Missouri Injury Lawyer Blog

As a Missouri auto accident attorney, I know uninsured motorist benefits are some of the hardest to get from an insurance company, even if the facts are clearly on the driver’s side. Insurance companies like collecting premiums for uninsured motorist claims, but after an accident, they will often use a hit-and-run or other facts that are hard to verify as an excuse to deny coverage. That was the claim made by Larry Squires in Allstate Property & Casualty Insurance Co. v. Squires, a decision by the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Squires was injured after swerving to avoid a box left in the road; the parties stipulated that an unidentified vehicle dropped the box. Allstate received a declaratory judgment in Pennsylvania state court that it did not owe Squires a settlement. The Third Circuit reversed, finding that direct contact with the uninsured vehicle was not necessary under the policy.

Squires put in a claim for uninsured motorist benefits after his accident. The relevant part of the disputed policy says Squires may recover for bodily injury “aris[ng] out of the ownership, maintenance or use of an uninsured auto.” Pennsylvania state law defines an uninsured vehicle to include “an unidentified vehicle that causes an accident resulting in injury,” provided that the victim report it to authorities and his or her insurance company. Allstate filed for a declaratory judgment that it did not owe benefits under the policy; Squires filed counterclaims for insurance bad faith and breach of contract. The trial court granted judgment on the pleadings to Allstate and dismissed the claims by Squires, finding that the sole issue was whether the box-related accident arose out of the “ownership, maintenance or use” of an automobile. It did not, the court said, and found that the policy only applied to accidents caused directly by a vehicle.

Squires appealed, arguing that contact with a vehicle was not necessary under the language at issue. The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately agreed. Seeking to understand what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would do, it examined Pennsylvania caselaw and concluded that under the “arising out of” language in his policy, Squires can avoid summary judgment by alleging that the unidentified vehicle’s use caused his injuries. The court cautioned that more may be needed to ultimately make a recovery. It also rejected a case heavily relied on by the district court, in which uninsured motorist benefits were denied to a boy who suffered injures as he bicycled, when another boy intentionally threw hay from the back of a truck. In that case, the injury was caused by the hay-throwing boy, the court said, but in this one, the falling box was a direct consequence of the use of the unknown vehicle to transport cargo. The appeals court noted that Pennsylvania’s auto insurance statute is to be construed liberally and in favor of the insured in close cases. Thus, it reversed and remanded the case.

This ruling is good news for Squires and other Pennsylvania drivers. This decision clears the hurdle of whether the policy language applies to his case. Though the appeals court correctly noted that Squires must still prove his breach of contract and bad faith claims, he can now say his claim for insurance is valid. Thus, he may be able to collect the settlement and move on without worrying about proving the bad faith and breach of contract claims. It’s common, in my experience as a southern Illinois car accident lawyer, for insurers to narrow in on specific policy language as a reason to deny coverage. That’s why it’s important for accident victims to come to a St. Louis car crash attorney like me as soon as possible after realizing they’re not being dealt with fairly. Though negotiations and, when necessary, litigation, we can sometimes reach a fair settlement without the hassle of a trial.

Continue reading "Third Circuit Permits Lawsuit Claiming Uninsured Motorist Benefits for Accident Involving Road Debris – Allstate v. Squires" »

As a Missouri auto accident lawyer, I know railroad crossings can be a serious hazard for Midwestern drivers. A crash between a car and a train is no contest at all, and some crossings, particularly rural ones, can be dangerously poorly marked. So I was interested to see an adverse ruling from the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a man who lost his wife in a train accident. In Cornwell v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., Dennis Cornwell lost in trial court after the court dismissed three of his four expert witnesses testifying as to the crossing’s safety. He challenged those dismissals on appeal and also the summary judgment granted to Union Pacific on other safety claims. The Tenth upheld the district court, finding its decisions well supported by precedent.

Renia Cornwell hit a Union Pacific locomotive at 11:45 a.m. at an at-grade crossing, killing her at the scene. Some, but not all, witnesses heard the train’s horn sound before the collision, and the train’s onboard recorders provided contradictory information on the horn. The crossing also had warning signs, but no lights or gates; the installation of those safety features was completed about a month after the accident. Dennis Cornwell eventually sued Union Pacific for negligent, reckless and intentional wrongdoing in the operation of the crossing and the horn. At trial, the Oklahoma district court excluded three of Cornwell’s four witnesses, finding their testimony unreliable under Daubert. Cornwell went to trial with the fourth expert witness, but the jury found for Union Pacific.

On appeal, Cornwell argued that the district court incorrectly assessed the evidence the witnesses were offering. One, general railroad expert Alan Haley, Jr., was deemed unqualified, unreliable and relying on insufficient data. Two others, accident reconstructionist Robert Painter and his videographer, Bryan Schubert, were excluded because their accident reconstruction was dissimilar to the conditions of the actual crash, and also because they had trespassed on Union Pacific property during their research. The Tenth Circuit upheld these. Haley “lacked the proper background,” the Tenth found, and frequently changed his opinions on specific factual issues like the reliability of the train’s onboard video. Thus, he would not be able to give meaningful help to the jury. Similarly, the Tenth found Painter and Schubert’s reconstruction was speculative and conclusory because they tried to reconstruct Renia Cornwell’s view using a minivan rather than an SUV and the wrong type of locomotive, and made assumptions about how her eyes would have tracked as she reached the intersection. However, it declined to reach the trespassing issue, noting that the Daubert reasons were enough to uphold their exclusion and well supported by Tenth Circuit precedent and other caselaw.

As a southern Illinois car crash attorney, I am disappointed in this ruling. Excluding witnesses is not just a procedural matter; excluding expert witnesses is essentially excluding evidence. Because there’s no clear other way to demonstrate certain issues to a jury, having experts excluded can sound a death knell for the case. For this reason, defendants like very much to exclude the plaintiff’s expert witnesses, then try to have the case dismissed for lack of evidence. It’s also disappointing that the court declined to reach the trespassing issue, which is unusual — most accident reconstruction takes place on public roads not requiring permission, and permission from the adverse party might be difficult to get. As a St. Louis motor vehicle accident lawyer, I’d be pleased to see it revisited in other cases.

Continue reading "Tenth Circuit Upholds Exclusion of Plaintiffs Experts in Car Accident Lawsuit Involving Train – Cornwell v. Union Pacific Railroad" »

Much of my work as a Missouri auto accident attorney focuses on insurance coverage — whether insurers should pay claims of their insureds. This is more complex than it might sound, because insurance companies make the most money when the minimize what they pay on claims. And of course, they write their policies to minimize their payments, at least within the confines of the law — but state law allows injured drivers to fight back. That was what happened in Tripp v. Western National Mutual Insurance, an auto accident insurance case decided by the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Driver Cindy Tripp and her husband, Lyle Tripp, sued Western for bad faith and breach of contract when it refused to provide the full amount of their underinsured motorist coverage. They lost on the bad faith claim but won both the money and attorney fees, and the Eighth Circuit upheld the attorney fee award.

Cindy Tripp and her daughter were going shopping when their car was rear-ended by Jeffrey Christiansen, hard enough to deploy Christiansen’s airbag. Tripp suffered $3,000 in property damage and recurring pain and sleeplessness that have affected her daily life and her work. After the crash, Western offered Tripp only the $5,000 limit of her medical-pay insurance; she settled with Christiansen’s insurance company for an additional $87,000, then made a claim on her own underinsured motorist insurance for $150,000, the limit she could legally obtain. Despite estimating the case’s worth at $120,000 to $150,000, Western offered Tripp $10,000. Instead of taking the offer, she sued for breach of contract and bad faith. The jury found for Tripp on breach of contract and awarded her $150,000, but did not find bad faith. The trial court awarded Tripp attorney fees under a South Dakota state law allowing such an award when an insurer’s refusal to pay is “vexatious or without reasonable cause.”

Western appealed the attorney fee award to the Eighth Circuit, arguing that the trial court was wrong on both the facts and the law to award the attorney fees because Western had won on the bad faith count. The Eighth disagreed. The South Dakota Supreme Court has consistently found no connection between insurance bad faith, a tort, and the statutory right to attorney fees when conduct was “vexatious or without reasonable cause.” When a jury finds in favor of an insured on bad faith, the court noted, South Dakota caselaw requires a separate analysis of whether the refusal to pay was vexatious. Thus, the Eighth expressly ruled that attorney fees for refusal to pay that is “vexatious or without reasonable cause” can stand even when bad faith is not found, and requires a separate analysis. It also rejected Western’s argument that the facts don’t support the “vexatious” finding in its case, noting that Western itself valued the claim at $10,000 to $140,000 more than its original offer to Tripp, and never investigated the loss independently. Thus, it upheld the district court.

As a southern Illinois motor vehicle accident lawyer, I applaud the ruling in this case. Judging by this opinion, neither the statute itself nor the caselaw in South Dakota supports Western’s position, making it odd that Western chose to fight the issue into the Eighth Circuit. While insurance companies may have all kinds of reasons to appeal their cases, this kind of protracted litigation can be hard on injured plaintiffs who are obligated to defend themselves and their judgments on appeal. An individual like Cindy Tripp is unlikely to have the financial resources to match Western’s, which means she may have been further strained financially by the case, after already suffering the economic losses of her injury. As a St. Louis car accident attorney, it’s my job to level the playing field whenever possible in the face of this gross power imbalance.

Continue reading "Eighth Circuit Rules Auto Insurer Must Pay Attorney Fees After ‘Vexatious’ Refusal to Pay – Tripp v. Western National Mutual Insurance" »

As a Missouri car accident attorney, I was interested to read a federal appeals court decision dismissing an insurance coverage dispute — at least for now. In Zbegner v. Allied Property & Casualty Insurance Co., the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Zbegner may not pursue his lawsuit for underinsured motorist benefits yet because it isn’t yet clear how much he could recover from the other driver’s insurance company. Zbegner was injured in a crash he says was caused by Jesse Hanson, who was not well enough insured to cover all of Zbegner’s claims. Hanson’s insurer has paid a property damage settlement and made an offer for Zbegner’s injuries, but the injury claim is not resolved. For that reason, the Tenth said Zbegner may not yet pursue a lawsuit.

Zbegner’s suit says he suffered severe injuries with damages of more than $150,000. He accepted a $350 property damage payment from Hanson’s insurer, Allstate, but has not accepted an offer of $2,145 to settle his injury claim. He then turned to his own insurer, Allied, to request the policy limits of his underinsured motorist policy. Allied declined and Zbegner sued for breach of contract, breach of covenant of good faith and violations of Colorado law. Allied moved to dismiss, arguing that the case was not yet ripe because it couldn’t know what it might owe Zbegner until he resolved his claim with Allstate. The federal district court agreed, construing Colorado law on ripeness and concluding that Zbegner suffers no undue hardship from waiting. It dismissed his claim without prejudice and he appealed.

The Tenth Circuit agreed that Zbegner’s claim is not yet ripe. Under Colorado law, which is controlling, it said the amount due under a UIM policy cannot be known until the underlying claim against the at-fault party is resolved. Zbegner argued that the language of his policy with Allied is distinct from the language in the case at issue, but the Tenth Circuit said the language of the policy was irrelevant — the ruling did not rely solely on the policy language. State law provides two different ways to calculate an insurer’s maximum liability under an underinsured (or uninsured) motorist policy, one of which depends on the payout by other parties. Allied further argued that its policy language requires waiting to see what other recoveries are, and the Tenth Circuit agreed, noting that many state courts have found this. Thus, the Tenth upheld the district court’s dismissal without prejudice.

As a St. Louis auto accident lawyer, I suspect Zbegner will be back in court. The decision doesn’t explain why he never settled with Allstate, but if he can document his claim for $150,000 in damages — which is well over the $2,145 settlement Allstate offered him — the chances are good that he won’t be able to collect the entire amount from the underinsured Hanson. In fact, the Tenth Circuit noted that Hanson’s policy limit is just $25,000, so it is inevitable that Zbegner will not be able to collect $150,000 — the question is merely whether or how much he will be able to recover from Allstate. In general, our southern Illinois car crash attorneys pursue payment from as many sources as necessary when our clients are seriously injured. This often starts with the at-fault driver, but as this case shows, action against your own insurer is sometimes necessary as well.

Continue reading "Tenth Circuit Agrees Lawsuit for Uninsured Motorist Benefits Not Ripe for Adjudication – Zbegner v. Allied Property & Casualty" »

As a St. Louis car accident attorney, I sometimes handle cases in which just one half of a couple was injured, but both people make injury claims. This is possible because the law allows the non-injured person in a marriage to make a claim for loss of consortium — broadly, loss of the injured spouse’s services, companionship and more. Of course, such a claim cannot exist without an injury to the spouse, and it generally follows an injury claim of some kind by the spouse, so both are suing the same at-fault parties. That was the case in Voris v. Molinaro, a Connecticut Supreme Court case in which John Voris claimed loss of consortium after an injury to his wife, Joan Voris, by driver Peter Molinaro. The high court ruled that because Joan Voris settled her injury claim, a loss of consortium claim alone by John Voris could not stand.

The Vorises were together when Molinaro hit the passenger side of their vehicle, causing back and spine injuries to both people. The injuries to Joan Voris are more severe and painful, leaving her bedridden at times and unable to function normally. The couple sued Molinaro, each alleging a count for their own injuries and each alleging loss of consortium. Joan Voris settled both of her claims about four and a half years after the accident, and withdrew them from court as is standard in settlements. John Voris also withdrew his injury claim, but left the loss of consortium claim in place. Molinaro moved to strike that last count and the trial court granted it, relying on a 1979 Connecticut Supreme Court case, Hopson v. St. Mary’s Hospital, to conclude that John Voris could not pursue his claim after Joan Voris dismissed hers. John Voris appealed.

Before the Connecticut Supreme Court, Voris argued that loss of consortium is a separate cause of action that should stand on its own. Hopson is dicta and not binding, he argued, and suggested extrajurisdictional cases on which the court could rely. The high court was not impressed. In Hopson, it said, it had reversed a 1911 rule that disallowed any loss of consortium claim at all. The opinion considered but rejected the possibility that allowing loss of consortium would allow double recoveries, expressly saying loss of consortium is barred when the injured spouse’s case has been settled or lost. While this was dicta, the court said, numerous cases since have followed its guidance. It cited “strong policy” reasons for its holding, including the possibility of overlapping damages; the status of loss of consortium as a derivative claim; and the interests of efficiency. Thus, it upheld the trial court’s decision to strike.

