOT sees as a life-saver but others do not. That issue moved a bit to the west this week when Kansas City’s KCTV reported March 1 on the issue of guard cables in neighboring Kansas, where the cables are deployed only where the state Department of Transportation believes they’re cost-effective. The report included an interview with Tara Coffman, who lost her husband in 2006 when a tractor-trailer crossed the center of a Kansas state highway and hit his car head-on. Justin Coffman was 28 at the time and the father of a new baby son.

Guard cables have been used in Missouri for 12 years, with the program expanded between 2005 and 2008. MoDOT believes the cables have saved substantial amounts of lives. One spokesperson pointed to accident statistics showing that just two people died in areas with new guard cables in the year following their installation. Before installation, the same areas saw 55 fatalities. A MoDOT spokesperson told the station the agency installs cables wherever fatalities are high. By contrast, Kansas performed a cost-benefit analysis and decided to put its first guard cables in only two places, not including the road on which Justin Coffman died. An engineering manager for KDOT said the cost makes it harder for the agency to provide other services that generate more complaints, like smoothing out potholes.

As a Missouri car crash attorney, I doubt that complaining to KDOT is a priority for families of people killed in crossover accidents. I agree strongly with the MoDOT spokesperson, who acknowledged that the price of installing guard cables is high — but said “I know that every one of those numbers has a name.” Federal statistics show that head-on accidents, the type a crossover is most likely to produce, are more than 25 percent of all fatal accidents. And Missouri recently recorded its lowest numbers of traffic accidents since the 1950s, which tracks a national trend but may be partly because of a decrease in deadly crossover accidents.

Continue reading "Kansas City Report Compares Missouri’s Guard Cables to Lack of Divider in Kansas" »

Some cases come up that are simply absurd to consider. Our legal system has had two hundred years of precedents to grow through, and as a result there are some very old, very upsetting laws that remain on
the books and result in terrible outrage and increased scrutiny from time to time. Such is the case of Rick and Pamela Squirrell, whose daughter was killed while participating in the Huffington Beach junior lifeguard program in 2010. During training exercises, 11-year-old Alyssa Squirrell was struck by a city lifeguard boat and killed instantly. The family filed a series of wrongful death lawsuits seeking damages from the city, and the city responded by citing an archaic and little-known law that limits payouts in such cases to the value of the vehicle that caused the damage. Thus, the Squirrell's payout would be limited to approximately $26,000 for the death of their child, who had been participating in a city program when killed by a city vehicle.

Further, the judge who heard the initial case suspended the legal proceedings while she deliberated on the matter of the liability-limiting law, saying that the family's arguments against the matter were "premature."

The average funeral in California costs between a few hundred dollars for cremation and $5,000 for a full service. This doesn't include legal fees for an attorney to make sure the city pays for its mistake,
income lost during the burial and grieving process, hospital fees, etc. How exactly is it "premature" to want to receive some manner of recompense in the wrongful death of a loved one who was killed by a city vehicle while participating in a city program? Regardless of what is decided in answer to that particular question, the next hearing in the case isn't scheduled until late next month while the judge takes time to deliberate on whether the law limiting the city's liability should remain valid in this case.