I am not aware of any similar decision here in Missouri. But as a Missouri auto accident lawyer, I am aware of a recent Eighth Circuit case that linked the amount of the damages for the loss of consortium claim to those for the underlying claim. In that case, Kingman v. Dillard’s, the wife had been injured by a falling rack in a Dillard’s department store and permanently injured her shoulder. While the injury was not severe, it compromised her ability to care for her quadriplegic husband, who required help bathing, dressing and turning over to avoid bedsores. The Eighth Circuit ultimately found that Missouri law would not allow the husband to claim the money for a full-time caregiver because the wife’s injury award was much smaller. As a southern Illinois car wreck attorney, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Missouri will also not allow loss of consortium claims separated from the spouse’s underlying injury claim.

Continue reading "Loss of Consortium Claims Barred When Underlying Claim Is Settled, Court Rules – Voris v. Molinaro" »

As a St. Louis car crash attorney, I like to warn my clients early and often that their insurance companies do not have their best interests in mind. Auto insurance is more profitable when insurers pay less in claims, and that means lowballing or denying claims whenever they believe they can. Sometimes, this is taken so far that it actually breaches the contract between the insurer and the insured, requiring a lawsuit to settle the claim. In Adams v. King et al, the lawsuit eventually created no fewer than three appellate court decisions, all filed by the insurance company seeking to avoid paying benefits. David, Landon and La Crysta Adams were hit by an at-fault driver and their insurer, Shelter Mutual Insurance Co., declined their uninsured motorist claim. In this decision, the appeals court reiterated that Shelter Mutual must pay the claim and denied it appeal of the “stacking” of insurance policies.

The opinion by the Missouri Appeals Court did not go into the facts of the crash, possibly because this was the third time the case had been before it. The first time, the appeals court reversed a grant of summary judgment to Shelter Mutual, finding that the at-fault driver had been driving an uninsured vehicle within the policy’s meaning. In the second appeal, the court reiterated that the Adams family was entitled to a declaratory judgment on the uninsured motorist claim, but sent the case back for resolution of breach of contract and vexatious refusal claims. In this appeal, the third, the appeals court declined to revisit the issue further, citing the law of the case doctrine without further comment.

The appellate court spent more time on the insurance company’s second point, which challenged the trial court’s decision to allow the family to stack its three insurance policies. Under “stacking,” insurance policy holders apply more than one policy to the same incident, allowing them to collect the maximum from each policy as long as all the policies apply to the situation. The facts of the case have been stipulated, the court noted; the dispute is a matter of law. Under Missouri caselaw, the court said, Missouri clearly allows stacking, and Shelter Mutual’s argument that caselaw creates a cap is erroneous. Shelter Mutual also argued that the policies’ language required the trial court to set off part of the payment to compensate for a payment by the negligent driver’s insurance company. The trial court ruled against the insurer on this, finding that the language of the policy was ambiguous as to what constitutes “damages.” Missouri law construes ambiguity in insurance contracts against the insurer, the court noted, and the victims’ “damages” were in any case well over the $200,000 limit of the stacked policies. Thus, the appeal was denied.

As a Missouri auto accident lawyer, I applaud the appeals court’s decision. Although I would have liked to understand the details of the case, it’s clear enough that Shelter Mutual was trying hard to avoid paying the uninsured motorist claim, even in the face of two different appellate decisions requiring it to pay. The court mentions offhand that the Adams family’s damages were well in excess of the $200,000 they will (hopefully) receive under the stacked policies, and presumably also the payment that the at-fault driver’s insurance company made. This likely means they suffered serious injuries and genuinely need that money to pay medical costs or replace lost income. It’s not unusual for people who suffered a serious car wreck to find themselves struggling financially as a result, with high medical bills rolling in and disabilities keeping them out of work. That’s often why accident victims seek out a southern Illinois car accident attorney, to help them pass the costs on to the negligent person who caused them.

Continue reading "Missouri Appeals Court Denies Insurers Third Attempt to Avoid Uninsured Motorist Claim – Adams v. King" »

Insurance coverage disputes come up frequently in my work as a St. Louis car crash lawyer. Insurance companies exist to make money, like all businesses, and part of the way they do that is by limiting the amount of money they pay to their insureds after an accident creates an insurance claim. Sometimes, this even leads to the insurance company denying coverage it’s required to provide under its own policy. This is a form of breach of contract called insurance bad faith, and insurance clients can and should protect their rights with a lawsuit when they are unfairly denied coverage. Lero v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. was an insurance bad faith claim that found its way to the Missouri Court of Appeals. The Leros sought to collect for an uninsured motorist claim on an umbrella insurance policy, but the appeals court found no right to coverage.

Paul and Carolyn Lero are the parents of Denise Greene, who died in October of 2008 when a drunk driver crossed a median and hit her car head-on. They successfully sued the owner of the driver’s car and received a $2 million judgment, but that insurance company denied coverage. The Leros then turned to Greene’s uninsured motorist coverage, which paid the policy limit of $50,000. They attempted to also collect on an umbrella policy Greene had, but State Farm denied that the policy covered accidents with uninsured motorists. The Leros sued State Farm for breach of contract, arguing that the umbrella policy was intended to provide excess coverage over Greene’s auto insurance and also that the uninsured motorist coverage was a prerequisite to the umbrella coverage. After striking several defenses State Farm raised as new defenses, the trial court granted summary judgment to the Leros, and State Farm appealed.

The Court of Appeals reversed, ruling that the stricken defenses were ultimately determinative of whether there was uninsured motorist coverage available. The trial court had found State Farm was estopped from arguing that its only coverage was that listed in a specific place, and that the Leros were impermissibly attempting to shift the burden of proof when they argued that uninsured motorist coverage was not excluded. On the first point, State Farm argued on appeal that estoppel was inappropriate; on the second, that striking the defense essentially created the coverage the Leros sought. The appeals court found that the Leros failed to establish true inconsistency between the initial denial and the later defenses, and therefore that State Farm should not have been estopped from using them. State Farm cited the policy in its denial letter and enclosed the relevant section of the policy. The company consistently asserted this later, it added. Because estopping this defense was inappropriate and created new coverage, the appeals court reversed the summary judgment for the Leros and entered it for State Farm.

As a southern Illinois auto accident attorney, I am disappointed by this ruling. When a family member dies through no fault of her own, families are understandably upset, and pursuing justice through the civil court system may be their only option. It’s disappointing that after the Leros pursued their case through at least three different courts, they were ultimately able to collect only a small part of their $2 million judgment. It would be interesting to know why the family did not pursue coverage from the insurance companies of the at-fault driver and that car’s owner (different people). As an experienced Missouri car wreck lawyer, I would not be surprised to discover that the at-fault driver, who was drunk, was not insured in the first place. This underscores why it’s so vital to buy uninsured motorist coverage — so in the event of a catastrophic crash, you have at least some compensation.

Continue reading "Missouri Court of Appeals Reverses Uninsured Motorist Decision in Fatal Auto Accident – Lero v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co." »

As a Missouri ATV accident attorney, I write here a lot about the dangers of ATVs. These are off-road vehicles used for entertainment or getting around large farms and ranches, and despite being motor vehicles, they are not subject to nearly the same regulations as roadworthy cars and trucks. However, one area where both classes of vehicle may be treated the same, at least in Montana, is liability of those who build and maintain roads for hazardous conditions that cause a crash. That was the issue in Fasch v. M.K. Weeden Construction et al., a Montana Supreme Court decision stemming from a single-vehicle ATV accident on U.S. Highway 59. The court ultimately ruled that the case should be decided by trial, not summary judgment.

Walter Fasch was using a three-wheeled ATV to bring some fresh produce to a friend, which obligated him to use Highway 59. The highway was under construction at the time, with traffic routed onto pavement while another part of the road was dirt. On his way home, Fasch’s ATV rolled over several times and ended up right-side up in the dirt part of the road. He testified that he was on the edge of the paved part of the road and encountered a small hole in the pavement that tipped over the ATV. The defendants testified that evidence showed Fasch was on the dirt part of the road, which was closed to traffic, when he hit the hole. Fasch ultimately drove the ATV back to Hirsch’s house and sought help for a punctured lung, broken rib and other injuries. Fasch sued the state Department of Transportation and two private contractors working on the construction. The trial court ultimately granted summary judgment to defendants, finding that Fasch was driving on the dirt when the accident took place.

On appeal, the Montana Supreme Court reversed that ruling, finding that the case poses genuine issues of material fact. It found that the trial court improperly relied on the fact that ATV tracks were found on the dirt portion of the road to conclude that Fasch was lying about having started out on pavement. This would make him ineligible for compensation because he would have been breaking the law by using the dirt portion of the road. However, the court said, that evidence was not documented with anything other than a diagram and witness testimony. Fasch had the same evidence to back up his version of events, which was that the one set of tracks was created when he drove back to Hirsch’s house, and that if he’d been on the dirt to start with, there would be two sets. A reasonable jury could accept that version, the high court found. Thus, the dispute here should be resolved by a full trial, not on summary judgment, it ruled, sending the case back down to trial court.

As a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer, I strongly agree that the evidence, as presented in this opinion, should get a fuller airing. Dangerous roadways don’t just affect ATVs, though ATVs may roll over more easily than most cars and trucks. People in ordinary cars and trucks can also get into serious accidents when dangerous conditions go unfixed. These include construction-related problems, like those in this case, as well as intersections that lack a needed traffic signal, debris in the roadway, vegetation blocking road signs, roads that create dangerous “blind curves” and more. These problems are generally the responsibility of the government entity responsible for building or maintaining the roadway, and sometimes also of construction contractors. This kind of lawsuit can be more time-sensitive and intricate than a case against a private party, so I recommend that potential plaintiffs contact our St. Louis defective roadway attorneys as early as possible.

Continue reading "Montana Supreme Court Finds Injured ATV Rider May Sue State DOT Over Roadway – Fasch v. M.K. Weeden" »

As a Missouri motor vehicle accident lawyer, I believe pedestrian accidents are among the most destructive crashes. Unlike crashes between two vehicles, pedestrian crashes involve at least one person who is totally unprotected by a steel cage or any safety device — and almost always involve a driver who had a legal obligation to yield to pedestrians. In Lifson v. City of Syracuse and Derek Klink, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, rejected a defense raised by a driver who hit a pedestrian as she crossed a pedestrian-heavy street. Driver Derek Klink hit Irene Lifson as she crossed the street, killing her. Lifson’s family sued, and Klink benefited at trial from jury instructions to consider the emergency doctrine — whether Klink behaved prudently in an emergency not of his own making. He was found not liable, but the New York high court found that the emergency doctrine instruction was in error.

Lifson and Klink both worked in the same Syracuse office tower, which lies across the street from a parking garage. Klink said he was unfamiliar with the area, however, when he pulled out of the garage on the day of the crash. He testified that he waited until he thought pedestrians had cleared the road before turning left, and when he glanced to the left again, he was blinded by the sun. When his vision cleared, he said, he saw Lifson too late to stop his car. Lifson’s family sued. At Klink’s request and over the objections of the Lifsons, the court instructed the jury to consider the emergency doctrine, which asked the jury to decide whether Klink faced an emergency not of his making and, if so, whether he responded in a reasonably prudent way. If it found both to be true, it would find no liability for Klink. This is ultimately what happened; the jury found Lifson 85% at fault and the city of Syracuse 15% at fault. The appellate division of New York’s courts affirmed the ruling, finding that the sun blinding could reasonably be found a sudden and unforeseen occurrence. A dissenter to that case argued that the sun glare was not an emergency because it could reasonably have been anticipated. The Lifsons appealed.

The New York Court of Appeals reversed, agreeing that Klink’s situation did not rise to the level of an emergency. It likened the case to Caristo v. Sanzone, a 2001 case in which a car slid downhill during icy weather and hit another vehicle. In that case, the high court reversed an emergency doctrine finding, saying the bad weather conditions had existed for at least two hours, and thus could not be considered “sudden and unexpected.” Similarly, the court found that it cannot be considered sudden and unexpected to be blinded by the sun while driving west at sunset. Klink was moderately familiar with the area, the court noted. Furthermore, the court found the error not harmless, because it permitted the jury to consider the evidence under a standard very favorable to Klink. Thus, it remanded the case to trial court. Judge Smith dissented, arguing that while the sun reliably sets in the west, drivers should not be required to always keep sunset, weather and obstructions in mind.

As a St. Louis auto accident attorney, I do not agree. In fact, I believe most people would agree that it’s completely reasonable to require drivers to keep road conditions in mind, including bad weather, road construction, obstructions on the side of the road and other factors as well as sun glare. All of these factors are easy to anticipate — though the sun is perhaps the easiest, being the main source of natural light for our planet — and common concerns for drivers. Indeed, failing to consider these factors is a failure in the common-law duty to take reasonable care behind the wheel that we all owe to one another. And that common-law duty is the source of lawsuits such as that of the Lifson’s family. A jury might still reduce blame for a driver if a pedestrian runs into traffic unexpectedly, but as a southern Illinois car accident lawyer, I encourage drivers who genuinely cannot see during sunset to find alternative routes.

Continue reading "New York Court Rejects Use of Emergency Doctrine in Fatal Pedestrian Accident Case – Lifson v. City of Syracuse" »

As a St. Louis auto accident attorney, I was interested to read a recent Ohio case about when accident victims may invoke their underinsured motorist coverage. In Barbee v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, four members of the Barbee family were in a serious accident while visiting Wisconsin. They first sued the at-fault drivers, who were named only as “the tortfeasors,” but eventually found that the judgment was insufficient to cover all of their damages. They then sued Nationwide for coverage under their underinsured motorist policy, only to have the case dismissed because it was filed after a three-year deadline in the policy. The trial court and court of appeals found that the policy was ambiguous, but the Ohio Supreme Court reversed, finding no ambiguity serious enough to toll the deadline.

The Barbees’ policy with Nationwide contained three relevant provisions. One requires any lawsuit to be filed within three years of the crash. Another says no payment will be made until the limits of all other applicable insurance are exhausted. A third clause says no lawsuit may be filed unless the plaintiff has fully complied with the policy, including pursuing Nationwide’s subrogation rights. Nationwide itself sued the tortfeasor to obtain payment of medical costs, but the Barbees did not sue Nationwide within the three-year deadline. Rather, they sued the tortfeasors in Wisconsin federal court and eventually won — but the limits of one tortfeasor’s insurance policy were insufficient to cover their damages. Thus, the Barbees sued in Ohio state court, more than four years after the crash, to recover additional money from their underinsured motorist policy. Nationwide moved for summary judgment because of the deadline provision, but the trial court denied this, finding that the exhaustion provision tolled the deadline provision. Ohio’s Ninth District Court of Appeals agreed, reading the three provisions together as creating ambiguity. Ambiguities in insurance contracts are always construed in favor of the insured, so the appeals court found for the Barbees. Nationwide appealed.

It had better luck at the Ohio Supreme Court, which found the contract unambiguous. The court started by noting that the dispute is about when the three-year deadline began to run, not the existence of the deadline. The Barbees argued that they could not have known they needed the underinsured motorist coverage until after the federal lawsuit was concluded. Nationwide argued that there was no ambiguity because the exhaustion clause limits payment, not the right to sue. The high court agreed, citing 1998’s Ross v. Farmers Insurance Group, which found the right to payment was separate from the accrual of the claim. An insured can still file suit even if the right to payment is not yet settled, the court said. In fact, this is what happened with another victims of the same accident, Faith Donley, whose suit against Nationwide was stayed pending the outcome of litigation with the tortfeasors. Ohio state law supports this by allowing a three-year deadline to sue. The court dismissed the Barbees’ argument that this would create a flood of unnecessary litigation, saying there would be little extra burden because cases could be stayed when necessary. Thus, it reversed the lower courts. In a strongly worded dissent, Judges Pfeifer and McGee Brown disagreed that this was little burden, saying the situation could be resolved much more efficiently by tolling the deadline.

As a southern Illinois motor vehicle accident lawyer, I have to agree. The Ohio courts probably do not lack cases or attention. By requiring plaintiffs to file lawsuits before they know they need to do so, the court’s decision ensures more clogging of the courts and more work for attorneys on both sides, at the expense of the litigants. This is a financial burden that insurance companies can likely bear, but the same is not true of injured people. Sustaining a serious personal injury typically makes the victim’s financial situation worse, and in fact, many of my clients file suit as a way to defray the heavy medical costs of injuries that were not their fault. And of course, this case sticks the Barbees with the bills for injuries that everyone agrees were caused by someone else’s negligence, simply because they had the bad luck to interpret their insurance contract differently. As a Missouri car wreck attorney, I don’t believe this decision is in most Ohioans’ best interests.

Continue reading "Ohio Supreme Court Rules Accident Victims Must Sue Insurers Before Ensuring Coverage Is Needed – Barbee v. Nationwide" »

As a Missouri auto accident attorney, I frequently write here about cases involving alleged defects with an automobile itself or one of its parts. These can cause a crash even when the driver is doing nothing unsafe, putting the people in the car and everyone around them at serious risk because of an auto company’s mistakes. That was the allegation in Bender v. Mazda Motor Corp., an Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from Alabama. Peggy Bender lost a family member in a crash involving a Mazda Miata; she alleged that the airbags in the Miata were defective. Mazda sought to remove the case to federal court, but the federal court sent it back despite a pending ruling on the same issue in the Eleventh Circuit. Despite a ruling keeping that other case in federal court, the Eleventh in this case ruled that it did not have the authority to bring the case back into federal court.

Bender originally filed her lawsuit in Alabama state court against Mazda and the dealership where the Miata was purchased. Mazda removed the case, arguing that the amount in controversy was more than $75,000 and the auto dealership was not a proper defendant. Bender argued that there was insufficient evidence on the amount in controversy. Mazda cited a contemporary Alabama case, Roe v. Michelin North America Inc., which was awaiting a decision in the Eleventh Circuit at the time. Roe had similar facts, but the district court in that case found the amount in controversy, while not expressly stated, was “readily deducible” and “clear” from the complaint. The district court should follow this earlier ruling, Mazda said, or at least stay the case until the Eleventh made its ruling in Roe. The district court denied this motion and sent the case back to state court. Six months later, the Eleventh affirmed in Roe, keeping the case in federal court. Mazda moved in federal court for reconsideration of the previous ruling, but the federal court said it no longer had jurisdiction over the case because it had already been remanded. Mazda appealed.

On appeal, the Eleventh found that the district court was right — it was powerless to make new rulings in the case. This was true even though Mazda’s argument would otherwise have succeeded in moving the case back to federal court. The Eleventh found Harris v. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Alabama was controlling. In that case, a claim moved back and forth from state to federal court, including a remand to state court from federal court. The defendants filed a successful motion to reconsider, and the plaintiffs appealed, arguing that the federal courts no longer had any authority to reconsider once the case was remanded. The Eleventh Circuit agreed, and in the current case, applied the same logic. Once a case is remanded, it said, the federal district court and even its federal appeals court have no jurisdiction to reconsider that remand order. It doesn’t matter that the remand order was legally erroneous under Roe, the Eleventh said; federal courts still have no jurisdiction. “The case has been removed to state court and that is where it will stay.”

As a St. Louis product liability lawyer, I’m interested in this case in part because it underscores an often-used tactic in injury cases. Injury cases, especially auto product liability cases like this, usually pit a single individual or family against a large, wealthy corporation. These corporations have a substantial advantage in terms of resources and legal expertise, so they don’t suffer much harm when they drag out the case with novel legal tactics or unlikely appeals. By contrast, this delay can hurt the plaintiff, who may not have the money to continue chasing the case through the court system (or systems). Indeed, plaintiffs often sue because the injury left them with serious financial problems. As a southern Illinois car crash attorney, I work hard to keep my cases where they belong and as short and easy on the plaintiffs as I can.

Continue reading "Appeals Court Refuses to Send Auto Product Liability Case Back to Federal Court – Bender v. Mazda Motor Co." »

As a southern Illinois defective products lawyer, I know defects in auto products are among the deadliest product defects, because they expose their victims to high-speed auto accidents. Most drivers could stand to be a little more careful, but no matter how much care you use, you’re only as safe as your vehicle is. An alleged defect in a Lincoln Town Car killed a man and badly injured a woman in Jablonski v. Ford Motor Co., in which the Illinois Supreme Court ultimately rejected a large jury verdict in the family’s favor. John and Dora Jablonski were stopped in their Lincoln Town Car when Natalie Ingrahm caused a crash that killed John and left Dora permanently disfigured. Dora and her son, John Jr., won a $43 million verdict in Madison County court, but the Illinois Supreme Court reversed, finding that the evidence for negligent design was not sufficient.

The Jablonskis were heading home when they reached a construction zone and came to a complete stop. Ingrahm rear-ended them at 55 to 65 miles per hour. The crash sent a large pipe wrench in the Jablonskis’ trunk flying into the Town Car’s gas tank, which in turn caused a fire. John died and Dora was severely burned, causing permanent disfigurement. Dora and John Jr. later sued Ingrahm, who settled, and Ford. At trial, they alleged Ford had willfully and wantonly defectively designed the Town Car by placing the fuel tank vertically behind the axle; failing to shield the tank; and failing to warn consumers of the risk. The trial relied heavily on expert testimony on auto design, which noted that Ford has mostly moved away from placing gas tanks behind the axle and allegedly knows this placement is unsafe. It also included evidence of Ford adding gas tank shields to Crown Victoria Police Interceptors — which are designed on the same platform as the Town Car — but not warning the Jablonskis or other Town Car owners. This last theory had never been pleaded and was included in jury instructions over Ford’s objections. Ford appealed the ruling to an Illinois appeals court, and again to the Illinois Supreme Court.

Before the state high court, Ford argued that it should have won judgment notwithstanding the verdict because the plaintiffs did not present enough evidence that Ford breached any standard of care. The high court rejected this as to compliance with industry standards, saying Ford is wrong to argue that compliance with industry standards is enough to show no liability. However, it agreed with Ford that the evidence presented on risk vs. the utility of moving the fuel tank failed to show Ford was negligent. The evidence is too mixed to show that Ford chose an unreasonably dangerous design, it said. Finally, on the post-sale duty to warn count, it found that evidence for it was not truly submitted at trial. The high court also found the jury instructions improperly used language not adopted in Illinois and declined to adopt it. It said Ford’s choice to add shields to the Crown Victoria trunks was a voluntary undertaking that did not extend to civilian vehicles on the same platform like the Jablonskis’. Thus, it reversed the verdict and remanded to trial court.

As a St. Louis auto accident attorney, I know this is an ongoing issue with certain Ford vehicles. That’s especially true for police vehicles, which as this decision notes are frequently involved in high-speed crashes because of the nature of police work. In fact, Ford has recently stopped making the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor altogether. However, even those of us who just use cars to get to work and errands are subject to other drivers’ bad decisions, as the Jablonski family was. This, it’s likely that similar claims will continue to spring up in Illinois, Missouri and across the United States. Of course, the claims in any individual lawsuit may not stand up to legal scrunity. That’s why part of my job as a Missouri personal injury lawyer is to construct and defend my clients’ cases as carefully as possible.

Continue reading "Illinois Supreme Court Throws Out Jury Verdict in Auto Product Liability Case – Jablonski v. Ford Motor Co." »

As a southern Illinois car crash lawyer and an experienced attorney in product liability cases, I know there are a lot of lawsuits alleging defective vehicles and vehicle parts that caused deadly rollover crashes. The Bridgestone/Firestone tire recalls a decade ago came after faulty tire construction sparked an unlikely increase in rollover crashes. This was made worse by the popularity of SUVs, a vehicle design that raises the vehicle’s center of gravity and thus increases the likelihood of a rollover. That contention was part of Show v. Ford Motor Co., an auto products liability case that ultimately did not survive its trip to the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. David Show and Maria Federici were in a Ford Explorer when another driver hit the left rear tire; the SUV rolled over and both were injured. The Seventh Circuit ruled that they could not continue their case, however, because they did not get an expert to testify on the safety of the vehicle design.

Show was driving the 1993 Explorer through an Illinois intersection at about 30 mph when the other driver hit the vehicle; Federici was a passenger. It was not clear who was at fault or how serious their injuries were. The plaintiffs sued Ford, arguing that the Explorer’s design made it inherently unstable and thus was defective. At the end of discovery, plaintiffs still had not retained an expert witness to discuss the vehicle’s design. The magistrate judge found that this made it impossible for them to establish their claim under Illinois law. Illinois requires plaintiffs to show either failure to perform according to reasonable consumer expectations, or that the design proximately caused the injury. The magistrate granted summary judgment to Ford and the plaintiffs appealed.

On appeal, the plaintiffs did not deny that lacking an expert would make it impossible to establish liability by showing an inherently defective design that proximately caused their injuries. However, they told the Seventh Circuit, ordinary jurors should be able to use their own experience to establish whether the vehicle failed to live up to reasonable consumer expectations. Though the Illinois Supreme Court — whose opinion controls the law in Illinois — has not ruled on the subject, several appellate courts in the state have found expert witnesses to be necessary when some parts of the product’s design are outside of ordinary experience. Under caselaw, the Seventh said, the question of what a reasonable consumer would expect is just one way of examining the issues surrounding whether the product is unreasonably dangerous. In this case, the court said, the design of the 1993 Ford Explorer came from experts and likely requires an expert to explain, even though many jurors own cars. Intuition is not enough, the court said; physics and higher math are involved.

As a St. Louis auto products liability attorney, I’m disappointed that these plaintiffs will not get a chance to finish their case. But as a rule, I use expert testimony in cases like this because it helps the jury understand the facts better. Experts are not necessarily on the side of the auto company; there are plenty of experts who have testified in the past decade about the dangerous proclivity of SUVs to roll over. (In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has devoted several studies to addressing rollover problems.) And as the Seventh Circuit pointed out, a rollover accident can be described with physics and higher math. An expert can be expensive, and I prefer that costs to injured people be kept low — but as a Missouri product liability lawyer, I find expert testimony helpful.

Continue reading "SUV Rollover Case Cannot Proceed Without Technical Expert’s Testimony – Show v. Ford Motor Co." »

As a St. Louis personal injury lawyer, I was interested to read a court decision voiding certain limitations in insurance contracts as contrary to Missouri public policy. The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made that decision in Carolyn Schubert v. Auto Owners Insurance Policy, a case about an insurance payout for a home destroyed by fire. Carolyn Schubert and her husband’s stepdaughter, Deborah Lee Weiss, stipulated to each owning half of the home after Schubert’s husband, Thomas Schubert, died. Because of this, and because of a provision in the insurance contract, Auto Owners maintained that it owed Schubert only half of the total value of the policy, or $62,250 instead of $124,500. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri found that this was voided as against public policy, and the Eighth Circuit agreed.

The Schuberts married in 2005 and Thomas Schubert died in 2006. Because he left no will, Carolyn Schubert and Weiss, who was Thomas’s stepdaughter from his first marriage, agreed in probate proceedings that each owned 50 percent of the home. Weiss was living there at the time. After the death, Carolyn Schubert continued making premium payments regularly and renewed the home’s insurance policy twice, although she had also told Auto Owners that she was not sure whether she legally owned the house. However, three months after the probate agreement, Weiss intentionally set the home on fire, causing it to be completely destroyed. Schubert made an insurance claim after the fire. Auto Owners agreed to pay only half, citing a provision in the policy saying it would pay no more than the “insurable interest” the insured had in the property. Schubert filed a lawsuit seeking the full amount, alleging breach of contract and vexatious refusal to pay. The district court ultimately found for Schubert on breach of contract, finding that the provision was both ambiguous and against Missouri’s valued policy statute. Auto Owners appealed.

On appeal, the Eighth Circuit first decided that it did indeed have jurisdiction, because the entire amount in controversy, $124,500, exceeded the $75,000 legal threshold. It then turned to the question of whether the Auto Owners contract provision did indeed violate Missouri law. The valued contract statute says the value of the property, as listed in the contract, is conclusive unless there was fraud or other wrongdoing. In the case of a total loss, the statute expressly says the settlement should be the amount for which the property was insured. To receive a settlement, the person should have an insurable interest — that is, suffer a financial loss from the property’s destruction or a financial gain from its preservation. This is true regardless of who has title to the property. Furthermore, it noted that Missouri law has generally granted full payments to part owners, absent substantial changes in ownership or strict definitions of interest. The Eighth also agreed that the clause at issue is ambiguous because it failed to define “insurable interest.” Thus, it upheld the district court’s decision and called for Schubert to recover the full policy amount.

This is good news for Missouri plaintiffs and Missouri personal injury attorneys like me, because it allows plaintiffs to recover more money to help them deal with their serious physical and financial injuries. I most often deal with insurance through auto accident cases, where insurance companies can be notoriously unwilling to pay claims, even when the language of their policies makes it clear that they must. Insurance companies routinely offer less than the claim is worth, relying on injured people not to understand their rights. Some insurers deny that the victims are as badly injured as they say, but they may also undervalue the vehicle or the cost of repairs. My job as a southern Illinois car accident lawyer is to fight for a full settlement, through negotiations or, if necessary, in court.

Continue reading "Eighth Circuit Upholds Voiding of Insurance Provision Limiting Recovery as Contrary to Public Policy – Schubert v. Auto Owners Ins. Co." »

As a Missouri auto accident lawyer, I was interested to see a ruling in an underinsured motorist insurance case involving another part of the Eighth Circuit, North Dakota. Underinsured motorist insurance can be a lifesaver when you are hit by someone who does not have enough insurance to cover the damage they cause — but only if the insurer agrees to pay out. That was the point of contention in Jung v. General Casualty Company of Wisconsin, a case arising out of a serious injury to John Jung of North Dakota. Jung was hit by Richard Martin, whose insurance payout was not sufficient to cover all of Jung’s injuries. Jung and his wife, Janice Jung, sued Jung’s employer’s insurance company for access to its underinsured motorist coverage, but the district court denied this, saying Martin’s excess liability coverage made him not underinsured as a matter of law. The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

John Jung was at work, driving his employer’s truck, when he was hit by Martin and sustained serious injuries. The employer, Tooz Construction, carried a $1 million underinsured motorist policy. Martin had insurance for $250,000 per person and $500,000 per accident, plus a $1 million excess liability policy. The Jungs eventually settled with Martin and his insurer, Nodak Mutual, for $1.25 million, the limits of the excess liability and per-person insurance. They then claimed the underinsured motorist coverage offered by Jung’s employer’s insurance company, General Casualty, but this was denied on the grounds that Martin was not underinsured. The Jungs sued, and General Casualty moved for summary judgment, arguing that Martin was not underinsured as a matter of law. A magistrate judge’s report agreed, and summary judgment was granted. The Jungs moved to certify a question on the issue to the North Dakota Supreme Court, which was denied. They appealed both issues.

The Eighth Circuit started with the summary judgment ruling. Under North Dakota law, it said, a vehicle is only underinsured if the limits of its policy are less than the limits of the underinsured motorist policy the injured person seeks to collect from. Martin’s base insurance provided $250,000, the court noted, which is less than the $1 million limit under General Casualty’s underinsured motorist coverage. However, General Casualty argued that Martin’s excess liability policy of $1 million should be counted. The Eighth agreed. A North Dakota case finding UIM was appropriate did not apply here, it noted, because one policy in that case was disregarded for not covering the actual vehicle involved. By contrast, this case involves Martin’s own excess liability insurance covering the vehicle Martin owned and used in the crash. Other jurisdictions using a “gap” method to calculate underinsurance have come to similar conclusions, it noted. Thus, it upheld the summary judgment ruling. It also upheld the certified question issue, saying the Eighth Circuit generally does not allow certified questions after a case is decided, and it saw no need to ask the state high court to get involved.

This kind of case is relevant to my work as a St. Louis car crash attorney because insurance disputes can determine how much money my clients ultimately collect. This case did not specify what kind of injuries John Jung sustained, but they were likely very serious. Not only did the case say so, but the Jungs’ pursuit of the underinsured motorist coverage suggests that $1.25 million was insufficient to cover his injuries. That suggests something very serious, such as a head injury or paralysis, because the most serious injuries are also generally the most expensive. Permanently disabled people often need at least some help with daily life and frequent checkups, and they often cannot work anymore. All of this makes it worthwhile to go back to court for more compensation, even though, as a southern Illinois car wreck lawyer, I know court proceedings can be long, and sometimes upsetting.

Continue reading "Eighth Circuit Denies Uninsured Motorist Coverage Where Negligent Driver Had Excess Liability Policy – Jung v. General Casualty Co." »

As a Missouri auto accident lawyer, I sometimes use a practice called “stacking” to increase the amount of money my clients are eligible to recover. Stacking means applying more than one insurance policy to the same accident. This might take place if the driver carried one insurance policy for each vehicle in the home, or if he or she had coverage for a business as well as personal coverage. For accident victims hit by someone whose primary insurance policy won’t cover the entire cost of the injuries the crash caused, this can help. However, insurance companies dislike the extra cost of stacking policies, and have started including anti-stacking clauses in their policies. Those clauses were put to the test in the Eighth Circuit’s recent decision in Marie DeMeo v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.

DeMeo was crossing the street on foot in a marked crosswalk when she was hit by a pickup truck driven by Patrick McGinness. The pickup was owned and insured by McGinness’s daughter. DeMeo sued in Missouri state court and won a judgment of $350,000, but the daughter’s insurance company had a policy limit of only $100,000. After collecting that, DeMeo sought to recover from McGinness’s four auto insurance policies — one for each car he owned. These covered him for accidents driving a non-owned car, but included anti-stacking provisions. State Farm, the insurer, paid DeMeo only the limit of one policy, which was $50,000. DeMeo sued to stack the other policies and the federal district court granted summary judgment. State Farm appealed.

On appeal, the insurer argued that the district court was wrong to find that the three policies at issue were “excess coverage,” thus rendering the clear anti-stacking provisions ambiguous. The Eighth distinguished this case from earlier Missouri appeals cases, which involved clauses saying the coverage was in excess over “any other collectable insurance.” In this case, by contrast, the State Farm policies provide that their coverage are excess only over insurance on a “non-owned car.” This is clear and does not create the ambiguity that the district court cited, the Eighth said. Thus, the district court was wrong to find that the contract was ambiguous enough to justify ignoring the unambiguous anti-stacking clause, and it denied DeMeo the chance to stack them. It declined an opportunity to clarify how the situation could be addressed through Missouri law on minimum coverage.

This decision denies DeMeo the full extent of the damages she won, which always disappoints me as a St. Louis car accident attorney. Ideally, everyone who drives should carry more insurance than the state-mandated minimum, to avoid situations like this. Unfortunately, this is not practical for every budget and every vehicle, which means people can be left without the money they need to be fully compensated for an accident. The money has a serious purpose; people injured in car wrecks can be very badly injured, which often leads to high hospital and followup medical bills — even with health insurance. Part of my job as a southern Illinois pedestrian accident lawyer is to help victims collect the best possible settlement for their injuries.

Continue reading "Injured Pedestrian May Not Stack Auto Insurance Policies With Express Anti Stacking Clauses – DeMeo v. State Farm" »

A sad story about a preventable accident caught my eye as a St. Louis car accident attorney. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported June 8, two people were injured on Interstate 270 after a flat tire forced one driver to stop on the inside lane of the highway. The Missouri Highway Patrol said Gwinnell Campbell, 36, was stopped in either the far left lane or the median west of Highway 367, standing behind her disabled van. An approaching motorcyclist, 57-year-old James Annable, slowed down when he saw the disturbance, but a pickup truck behind did not, and hit both Annable and Campbell. Both were hospitalized with serious injuries. The Highway Patrol declined to say whether any of the motorists would be cited or criminally charged.

Campbell, of Florissant, was on her way home from a practice session with her rock band, her boyfriend, Bud Voegtlin, told the newspaper. She told Voegtlin that her tire had blown out at highway speeds and she was going to pull over. The Highway Patrol was not sure whether she was in the far left lane or partly in the median of the highway. Annable, of Worden, slowed when he saw the disabled van, but 30-year-old Joseph Burch, of Lexington, Mo., apparently did not see them and hit both people. Voegtlin, whose phone call with Campbell was unexpectedly cut short, went looking for her in his own truck and came across the accident scene. He said Campbell was conscious when he found her at the hospital, but had two broken bones, a dislocated knee and a bruised lung.

As a Missouri personal injury lawyer, I would be interested in knowing whether Campbell stopped in the left lane or the median. Of course, not everyone with a disabled vehicle is lucky enough to be able to get into a median in time. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, drivers have an obligation to stop when they see a collision risk ahead — that’s what Annable did. If the Highway Patrol eventually determines that Burch failed to stop because he wasn’t paying enough attention to the road, he and his auto insurance company could be held legally liable for the injuries to the other motorists. But if Campbell could have done more to get safely out of the road, it could hurt her chances of getting full compensation. And that matters, because the kinds of injuries she and Annable likely have will be expensive.

Continue reading "Two Hospitalized When Driver Hits Motorists Stopped in Far Left of Interstate 270" »

As a southern Illinois product liability attorney, I know vehicle rollovers are one of the most dangerous types of car wreck — and also one that’s commonly associated with bad vehicle design. So I was disappointed to read that a single-vehicle rollover in Madison County, Ill., has put a mother and three children under the age of five in area hospitals. According to a June 2 article from the Belleville News-Democrat, Jessica Dillon, 25, of Roxana swerved to avoid a piece of metal in her lane on Illinois 255. The maneuver sent her Chevrolet Trailblazer into the left-hand median of the road, overturned, slid into the opposing lanes and was hit by a utility truck. Two of the children and their mother were listed in serious or critical condition as of June 2; the fourth was treated and released.

Jessica Dillon was heading south at about 11:45 a.m. May 31 when she swerved to avoid the metal in the road. The Illinois State Police report said she lost control of the Trailblazer, which overturned in the median. The car was then hit by a utility truck driven by Cody Helms, 16, of Edwardsville. Tristynn Dillon, age 4, was using a seatbelt but not an age-appropriate booster seat and was ejected from the car. She is in critical condition at Cardinal Glennon Hospital in St. Louis. The crash also caused serious injuries to Jessica Dillon and to Timothy Dillon, 2. Tyler Dillon, two months, suffered only minor injuries. The other occupants had age-appropriate safety restraints. Helms was not injured. Illinois State Police were still investigating and had not cited anyone as of June 2.

The newspapers have highlighted the issue of Tristynn Dillon’s safety restraints, and I agree that safety restraints are important. But as a St. Louis car crash lawyer, I’d also like to talk about the possibility that the Trailblazer was defective. SUVs came under fire 10 to 15 years ago, after their rising popularity drew attention to the fact that they were more likely to roll over than conventional passenger cars. Federal data from 2000 shows that rollovers accounted for 22 percent of fatal accidents involving cars, but 61.5 percent of fatal SUV crashes. Safety experts believe SUVs’ higher centers of gravity make them more likely to tip over, sometimes even in common driving situations such as swerving and leaving the road. If that was the case here, it’s possible that an inherently unstable — that is, defective — design was at the root of this family’s crash.

Continue reading "Southern Illinois SUV Rollover Accident Sends Mother and Three Children to Hospital" »

As a Missouri ATV accident lawyer, I’m accustomed to reading about devastating single-vehicle accidents with ATVs that have serious safety flaws by design. But a story out of Lincoln County, Missouri, shows that ATVs are also not a safe place to be when hit by a car. According to a May 22 article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a couple in their early 80s were killed over the weekend after their ATV was rear-ended by a Pontiac driven by a teenager. Victor Harrell, 81, died at the scene; his wife, 82-year-old Virginia Harrell, was taken to the hospital but died there. The teen and his passenger were also treated at the hospital for serious injuries. The Missouri Highway Patrol is investigating whether charges are appropriate.

According to the article, the Harrells were going west on the paved Brevator Road outside Moscow Mills, Mo., northwest of St. Charles County. It was unclear what they were doing, but reports said they own a farm in the area. They were on top of a hill at 9:24 a.m. when Zacheriah Cain, 16, came up the hill behind them, westbound in the same lane, and hit the ATV. In addition to the fatal injuries to both Harrells, the crash caused serious injuries to Cain and his male passenger, who the Post-Dispatch said had the same last name. No charges have been filed, but the Missouri Highway Patrol is investigating each vehicle’s speed and the cause of the accident.

No matter what conclusion the Highway Patrol reaches, this story saddens me as a St. Louis auto accident attorney. ATVs are frequently used for recreation and sometimes for getting around unpaved land, but they are not intended to substitute for cars. For that reason, they lack many of the basic safety features required by law for passenger cars, such as seatbelts, airbags and a crush-resistant roof. That means that whenever a car (or truck) and an ATV crash, the people in the ATV usually sustain far worse injuries. In fact, the lack of seatbelts or even sides or a roof in many ATVs makes them a great deal more like motorcycles from an injury standpoint — it’s very easy to be thrown from the vehicle. That can lead to head injuries, broken bones and other serious injuries, regardless of who caused the crash.

Continue reading "Elderly Northeast Missouri Couple Dies After Their ATV Was Rear-Ended by a Car" »

As a St. Louis motor vehicle accident attorney, I know roadway design is not often the cause of crashes. So I was interested to see that St. Charles County officials have approved funding to repair an apparent safety flaw on a road in that county. According to a May 17 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, county officials authorized almost $24,000 to put guardrails on both sides of Augusta Bottom Road, which will protect motorists from going off the road and into a roadside pond. Two people died in such accidents last fall, setting off a local dispute over which government agency had the authority to improve the road. Fighting continues over another section that connects St. Charles County to Warren County.

Augusta Bottom Road is paved in the area where the guardrails will go in, in St. Charles County, but a gravel road as it approaches Warren County. Last October, 16-year-old Ella Neier of Washington died when her car went off the road above the pond, sending her into deep water. About a month later, Joseph Volmert, also of Washington, had a similar fatal accident.

The accidents triggered discussions about improving the entire length of road, but authorities quickly realized it wasn’t clear who owned the gravel section. The city of Washington has been maintaining it, but records show it belongs to the city of Augusta. Officials from both cities and both counties have agreed to seek a MoDOT grant to study the issue, but Warren County has refused to authorize paving or moving the road, regardless of the study’s results. The Neier family has collected donations for road improvements, but cannot use them until ownership is cleared up.

Ownership is an important question when government funds are low, but as a Missouri auto accident lawyer, I’m disappointed that this dispute is holding up potential safety improvements. Regardless of who owns the road, it’s not hard for visitors to see that it could use guardrails — it runs along the top of a levee with a steep drop-off to deep water below. The section in Warren County is gravel, which may even increase the risk of a crash. Interestingly, a commenter in a previous Post-Dispatch article suggests Warren County doesn’t want to take responsibility for the road because it doesn’t want to be sued. However, it’s unclear how the county will prevent lawsuits by refusing to improve the road even after these two crashes — which make the need for improvements clear.

Continue reading "St. Charles Authorities Approve Guardrails for Road With at Least Two Fatal Crashes" »

I’ve been writing here recently about the issue of guard cables on the Kansas side of Kansas City, which are under consideration after an accident that killed a five-year-old boy and a young man. Now, as a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer, I was interested to read that our neighbors in Illinois are going ahead with median cables on a stretch of Interstate 74 that saw its own fatal accident. According to a May 9 article from the Bloomington Pantagraph, the families of two teenagers who died in a crossover crash in January have succeeded in their push for cables along the interchange between the interstate and County Highway 39. The work will be completed by 2012.

The accident that triggered the push for guard cables killed Michael Honan II and Celene Estes. Honan was driving a pickup along Interstate 74 when he crossed the median, clipped a semi and ran into a school bus carrying the girls’ basketball team from Tremont High School. The accident also injured Briana Estes and Brittany Fair, who were both in the pickup; nine people from the bus were treated at a hospital and released. State troopers said ice on the road contributed to the accident, although Honan also had amphetamines and marijuana in his bloodstream. The campaign got a boost from locals, including friends of the families as well as a woman who lost her father in a crossover accident in the same spot. Local politicians backed it as well.

As a St. Louis car crash attorney, I’m pleased that the campaign for guard cables was successful, although it’s sad that an unnecessary tragedy caused it. After observing Missouri’s experience with guard cables for several years, I believe they are an important safeguard against deadly crossover accidents. Crossovers are especially dangerous because they create head-on crashes, which have a higher death rate than rear-end or sideswipe crashes. That means that even if a driver bounces off a median barrier and hits other cars, the probability of a bad accident is lower. Missouri’s experience has borne this out. In 2010, after our state added guard cables to many roads, we had 7 deaths in crossover accidents. Before their installation in 2003, that number was 53.

Continue reading "Illinois Highway to Get Guard Cables After Teens Die in Crossover Car Accident" »

As a Missouri auto accident attorney, I wrote about two months ago in this space about the call for median guard cables in Kansas. Guard cables, which are thick metal cables strung between opposing lanes of traffic on highways, are in wider use on the Missouri side of the state line, and the Missouri Department of Transportation believes they have saved lives by preventing crossover accidents. Kansas transportation authorities have not used the cables as much, however, in part because of the cost and the different highway widths in the two states. Unfortunately, the issue was revived April 16 when a crossover crash on the K-10 highway killed five-year-old Cainan Schutt and 24-year-old Ryan Pittman.

Schutt and his two-year-old sister were on their way to an Easter egg hunt with their grandmother and her husband when Pittman crossed the center median of K-10. The ensuing crash killed both and seriously injured Schutt's sister and grandmother. Blood tests later showed that Pittman had several incapacitating drugs in his body. The mayor of the town where they lived, Eudora, responded with a campaign for guard cables along K-10, and Kansas governor Sam Brownbeck has asked the state Department of Transportation to study the matter.

However, KDOT has said it doesn't believe the cables are necessarily the best choice. Using a cost-benefit analysis, the agency had previously concluded that K-10 didn't qualify for the expensive cables, due to relatively low traffic and wide medians. Highway medians are generally wider in Kansas than in Missouri, they note, so drivers who swerve off the road have more time to recover. As a result, the state sees about five crossover accidents per year, far fewer than Missouri's pre-cable rate. Cables could actually cause a few accidents among drivers who would otherwise be able to get back in their lanes. And guard cables would prevent emergency vehicles from turning around easily, they said.

As a St. Louis car crash lawyer, I hope KDOT officials make this decision with safety in mind. Missouri is being used as a comparison not just because we're neighbors, but also because Missouri has seen a dramatic drop in its crossover accident fatalities since installing the cables. Last year, we had seven crossover deaths; in 2003, before installation started, we had 53. MoDOT acknowledges that cables can bounce cars back into traffic, as KDOT suggested, but says the sideswipe or rear-end accidents this causes are less likely to be deadly than a head-on crossover crash. And the other arguments cited in the article can easily be raised against the medians on interstates and other divided highways, where emergency vehicles are still doing their jobs.

Continue reading "Crossover Accident Outside Kansas City Renews Call for Missouri-Like Guard Cables" »

An unusual accident caught my eye as a Missouri motor vehicle accident lawyer. As the Springfield News-Leader reported April 15, one Springfield man was killed and another arrested after a pickup truck hit a homemade go-kart just outside the city limits. The accident took the life of Raymond Ridinger, 39, whose disabled go-kart was being towed by another go-kart. Ridinger was rounding a turn when he was struck and killed by an unnamed 27-year-old driver in a pickup truck. No one else was injured, but police took the pickup’s driver into custody and charges against him may be filed. A state trooper reminded readers that small vehicles like the go-kart don’t belong on city streets.

OzarksFirst.com said the accident happened around 9 p.m. on April 14. Ridinger’s go-kart was not functioning, so the other kart was towing him. The karts reportedly did not have headlights or taillights or license plates. The first kart stopped at an intersection to yield to the pickup, but Ridinger’s kart had enough momentum to keep going into the intersection. There, he was hit and died at the scene of his injuries. The driver of the pickup was not formally charged with any crime; police were still investigating. However, that driver has a history of driving infractions including DUI, driving without a valid license and leaving the scene of an accident, as well as drug charges.

As a St. Louis car crash attorney, I wonder if both drivers might not share some responsibility for the crash. As the trooper said, it’s extremely unwise to drive a go-kart on roads designed for cars and trucks. It might also be illegal, depending on things like the kart’s maximum speed — and it was certainly risky to do so without lights at night. For that reason, I suspect Ridinger will be assigned some fault for the crash. It’s less certain whether the pickup’s driver was at fault. A history of DUI and other bad decisions behind the wheel doesn’t make someone guilty of the same bad decisions this time, but it does suggest that police should look into the question — and the arrest suggests that they are looking into it pretty seriously.

Continue reading "Springfield Man Arrested After Hitting and Killing Driver of Homemade Go-Kart" »

A news story about a traffic accident lawsuit caught my eye as a St. Louis pedestrian accident lawyer. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported April 7, the surviving husband of a woman killed as she walked through a gas station has sued the driver who hit her. Matthew McBride of St. Louis was left a widower with two toddler daughters last September when his wife, 38-year-old Molly McBride, was hit by Anthony Rancilio of southern St. Louis County. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from Rancilio, 27, for the effects of the death on the McBride family. Criminal charges have not been filed against Rancilio; police say they are still looking into whether he had a medical condition that caused or contributed to the crash.

According to the Post-Dispatch, Molly McBride was walking toward the gas cap at the rear of her vehicle when Rancilio sped into the gas station and hit a small barrier pole. His Mazda Tribute SUV then struck McBride. She was taken to a hospital, where she died. Witnesses told the newspaper at the time that Rancilio had been using his cell phone moments before the crash, and Matthew McBride’s lawsuit says Rancilio had been speeding. Police officers said at the time that they were looking into whether an unspecified medical condition could have caused the crash; no charges have yet been filed. This is not Rancilio’s first car wreck lawsuit; he previously settled two suits out of court, both stemming from a December 2000 rear-end crash involving ice.

As a Missouri car crash attorney, I think this is a great example of how individuals can seek justice through the civil courts even when the criminal justice system moves slowly. It is not certain that Rancilio won’t be charged, but it seems unusual to wait seven months to determine whether he has a medical problem. Meanwhile, distracted driving, especially phoning and driving, has become a major focus of federal and state driving safety campaigns. The McBride family’s lawsuit can go forward regardless of whether authorities end up filing criminal charges against Rancilio, and may give them some measure of justice even if they do not. It may also provide fair compensation for the emotional and practical challenges faced by the loss of a mother while both daughters are still very young.

Continue reading "Family Sues Driver Over Woman’s Death in Gas Station Accident With Charges Pending" »

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" »

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" »

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" »

I wrote a few weeks ago, as a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer, about the federal study suggesting that electronic throttle systems aren’t responsible for unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles. So I was very interested to see a Feb. 23 article in the Chicago Tribune about a family that is undeterred by the report — they still believe their father’s death was caused by an electronic problem, not by driver error. Just as interestingly, the article quotes Southern Illinois University professor Dave Gilbert, an automotive technology expert, who says he stands by his earlier report that an electronic short could have caused the unintended acceleration. A second federal study expected this summer could cast more light on the subject.

Gilbert testified before Congress a year ago about a report he’d prepared on the possibility that unintended acceleration, rather than faulty floor mats or gas pedals, could be responsible for the slew of accidents. He had found that inducing an electronic short in the drive-by-wire systems in the cars could cause unintended acceleration, something he was able to reproduce in a laboratory. Gilbert told the Tribune that NASA’s own report mentions finding “tin whiskers” — small, hairlike deformations of the metal — on the pedal assemblies of the Toyota vehicles. That suggests that the federal government might have overstated its conclusions, he said. Meanwhile, Toyota has just announced yet another unintended acceleration recall of 2.17 million vehicles, which are attributed to gas pedal entrapment problems.

As a St. Louis car accident attorney, I hope safety investigators keep this in mind as they continue to look into the possibility of flaws in the electronic throttle systems. This is very important, because most cars made in the last decade use this kind of throttle. If it has serious safety problems, literally millions of vehicles could be unsafe for their own drivers and everyone who happens to be around them. Alternative interpretations of NASA’s study may also be important for people like the man in the article, who lost his 87-year-old father after an alleged unintended acceleration incident in a 2006 Corolla. Surveillance video shows the car swerving to avoid pedestrians, so the driver clearly had enough mental presence to understand and avoid the danger — making driver error more difficult to believe.

Continue reading "Illinois Professor Stands By His Work on Unintended Acceleration in Toyota Vehicles" »

About two years ago, I wrote a blog post as a southern Illinois auto accident attorney about the unnecessary deaths of three people in a drunk driving accident. So I was interested to read in the Alton Telegraph Feb. 13 that the family of two of those killed is suing a bar they say served the driver too much alcohol. Arnold Jackson Jr. and Takia Jackson are suing an establishment called Pink Galleon for allegedly continuing to serve alcohol to Newton Keene even though he was visibly intoxicated. Keene went on that evening to drive on the wrong side of Illinois 255, causing the accident that killed Tawanda Jackson, Takia’s mother, and Arnold Jackson III, her nine-year-old brother. Another passenger, 28-year-old Jon Moss of Dellwood, Mo., also died but is not a party to the lawsuit. Keene is currently serving 28 years in prison.

Tawanda Jackson and her children were former St. Louis residents who had moved to Tennessee but returned to the area for her grandmother’s funeral. They were on their way home on the evening of Feb. 5, 2009, with a friend, Jon Moss of Dellwood, Mo., in the car. Just north of Interstate 270 in Edwardville, they ran head-on into Keene, who was driving drunk on the wrong side of the road. Keene had six previous drunk driving convictions in Missouri and Illinois, but was still free. The crash killed everyone but Takia Jackson, who was 11 at the time, and kept her in the hospital for weeks. She and her father allege that Pink Galleon served Keene even though he was “obviously intoxicated. They are also suing Tawanda Jackson’s auto insurance company, saying their uninsured motorist coverage was not sufficient to cover the costs of the accident.

No insurance policy is sufficient to give Takia Jackson back her mother and brother, unfortunately. But as a St. Louis car accident lawyer, I suspect that this accident caused very high medical costs for her family. Weeks of hospitalization can easily cost six figures. If Takia Jackson was seriously injured, which is likely, she will need follow-up medical care that will also cost a lot of money. And of course, she is entitled to claim financial damages for the loss of her family and her own injuries. In Illinois and many other states, including Missouri, victims have the right to sue establishments that served alcohol to people who were visibly or obviously intoxicated. These establishments can make a lot of money catering to drunks – so the law makes sure that they also have an incentive to “cut off” people who could pose a danger to the public.

Continue reading "Family of Mother and Son Killed by Drunk Driver Suing Bar for Over-Serving Him" »

As a Missouri product liability lawyer, I have been very interested in the reports of unintended acceleration in some late-model Toyota and Lexus vehicles. As I’ve written here in the past, news reports have found an unusually high number of those vehicles involved in incidents when the vehicle seemed to accelerate out of control, often with the driver standing on the brakes to stop it. Multiple deaths are attributed to the problem, including the death of a California Highway Patrol officer trained in handling high-speed emergencies. This eventually led to a recall of millions of Toyota vehicles for retrofits of the pedal and the floor mats – but some safety advocates believed the real problem was the cars’ electronic throttle systems. As the Los Angeles Times reported Feb. 8, a new federal study has case doubt on that theory.

The study was released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but conducted by engineers on loan from NASA. Those engineers found no problems with the software used in Toyota’s electronic throttle control systems that could lead to unintended acceleration. Toyota gave NASA engineers access to 280,000 lines of software code as well as the circuitry used in the systems, also known as drive-by-wire. The team did find flaws, and conceded that it was possible for two of those flaws to converge in a way that would cause unintended acceleration under some conditions. But it said there was no evidence that this happened in normal use or was especially likely. Regardless, the NHTSA said it planned to propose rules requiring brake override on all vehicles – which is currently offered by Toyota.

These results concern me as a St. Louis car accident attorney. As the Times notes, reports of unintended acceleration went up dramatically after electronic throttles became standard. Another study sponsored by the federal Department of Transportation, this one conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, is expected in the summer and will provide another data point. In the meantime, however, the NASA results are still a victory of a sort for injured Toyota drivers and occupants, because they do validate the idea that Toyota’s gas pedals and floor mats were flawed – adding to the evidence provided by the recalls. Toyota has already paid two fines totaling about 48.8 million for delaying reports and recalls of those problems, and that is likely damning enough to fuel the lawsuits facing the automaker, which number more than 100.

Continue reading "Federal Report Rules Out Electronic Throttle Controls in Unintended Acceleration Cases" »

As a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer, I was sorry to see a report about a St. George man who was killed in a downtown St. Louis crash. Zeljko Landup, 43, was thrown from an elevated portion of highway after he pulled into the left lane of Interstate 55 to deal with a fender-bender. Authorities told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that ice might have been a factor in the 6 a.m. crashes, but were still investigating as of Jan. 22. The other driver in the fender-bender suffered minor injuries when the second crash knocked him down. Nothing was reported on the third driver, who hit Landup’s car with a pickup truck. Landup and his wife and teenaged sons came to St. Louis from Bosnia about nine years ago; he worked at Archer-Daniels-Midland.

The article said Landup was likely on the way to work when he got into a minor accident with an unnamed 57-year-old driver. His wife, Jasmina Landup, was with him and planned to take the car home. Landup and the other driver were standing in the far left lane of Interstate 55, talking, when a pickup truck crashed into Landup’s vehicle. That crash pushed Landup over the guardrail, between the northbound and southbound portions of the elevated highway, and into downtown St. Louis below. The other driver was knocked to the ground and was treated at a hospital for injuries that were not life-threatening. Police officers were investigating the cause of the crash and did not assign a cause as of Jan. 22, but said parts of the road were icy on the morning of the crash, and parts of some highways were closed.

As a St. Louis car accident attorney, I hope drivers are very careful about weather and pull off highways whenever possible, so they can prevent another accident as senseless as this. Missouri and Illinois have been wrestling with icy weather for weeks, and we’ve had some weather-related accidents as well. But if this driver turns out to have hit Landup’s vehicle out of inattention or carelessness, he or she could face serious criminal charges as well as a lawsuit. As the article notes, this is a family of immigrants; Landup’s 17-year-old son had to translate for his mother in the KDSK story. Without good English, she may not be able to support the family on her own, meaning they may truly need a financial settlement to make ends meet.

Continue reading "Driver in Minor Accident Thrown to Death When Another Vehicle Hits His Parked Car" »

Our St. Louis car wreck attorneys have written here before about the accident that took the lives of two young women from southern Illinois. Jessica Uhl, 18, and Kelli Uhl, 13, died in a crash caused by a former Illinois State Trooper who was allegedly speeding and distracted. Matt Mitchell was allegedly driving at 126 mph, talking on a cell phone and emailing at the same time when his squad car hit the Uhls’ car. They were killed at the scene, and two others in another vehicle were injured. Mitchell has already pleaded guilty to two counts of reckless homicide, but as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Jan. 19, the young women’s parents, Brian Uhl and Kimberly Schlau, have also won an $8 million judgment from the Illinois Court of Claims.

An attorney for the state of Illinois said it was the largest tort verdict ever handed down by the Illinois Court of Claims, which handles lawsuits against the state. Schlau told the media the award wouldn’t make her family whole, but hoped it would deter similar behavior in the future. She made similar remarks in June, when she spoke to the graduating class at the St. Louis County Police Academy. At the time of the crash, Mitchell was responding to an emergency call, but other police agencies were already on the scene. In addition, he was reportedly talking on the phone to his girlfriend and emailing another trooper moments before the crash. According to the article, there was already a judgment against Mitchell for $1.7 million stemming from a 2003 car crash. He was involved in another single-car accident in 2002, but with no injuries.

As a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer, I am pleased that the Court of Claims made an appropriate award to this family. Mitchell’s behavior was described at trial as “indefensible” by a former director of the Illinois State Police, and reports suggest that it’s true. Distracted driving is becoming a major issue thanks to the rise of mobile phones, helping remind all of us that taking your eyes off the road to email or text is not safe. There’s also some evidence that talking on the phone while driving is dangerous, although this is less accepted. These behaviors are even less acceptable while driving at a high rate of speed, since speeding gives drivers less time to react to sudden changes on the road. Mitchell may have been doing his job when he rushed to answer the emergency call, but there was no reason why he couldn’t have done it with a greater regard for other motorists’ safety.

Continue reading "Parents of Teenagers Killed in Crash With Speeding Trooper Win $8 Million Verdict" »

As a St. Louis pedestrian accident attorney, I was sorry to read about a man who was hit by not one but two vehicles as he walked down a snowy southern Illinois road. The Belleville News-Democrat reported that Richard Hicks, 25 and of Edwardsville, was hospitalized in critical but stable condition after he was hit by both an SUV and a snowplow. Hicks was walking north on Illinois 157 just after midnight on Jan. 8 when a fast-moving SUV apparently lost control and hit him. He was dragged 960 feet into the northbound lanes of the highway. The SUV did not stop. However, a snowplow clearing the highway’s southbound lanes came along and also hit Hicks as he lay in the road. That driver did stop. Police are looking for a large Ford SUV, gray or silver, with a missing grille emblem and damage to a dark-colored bug deflector.

Because police are looking for the SUV driver, it sounds like they may believe he or she is criminally culpable for hitting Hicks. It was unclear why Hicks was on foot at a late hour in a snowstorm, but a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story says he was walking south in the northbound lane, suggesting that he was taking steps to be extra visible. The witness statement that the SUV was going very fast and lost control could mean reckless driving, or it could simply mean the driver lost control in the snowy conditions. Of course, the driver would be guilty of leaving the scene either way, but if police think the driver was also driving recklessly or under the influence, the end result could be criminal vehicular manslaughter charges. Evidence of reckless driving could also strengthen any pedestrian accident lawsuit Hicks and his family might pursue.

The accident with the snowplow is another matter. By all accounts, the police don’t believe the snowplow driver is at fault -- he stopped after the accident and there was no report that he is being cited. But if authorities determine this driver was at fault, the legal landscape for any injury lawsuit would be very different. This driver was plowing an Illinois state highway, which means he works for the Illinois Department of Transportation -- that is, the state. Under a legal doctrine called sovereign immunity, states are generally able to specify shorter deadlines for suing, special administrative procedures to follow and other special rules. If you miss these deadlines or don’t follow procedures right, you can lose your right to sue, which is why experts suggest hiring a southern Illinois pedestrian accident lawyer right away if you have this kind of claim.

Continue reading "Illinois Man Hospitalized After Accidents With Hit-and-Run SUV and Snowplow" »

As a Missouri auto defect attorney, I have followed the news about the Toyota sudden acceleration problems with great interest. As you might remember, regulators focused their attention on Toyota vehicles in 2009 after evidence emerged showing that Toyotas had an unusual number of accidents blamed on acceleration the drivers didn’t intend. The automaker initially blamed floor mats for trapping gas pedals, then “sticky” gas pedals, and recalled millions of Toyota and Lexus models to fix those problems. But some observers believe the real problem is with newer cars’ electronic throttles, also known as “drive by wire,” malfunctioning without a clear way for drivers to override them. That’s the theory behind product defect lawsuits filed by seven insurance companies against Toyota on Dec. 30.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the insurers are seeking to recover insurance payments made to their customers in crashes they believe were caused by defects in Toyota vehicles. They are claiming damages in excess of $230,000 from 14 crashes, but say as many as 725 crashes may have been caused by unintended acceleration. In the lawsuits, the insurance companies say the problem comes from defects in Toyota’s products, and that Toyota could have fixed it by including an override system that idles the vehicle when the gas and brake are both pressed. Evidence shows that Toyota discussed this solution with federal regulators as early as 2007 -- but didn’t implement it until 2010. The same legal theory is behind a slew of lawsuits by accident victims, which are consolidated in California federal court and still pending. Toyota was also sued by Allstate Insurance three months ago.

The new lawsuits indicate to me, as a St. Louis car crash lawyer, that all of these lawsuits are likely on the right track. Individuals may or may not choose to sue for emotional reasons, but when a business like an insurance company files a claim, it’s likely because that business thinks it’s worth the financial risk. That bodes well for everyone making the claims against Toyota. If records show the automaker considered putting in a safety override to its electronic throttle system three years before it actually did so, that could look a lot to a jury like a decision to place finances ahead of its customers’ safety. And as other automakers know, that is unlikely to impress a jury favorably. After all the claims are finished, Toyota is likely to be on the hook for millions of dollars, not just the money the insurers claimed.

Continue reading "Insurance Companies Join Drivers With Sudden Acceleration Lawsuits Against Toyota" »

As a Missouri drunk driving accident attorney, I’ve written here before about the sad case of Christine Miller, a Sunset Hills police officer who is accused of causing a fatal DUI crash. Miller was off duty when she allegedly drove drunk on the wrong side of the road, causing a head-on crash that killed four people and severely injured a fifth. Miller, and a bar that allegedly over-served her, settled a wrongful death lawsuit in April with the surviving victim and the others’ families. She is also criminally charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of assault. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Dec. 10, Miller pleaded guilty to those charges the day before. At her sentencing in March, she could receive sentences ranging from probation to 67 years in prison.

The crash injured Nitesh Adusumilli, 27, of Balwin, Mo.; and killed Anusha Anumolu, 23, Anita Lakshmi Veerapaneni, 23, Priya Muppavarapu, 22 -- all of Charleston, Ill., and Satya Subhakar Chinta, 25, of Aurora, Ill. All of the victims were Indian nationals in the United States to work or study, and Veerapaneni and Adusumilli were engaged to be married. They were heading home from bowling and dinner out when Adusumilli made a legal right turn and crashed head-on into Miller, who was driving the wrong way. Forty-five minutes after the crash, Miller had a blood-alcohol level of 0.229. Miller was hospitalized in critical condition right after the crash, and her defense attorney said she couldn’t remember it. In court, a prosecutor said a receipt in Miller’s purse showed she’d had five drinks the night of the crash. She has been on unpaid suspension with the Sunset Hills police department since the incident, and city officials expect to discuss her employment status soon.

As a St. Louis DUI crash lawyer, I hope this sad story encourages drivers in the region to think twice before driving drunk this holiday season. Because of drunk driving, four young people lost their lives in a country far from home, where their families couldn’t be with them -- representatives of the St. Louis Indian community rushed to the hospital instead. Miller and Adusumilli are likely suffering from permanent injuries, not to mention other personal losses. This case is somewhat unusual, in that the victims have successfully pursued a drunk driving lawsuit long before Miller could be criminally convicted, and in fact before she even pleaded guilty. That fact, and the guilty plea, suggests that the evidence against Miller is very strong. The compensation won by the victims can never reverse the accident, of course, but as the article notes, it has helped them deal with the aftereffects, such as the cost of bringing the bodies back to India.

Continue reading "Police Officer Pleads Guilty to Manslaughter in DUI Crash That Killed Four People" »

A major news story in St. Louis caught my eye as a Missouri pedestrian accident attorney. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Dec. 7, police have made one arrest in the death of a 17-year-old who was acting as a “flag girl” at a drag race. Trenton Pinckard, 19, was arrested on the day of the article for his part in the crash that seriously injured Sammie Boldwyn of Hazelwood. Pinckard was racing another driver, who has not been identified although police are looking for him. Both drivers left the scene. Boldwyn is hospitalized in critical condition at St. Louis University Hospital, with injuries including swelling of her brain and broken ribs. Her mother and sister declined to comment.

The accident reportedly happened on the night of Dec. 5, at an illegal street race in St. Louis. A pickup truck and a Mitsubishi Eclipse were racing at about 9:45 p.m., with Pinckard reportedly driving the truck. The Eclipse was driven by a man and also had a woman passenger. Bystanders described it as gray with a missing rear bumper. Boldwyn was standing in the street to signal the start of the race, and as the vehicles raced by, the rear fender of the Eclipse knocked her over. The impact pushed Boldwyn beneath the pickup truck, where she suffered serious injuries. A spectator said she and others ran to Boldwyn after they saw the accident and called for medical help, but neither vehicle stopped. Police say they have strong leads on the identity of the other driver.

This terrible, preventable incident is attracting a lot of media attention, in part because it was caused by illegal drag racing. As a St. Louis pedestrian accident lawyer, I’d like to discuss how that could affect the legal consequences for Pinckard and the other driver. Both drivers may be charged with illegal racing, but even if they are not, the record will show that racing was the cause of the crash. This will hurt them if they go to trial in a criminal case -- and it would also hurt them if Boldwyn and her family decide to pursue a civil lawsuit as well. When drivers break the law, even by doing something like running a stop sign, they are usually at fault for any accident that results. That means Pinckard and the other driver are almost automatically liable in any legal claim for Boldwyn’s injuries. And that could be a large claim, because if the newspaper is right that she has brain swelling, doctors are probably concerned about permanent brain damage.

Continue reading "Young Man Charged With Running Over Teen and Leaving the Scene at Drag Race" »

As a St. Louis auto accident lawyer, I was interested to see a recent report on how attorneys can help homeowners in foreclosure. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Nov. 30 on the practice of suing lenders who are about to foreclose for reasons the borrower considers unfair. Our firm primarily handles personal injury work rather than foreclosures, but the article started with the story of a woman who was sent into foreclosure by a personal injury she never expected. Darlene Lehman was injured on Christmas of last year in an accident that was not her fault, keeping her out of work for four months. This meant she lost income, which in turn put her behind in mortgage payments. Only with the help of an attorney did she manage to hold on to her home.

Lehman was driving a van for a hotel on Interstate 70 when the accident took place. Cars around her van began spinning out and crashing on the icy road, so she stopped her van. Unfortunately, drivers behind her didn’t or couldn’t stop, and she was rear-ended, triggering a chain reaction of rear-end accidents that shoved her van into a median. She told the newspaper that she blacked out after severe pain to the left side of her head, and eventually woke up with injuries to her head, neck and back. Ultimately, the injuries took her out of work from Christmas Day until early May, and she was not able to make mortgage payments. Together with $1,500 in foreclosure fees and attorney costs for her bank, she owed more than $5,000 she couldn’t pay. The bank had scheduled a foreclosure sale before her attorney convinced it to take an expected workers’ compensation settlement as payment in the future.

This article goes into detail about the services of foreclosure attorneys as well as their problems. But as a southern Illinois car crash attorney, I want to highlight the financial problems this crash caused for Lehman. Lehman had a job and an income, but all of that was taken away in an instant by the 25-car pileup. Her injury took her out of work for several months, during which time she was not able to make an income and apparently was also unable to secure the workers’ compensation that typically applies to accidents on the job. Unfortunately, this is a typical story for people who are sidelined by serious injuries not their fault. As this woman found, serious injuries create sky-high medical bills and other costs, while taking away victims’ ability to earn the money they need to pay for care, let alone support themselves.

Continue reading "Foreclosure Article Outlines Serious Financial Problems Traffic Accidents Can Cause" »

As a Missouri defective automobile attorney, I was pleased to see reports that the federal Department of Transportation is looking into allegations about unsafe rental cars. As the Detroit News reported Nov. 23, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating how quickly car rental companies make repairs to vehicles in their fleets that are subject to recalls. The agency said it was acting in response to allegations that people have suffered injuries or deaths because rental car companies failed to pull recalled vehicles off the road. There has already been one high-profile case fitting that description, in which two young women died after their vehicle caught fire on a California highway. Their mother co-founded an auto safety group that has asked the FTC to require repairs before rental cars go back on the road.

The California case involved sisters Jacqueline and Raechel Houck, ages 20 and 24. They died in 2004 after the Chrysler PT Cruiser they had rented caught fire on the road, causing them to hit a tractor-trailer. Later, it was discovered that the PT Cruiser had been recalled for exactly this problem -- a risk of catching fire under the hood. Their parents sued Enterprise Rent-A-Car for renting the young women a car that was recalled because of the possibility of catching fire while in use. In fact, the family claims Enterprise rented the car at least four times after receiving the recall notice. After fighting the lawsuit for five years, Enterprise settled this summer for $15 million. A spokesperson for the car rental industry said no law requires companies to repair recalled vehicles before they go back on the road, but that most companies pull recalled cars from their fleets.

I hope the NHTSA investigation confirms that statement. But as a St. Louis auto defect lawyer, I believe the financial incentives at play here work against safety, not for it. Car rental companies only have so many vehicles, and when they place vehicles out of service, they can serve fewer customers. That leads to less money, of course. As a result, the companies have an incentive to keep as many cars on the road as possible. Even when the risk of a lawsuit is taken into account, some managers may judge that the risk of an accident is less desirable than the near-certainty of not making money while the vehicle is grounded. This policy makes sense if your only goal is to make money -- but it’s an unacceptable safety risk for rental car customers and the people they happen to pass on the road.

Continue reading "Federal Government Launches Investigation Into Safety Recall Repairs on Rental Cars " »

As a St. Louis motor vehicle accident attorney, I was sorry to read that a motorcyclist in southern Illinois lost his life to a crash. The Alton Telegraph reported Nov. 16 that James T. Selby of Alton, Ill. died in emergency surgery after sustaining serious injuries just hours before. Selby was riding on Milton Road when a driver, 19-year-old Christopher Dickerson, reportedly pulled out in front of him. The ensuing crash left Selby with serious injuries to his chest. No injuries to Dickerson were reported. A spokesperson for the Alton Police Department said Dickerson might be cited for failure to yield, pending the results of the investigation. Blood-alcohol tests are also pending, but police believe neither of the motorists was intoxicated.

The accident occurred at about 1:15 p.m. Monday, according to the Telegraph. Selby was riding south on Milton Road when Dickerson, driving a sedan, tried to turn left from Milton Drive, directly into Selby’s path. In the ensuing crash, Selby was seriously injured when his chest hit the left front fender of the car. No part of the car ran him over, however. The motorcycle slid several feet away from the site of the crash. Selby was airlifted to Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis for emergency surgery, but died in surgery about three and a half hours after the crash. A police spokesperson in Alton said Dickerson did not appear to be guilty of anything other than failure to yield at a stop sign, but that the department was waiting for the results of an investigation before charging anyone with a crime.

I am not a traffic officer or a detective; I am a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer. But I am surprised that the Alton police are willing to tell the media that Dickerson failed to yield, yet not willing to actually issue the citation. If he truly did fail to check for oncoming traffic, and as a result pulled into the path of an oncoming vehicle, Dickerson would almost certainly be cited for that failure, and could also be held responsible for the death under some circumstances. Regardless of whether he faces criminal charges, Dickerson would also be legally liable in any motorcycle crash lawsuit filed by Selby’s family. In fact, families who have lost a loved one or suffered a serious injury don’t have to rely on the criminal justice system to seek justice. Instead, families may sue a negligent driver in civil court, allowing them to recover financial compensation for their hospital bills and other costs while holding wrongdoers legally responsible for their actions.

Continue reading "Southern Illinois Motorcyclist Dies After Crash With Car Driver Making Left Turn" »

As a southern Illinois car accident attorney, I frequently work with families of people who were killed or badly injured by drunk drivers. That’s why I was disappointed to read in the Bellville News-Democrat about a 33-year-old Greenville man killed in a head-on collision with an allegedly drunk driver. Robert Reavis, 23, is accused of driving drunk on the night of Nov. 7, when he swerved across Illinois 140 and hit a car head-on. The collision killed Brock W. Adcock, 33. Chemical test results are pending, but Reavis is already charged with aggravated DUI resulting in death.

The accident took place around 2 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 7, a Sunday. Adcock was driving his Dodge Stratus east on Illinois 140, a two-lane road, in Bond County. According to Illinois State Police, Reavis, of Smithboro, was traveling west on the same road in a Chevy Silverado pickup truck. Allegedly under the influence, he veered off the right side of the road into a cornfield, and then back across the westbound lane, crossing into the eastbound lane about 50 feet east of Linder Boulevard, near Greenville. There, he smashed head-on into Adcock's car. Reavis suffered minor injuries, but when police arrived at the scene only a short time after the accident, Adcock was already dead. As of Sunday evening, Reavis was being held at the Bond County Jail, and bail had not yet been set.

It’s almost too obvious to repeat that drunk driving is illegal and unsafe. Nonetheless, I see the sad results all the time in my work as a Missouri car accident attorney. In many of my cases, prosecutors have already filed criminal charges against the driver, although that’s not always the case -- especially in Missouri, which media reports have shown has a patchy and ineffective license suspension system. However, regardless of whether there’s a criminal case, victims have a legal right to hold the drunk driver responsible in civil court as well. When a driver ignores the law and common sense and then injures or kills someone, that’s a form of negligence. The law recognizes that victims should not have to bear the costs of accidents caused by someone else’s negligence, which is why victims may sue the perpetrator for all of their financial and personal losses.

Continue reading "Fatal Head-On Collision in Greenville Attributed to Allegedly Drunk Driver " »

As a St. Louis personal injury attorney, I noted a recent article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about involuntary manslaughter charges that were brought because of a tragic but preventable accident. Yet another young man, 22-year-old Michael Brown of Florissant, has died in a drunk driving accident. The driver, 23-year-old Ronnie Langford of St. Paul, now faces serious criminal charges as a result of the crash.

According to the Post-Dispatch, Brown died from injuries he sustained after he was thrown from Langford’s 2004 Nissan Titan on June 11. Langford was allegedly driving drunk and speeding when he struck a utility pole and then a house in the 1700 block of Koch Road in St. Charles County. The truck flipped after it hit the home’s front deck. Two men were in the home at the time, but neither was injured. Police said that Langford's blood-alcohol content was more than three times the 0.08 percent limit, registering at 0.248 percent when tested. Langford also told police that he knew he should not have been drinking. Langford, who lives on the 700 block of Grandpa's Lane in St. Paul, was jailed in St. Charles County in lieu of $50,000 in bail. He was forbidden to drive or drink alcohol if released.

It's shocking how often people drive when they're drunk, even though it's widely understood that this is dangerous and could hurt or kill others. Many people realize that they could be arrested and charged for driving under the influence of alcohol or, as in Langford's case, involuntary manslaughter. But they may not realize that they may also have to answer in civil court as well -- if they are sued by the loved ones of the victims. Driving when you know perfectly well that you're impaired, and when the dangers of drunk driving are well known, is negligence -- that is, extreme carelessness that could hurt others. Under the law, victims and their families can recover compensation for harm they have suffered from those who hurt them. Victims and their families can sue those who harmed them to recover medical costs, the cost of replacing destroyed property, and lost past and future wages, as well as more intangible harms like pain, suffering, and damage to their relationships and quality of life.

Continue reading "St. Charles Man Faces Manslaughter Charges in Friend’s Drunk Driving Death" »

The parents of a 15-year-old girl tragically killed in a 2006 car accident have recently settled a wrongful-death lawsuit for $50,000. The parents of Hannah Smallwood, who died in a crash in 2006, settled their claim against the driver’s insurance company for $25,000 each. As a Missouri car crash attorney, I know how much pain this couple must feel after losing their daughter to a senseless, preventable accident, and I wish them well. Wrongful-death lawsuits are an important way for victims and their families to fight back against those who harmed them.

Smallwood, of Carthage, Mo., died on December 8, 2006, just outside Carthage. She was a passenger in a Mazda Millenia along with two other teenagers, driven by Jarub R. Baird, now 20. Baird was speeding on County Road 120 when the car left the road, hit a utility pole and sheared it off at its base, crashed through a barbed-wire fence, and rolled about the length of a football field. Only one person in the car was wearing a seatbelt, which she put on just seconds before the crash. She and Baird suffered only minor injuries. Unfortunately, the others weren't so lucky. Smallwood was thrown from the back seat through the windshield. She died at the scene. Her 16-year-old boyfriend, Colby Johnson, was also thrown from the car and suffered a brain injury, a broken femur, and three broken bones in his hand.

A jury convicted Baird of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and second-degree assault. Baird is now incarcerated in the Missouri Department of Corrections, serving consecutive sentences of four years and three years. Notably, when Baird was on trial in 2008 for manslaughter and vehicular assault, a witness testified that as Baird walked away from his car after the accident, he said to a friend on his cell phone, “Dude, we flew, man. Seriously, dude.” It must be especially painful for parents who have lost a child to hear that the person whose recklessness caused their child's death thought of the accident as a source of amusement. Hannah's parents, Andy and Debbie Smallwood, sued Baird for wrongful death and settled recently with his insurer, which ended their lawsuit.

Of course, the settlement that the Smallwoods will receive can never make up for their daughter's death. As a St. Louis auto accident attorney, I know that every parent who has lost a child to a car crash would much rather have their child back than the money that comes from a wrongful-death settlement. But at the same time, most parents who have lost a child to someone else's negligent behavior want that person to be held responsible for the harm that he or she caused. A criminal trial and conviction hold the negligent person responsible for breaking the law, but this is accountability to the state, not to the individuals who were devastated by the person’s actions. In a civil suit, family members can make the wrongdoer face what he or she has done to hurt them and their loved ones. A lawsuit can also help those left behind deal with the high bills caused by an unexpected hospitalization, funeral and loss of income.

Continue reading "Parents Settle Lawsuit Over Death of Teenage Girl in Reckless Driving Crash" »

As a southern Illinois car accident attorney, it troubles me to read about preventable fatal crashes like one that recently took place in Madison County. According to the Belleville News-Democrat, James L. Griesbaum was indicted by a grand jury indicted on three charges of aggravated driving under the influence -- with a blood-alcohol concentration of .08 or more; resulting in death; and resulting in great bodily harm. His bail was set at $200,000, and he could serve up to 14 years in prison if convicted of all of these felonies. All drunk-driving crashes are preventable accidents, and it is terrible when innocent people lose their lives because of the careless, negligent behavior of drunk drivers.

Griesbaum, 33, of Aviston, was driving north on Illinois 160 near Highland Road in February when his pickup crossed into the southbound lane. He was allegedly drunk when his truck crashed head-on into the pickup truck of Barbara K. Green and her 81-year-old mother, Ressie M. Woodcock. Sadly, Green was killed in the crash and Woodcock was critically injured. Griesbaum had been charged with DUI twice before in the past seven years. The first one came seven years ago when he was arrested for running a flashing red light at the intersection of Illinois 160 and Old Route 50 near Trenton. Griesbaum reportedly almost hit a telephone pole as he attempted to escape the police. He refused to take a blood-alcohol test at the Clinton County Jail, but police noted that he smelled like alcohol, dropped his wallet while getting his license out and failed field sobriety tests. Nonetheless, the DUI charge was dismissed and his license suspension for refusing the blood alcohol test was voided. Two years ago, he again refused a blood alcohol test and was able to beat a second DUI charge. A judicial driving permit allowed him to keep driving.

As a St. Louis car crash lawyer, I find it especially sad that so often, drunk drivers can get away with their dangerous, negligent behavior until someone gets hurt or killed. Someone who beats a DUI charge shouldn't look at their escape from punishment as a green light to continue driving drunk -- they should look at it as a wake-up call. When someone gets behind the wheel of a car, they have a legal and moral responsibility to drive with consideration for the safety of everyone else on and near the road. Someone who gets drunk before driving is clearly acting without regard for others' safety, not to mention the law. A drunk driver who injures or kills someone can be forced to pay for the damage he or she caused -- not just criminal penalties, but civil ones too, through a lawsuit. Victims of drunk driving are not the ones at fault, so the law recognizes that they should not have to pay the costs of an accident they didn't cause. Instead, the law holds that the person who caused the accident can be required to pay for the physical, financial and emotional harm that results.

Continue reading "Allegedly Drunk Driver With DUI History Indicted in Fatal Madison County Crash" »

As a Missouri wrongful death attorney, I have worked with many grieving families whose loved ones have been taken from them, and I know how devastating the loss of a family member is. That’s why I was sorry to read that a Branson man has been charged with manslaughter in the deaths of two young women. Michael Green, 25, was allegedly drunk when he crashed his car just west of Branson, killing Nicole Porter, 25, and Jessica Jenkins, 24. Green has been charged with a Class B felony for killing both women while driving under the influence of alcohol, with a BAC of .18% or more.

On the night of Monday, Sept. 27, prosecutors say that Green was driving his Pontiac sports car too fast and down the wrong side of the road on Highway 248. He ran a stop sign at Branson Hills Parkway and his car hit a rock embankment and caught fire. Porter and Jenkins were passengers in his car. Both women were taken to hospitals -- Jenkins to one in Branson, and Porter to one in Springfield. Sadly, both women died. The Western Taney County Fire District photographed the wrecked car. Police took a blood sample from Green at the scene of the accident.

Jenkins' sister, Brittany Halstead, 20, said that Jenkins had offered to drive so that Green would not have to. Medical personnel at the Branson hospital where Jenkins died that night told the family that Jenkins had no alcohol or drugs in her system. Jenkins was an organ donor, and her family hopes that people will learn from their tragedy. Jenkins's mother told her daughters' friends how much pain she was in, and Halstead told them, "Let this be a lesson. Do not drink and drive and do not get in the vehicle if the driver is drunk because it's the innocent that suffer."

It's especially sad to me as a St. Louis auto accident attorney to know that this accident could have been prevented if Green had allowed Jenkins to drive. Driving drunk and refusing to allow an unimpaired driver to take the wheel are well beyond the boundaries of responsible behavior -- in fact, they're good examples of the kind of negligence that is an issue in my cases. If Green is convicted of the criminal charges he faces, he will be sentenced for breaking the law. But he may also face lawsuits from the Porter and Jenkins families for taking their daughters away from them. When someone behaves negligently and hurts someone else, the negligent person can be required to pay for the harm that they caused. Even with court cases, families of car crash victims will never get their loved ones back, and their lives will never be the same. But through wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits, they can hold drivers responsible for the emotional -- and sometimes financial -- consequences of their actions.

Continue reading "Alleged Drunk Driver Charged With DUI Manslaughter in Passengers’ Deaths" »

As a Missouri auto accident lawyer, I was interested in an article about the progress of a wrongful death suit brought by family members of a high school baseball coach killed by an allegedly drunk driver. The Pulaski (Missouri) County Daily recently reported that the criminal and civil trials related to the crash will be held in separate counties to help ensure a fair trial for the defendant, since the families of both the defendant and the plaintiffs are well known in their community. News reports like this one help the public gain a better understanding of the rights and responsibilities that all of us have when we get behind the wheel of a car, and in the unfortunate event of an accident.

The crash occurred on June 4, 2009, when George Harry Widener, 65, of Jerome, was allegedly driving the wrong way on Old Route 66. His Chevy Avalanche SUV crashed head-on into Don Nelson, who was riding a motorcycle. Nelson was pronounced dead at the scene. Widener's blood alcohol content was 0.214 percent, nearly three times the legal limit of .08. Widener is criminally charged with negligent homicide, a Class B felony punishable by five to 15 years in prison. He was convicted of drunk driving three times, in 1983, 1993, and 1999, and was driving on a restored license at the time of the 2009 crash.

Nelson was Waynesville High School's head baseball coach as well as a radio sports announcer for KJPW/KFBD. Widener is a retired railroad employee, and his wife is a real estate agent. Because of the two families' prominence in the Waynesville area, Widener's attorneys requested that the civil and criminal trials be held in a different county. His attorneys argue that Pulaski County residents are prejudiced against Widener because of widespread news coverage and Nelson's prominence in the community, so it would be impossible for him to receive a fair trial in the county. Already, the court had been deluged with phone calls from Pulaski County residents attempting to lobby the judge to require a high bail amount from Widener.

However, Nelson's adult children, Kenneth Todd Nelson and Stacey Marie Cruz, who have brought the civil lawsuit, argued that their case should remain in Pulaski County. Kenneth Nelson and Cruz seek damages to compensate them for costs they have borne because of the accident, such as funeral and legal expenses, as well as “the reasonable value of the services, consortium, companionship, comfort, instruction, guidance, counsel, training and support” that they will no longer receive from their father. They also seek punitive damages in light of the “great physical pain and mental anguish” that they say their father must have experienced in the crash, and because Widener's actions demonstrated disregard for the safety of others. Widener denies responsibility for Nelson's death, saying that Nelson himself was responsible for it.

It's too early to say whether Widener will be found guilty of the charges against him, regardless of where his trials are held. But what is very clear is that when someone makes the choice to drive while intoxicated, they are not just risking their own life. Their disregard for the safety of other drivers threatens the other drivers, as well as their families. And when a drunk driver's negligent decision to get behind the wheel results in a fatal accident, an entire community can be torn apart. As Pulaski County is discovering, family, friendships and business relationships can be severed.

As a St. Louis car crash lawyer, I sympathize with Nelson's children as they go through the painful process of trying to hold Widener responsible for his alleged harm to them and their father. Preventable accidents like the one that killed their father should be far less common than they are. I have seen a lot of cases in smaller communities like Waynesville where victims' families have to see the person who hurt them in their community. This can make them feel uncomfortable about asking for compensation for their injuries. But victims need to preserve their ability to ask for compensation for the harms they have suffered. It would be unfair to expect them to not only bear the pain of their injuries but also all the expenses too -- not just funeral costs, but pain and suffering and lost quality of life.

Continue reading "Small-Town Families Devastated by Fatal Accident Caused by Allegedly Drunk Driver" »

As a Missouri car crash attorney, I have been carefully following the news about Toyota and other carmakers that have recalled their vehicles for serious safety defects. Given the lawsuits mounting against Toyota, I was dismayed to see recent articles reporting that rental car companies are not required to fix recalled safety defects in their cars before renting them out. Despite being ordered to pay $15 million in a recent lawsuit involving two deaths, Enterprise Rent-A-Car has said that it may not immediately fix cars whose recalls it does not regard as pressing.

This isn't the first time Enterprise has been in the news for cutting corners on customer safety. Last year, Enterprise was discovered to have ordered about 66,000 Chevy Impalas without their standard side airbags in order to save money. Then the company advertised the cars for sale as if they did have the airbags, misleading customers who expected that the cars had all their standard safety features. The more recent defective rental car issue gained attention from a tragic case involving the deaths of two sisters. Jacqueline Houck, 20, and her sister, Raechel, 24, rented a Chrysler PT Cruiser from a California Enterprise Rent-A-Car in 2004 so that they could visit family near Los Angeles. The PT Cruiser had been recalled a month before the crash because of a broken power steering hose that posed a fire hazard. While the Houck sisters were driving, a fire broke out under the hood. They lost control of the car, hit a semi-trailer and died.

Consumer advocates including the Houck sisters' mother, Carol Houck, have petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to forbid rental car companies from continuing to rent out defective cars. They have said it's deceptive to rent out a car that customers should be able to assume is safe, when the company knows that there are recalls associated with the car. If someone chooses not to take their personal car in to have a recalled defect repaired right away, they are aware of the car's defect and have chosen to drive it anyway. But a defective rental car is a different situation. The customer rents a car expecting that they're paying for the use of a safe, functional vehicle, but only the rental car company knows whether this is really true.

In my view as a St. Louis auto accident attorney, it is disturbing that Enterprise does not see every safety recall as “pressing.” If the defect was serious enough to merit a recall, it should be serious enough to fix before renting the car to a customer who has no reason to think there is anything wrong with it. It's easy to see why rental car companies don't want to immediately fix cars when they learn about recalls: money. If they have to pull some of their cars out of circulation when a recall is announced, those cars will not be bringing in rental fees while they're in the shop. From the company's perspective, it's easier and cheaper to pull the cars out of circulation when it's convenient for the company. But this way of looking at it puts consumer and driver safety at the bottom of the list, which is the opposite of where it belongs. It shouldn't be up to victims and their families alone to deal with the financial and health consequences of accidents that negligent car rental companies failed to prevent.

Continue reading "Rental Car Companies Put Unwitting Customers’ Lives at Risk With Defective Cars" »

As a St. Louis auto accident attorney, I am very concerned about design flaws that make automobiles more susceptible to crashing. That's why a recent story in the New York Times about a Japanese inventor who argues that having separate gas and brake pedals right next to each other in cars is simply dangerous got my attention. The inventor has come up with a new design that combines both pedals into one, preventing crashes caused by "pedal confusion," when a driver mistakenly hits the accelerator instead of the brake.

Toyota and other car makers that have been faced with lawsuits for “sticky” gas pedals have blamed driver error for the unintended acceleration. Masuyuki Naruse, 74, an inventor who owns a small factory in southwest Japan, has designed a new pedal to prevent this problem. Drivers would press one part of the pedal with a sideways motion to accelerate, and press down like on a traditional brake pedal to stop. Pushing down on the brake automatically releases the accelerator. “We have a natural tendency to stomp down when we panic," said Naruse. "The automakers call it driver error. But what if their design’s all wrong?” Another inventor, Sven Gustafsson, came up with a similar idea, and a prototype of his pedal is being tested by regulators in Sweden. Naruse's design is being used in about 130 cars in Japan.

(Image from the New York Times)

The single-pedal design offers an important opportunity for automakers to invest in a new safety technology. Yet, even though it has been around for two decades and clearly offers an improvement for public safety, automakers have not adopted it. Naruse said that Toyota engineers tested a prototype of his pedal in 2000, but they didn't like the design. In 2009 alone, 37 deaths and 9500 injuries were attributed to accidents caused by pedal confusion in Japan, according to the Tokyo-based Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis. In the United States, auto safety experts say there have probably been tens of thousands of crashes because of pedal confusion, most notably a 2003 accident in Santa Monica, Calif., that killed 10 people when a driver accelerated into an outdoor market.

Even though drivers would have to learn how to drive smoothly with the new pedal, in my view as a Missouri car crash attorney, the prospect of preventing accidents by changing the car's design seems worth the investment. Retrofitting cars with the pedal is not prohibitively expensive. Naruse said it costs about 100,000 yen, or $1,156, and it does not require major changes to the car's existing braking or acceleration systems.

Continue reading "Inventors Design New Gas and Brake Pedal to Avoid ‘Pedal Confusion’ Crashes" »

The bad news just keeps coming for Toyota. According to the Washington Post, a federal grand jury has subpoenaed information from Toyota for an investigation into concerns about vehicle safety defects. As a Missouri car wreck attorney, I've been following the investigations into Toyota's runaway acceleration problems. Now the focus has widened to include defects with steering relay rods. Just as with the sticky acceleration pedals, Toyota is facing accusations that it kept quiet about the steering relay rod problems rather than informing consumers. While Toyota undoubtedly doesn't welcome these developments, it's good that these problems are coming to light so that Toyota and other automakers can learn that there are consequences to putting public safety at risk by allowing defective vehicles on the roads.

Several Toyota trucks and SUVs -- certain 1989 to 1998 4Runners, T100 pickups and Toyota pickups -- are implicated in the faulty steering relay rods investigation. The defective steering relay rods, which connect the steering wheel to the wheels, reportedly break and leave the drivers without control of their vehicles, making this a very serious safety problem. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is apparently treating this as a criminal investigation. The investigation is looking into whether Toyota shrugged off complaints of steering relay rods breaking. Toyota had issued recalls first in only Japan, claiming that the problem would affect only Japanese drivers and not Americans because the tight maneuvering required in Japan would stress the steering mechanisms more. However, at least 15 crashes, 3 deaths, and 7 injuries have occurred in connection with the problem in the U.S., according to the NHTSA. Toyota issued a U.S. recall in 2005, but only a small number of the affected vehicles were fixed. In 2007, Michael Levi Stewart, an Idaho teenager, was killed after the steering relay rod snapped in his 1991 Toyota pickup, causing it to veer off the road and roll over.

As a St. Louis car crash lawyer, I hope that the NHTSA's toughening stance on Toyota's numerous recalls will deter other automakers from failing to warn consumers about safety issues in a timely manner. Accidents like Michael Levi Stewart's leave families and communities with tremendous emotional losses, especially when they happen through no fault of the victim's. Automakers do not have a right to withhold information about serious safety problems until they feel that the right time has come to disclose it. All manufacturers are legally required to tell the public about any unavoidable safety problems with their products. Automakers who place their company's financial and public relations concerns ahead of public safety can be held responsible for any harm that their products do. Their failure to warn the public is a form of negligence, or carelessness, and victims should not and do not have to bear the consequences of the company's negligence all on their own.

Continue reading "Toyota Faces Criminal Investigation Into Failure to Warn About Steering Rod Problem" »

In February, I wrote about the lawsuits that Toyota will increasingly face regarding the unintended acceleration of some of its cars, which has been blamed for 93 deaths. Toyota's handling of recalls related to the unintended acceleration problem have led to some serious public- and government relations problems, since the company appears to have sat on evidence about these problems for three years before doing anything about them. The New York Times recently reported that Toyota has admitted that some of the reported incidents of sudden acceleration really were related to problems with floor mats and sticking accelerator pedals, rather than only due to driver error, as the carmaker had previously claimed. From my perspective as a Missouri car crash attorney, Toyota's admission means that consumers and their advocates should continue to insist on complete answers to questions about whether their vehicles are safe.

Toyota's acknowledgement that the floor mat and sticking pedal problems are real came in the context of its investigation of about 2,000 reports of sudden acceleration. The company did not say how many of these incidents it believes were caused by floor mats or sticking pedals, but its spokesman, Mike Michels, said more of the incidents were related to floor mats than to pedals. Michels said that none of the vehicles with sticking pedals were involved in crashes, and he was unable to say how many crashes were related to the floor mats. Toyota maintains that in almost all crashes related to unintended acceleration, the problem was that the driver mistakenly pressed the accelerator rather than the brake.

Michels said there was no evidence of problems with the electronic throttle control system, despite the research of Southern Illinois University professor David Gilbert that demonstrated such problems. However, Toyota may be avoiding looking closely at its electronic throttle system because it’s afraid of what it might find. A Massachusetts consulting firm, Safety Research and Strategies, is taking a broader view of the unintended acceleration problems. Its president, Sean Kane, said, “You can’t ignore the fact that when they move to an electronic throttle control, you basically see a fourfold increase in complaints.” Toyota's investigation has focused on information gathered by vehicles' onboard data recorders, which are activated by crashes violent enough to cause the airbag to deploy. But Kane pointed out that these recorders rely on “the same sensing system that is unable to detect the failure to begin with,” so they couldn't prove that a car didn't accelerate suddenly on its own. And Toyota itself has argued in court cases that its onboard data recorders should not be used as reliable sources of evidence.

As a southern Illinois auto accident attorney, I find the suggestion that Toyota may be purposely avoiding looking at its electronic throttle control very troubling. Between Professor Gilbert's account of Toyota's possible attempts to quash his research into its electronics, and Toyota's own description of the onboard data recorders as unreliable, it seems clear that those who have been harmed by automobiles with runaway acceleration problems should keep pushing for real answers. They should also discuss with a St. Louis car crash lawyer how they might pursue compensation for any harm they have suffered as a result of Toyota's failure to warn consumers or investigate the cause of defects in their vehicles.

Continue reading "Toyota Admits Validity of Sudden Acceleration Claims Involving Pedals and Floor Mats" »

As a southern Illinois auto accident attorney, I was very interested in a recent story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about Toyota's alleged attempts to intimidate a Southern Illinois University automotive technology professor and suppress his research into Toyota's runaway acceleration problems. Toyota has donated cars as well as money to SIU, and the company may have used its standing to pressure SIU administrators to stop Professor David Gilbert from publicizing his worrisome findings. Knowing how many people have been hurt and how many more are afraid that their cars might suddenly accelerate, these allegations would be unfortunate, if proven, both for the safety of the driving public and for Toyota’s own financial security.

In January, Gilbert discovered that he could cause runaway acceleration in a Toyota Avalon by manipulating its electronics. When he did so, the car's computer did not switch over to a fail-safe mode that would allow the brake to override the gas, as it should have. Gilbert went to Toyota with his findings, but after hearing what he had to say, they never got back to him. Gilbert felt he couldn’t stay silent, the article said, so he took his findings to the government and media. In response, Toyota sent some attorneys to meet with Gilbert and university officials about his testimony before Congress, a meeting that Gilbert said "was meant to maybe intimidate me." Toyota also assembled its own group of experts to refute Gilbert's findings, saying that the conditions under which he produced the runaway acceleration could never happen on an actual road. SIU's then-chancellor Sam Goldman also received an email from a man who said he was an SIU alumnus and a Toyota Motor Sales employee, complaining that Gilbert should be fired for making what he called false accusations about Toyota, and reminding him of his and Toyota's financial and in-kind contributions to the university. University officials apparently did their best to assuage Toyota and maintain the relationship.

In my view as a St. Louis car crash lawyer, it would be much better for the company to work with someone who could discover solutions to the runaway acceleration problem than to try to cover it up. If the allegations are proven, Toyota's alleged treatment of Gilbert and his work could actually hurt the company’s public relations and its financial bottom line. Evidence that Toyota passed up an opportunity to work on a potential fix for a serious problem could make the company look bad in all the lawsuits it's already facing over runaway acceleration. Not only is there evidence that Toyota had received over 2,000 complaints over the last decade and knew about the pedal problem three years ago, but Gilbert's story suggests that Toyota was more interested in denying any problem than fixing it. Unfortunately for Toyota, its customers may have a strong basis for a legal claim that it failed to warn drivers about the problem in a timely manner, in addition to a possible claim about a design defect. And if the automaker is found liable, it could be forced to pay its customers billions of dollars because of the seriousness of the claims and the huge number of affected vehicles.

Continue reading "Professor Alleges Toyota Tried to Quash His Research Into Runaway Acceleration" »

Often, in my work as a Missouri personal injury lawyer, I see cases where people have made bad decisions that have harmed others, like causing an accident while driving while intoxicated. A recent story in the Kansas City Star tells of an unusually bad decision made by a 16-year-old driver in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park. He and an 8-year-old friend had an ongoing game in which the younger boy would ride his skateboard while hanging onto the passenger side of a pickup truck driven by the older boy. The game came to an unfortunate end on June 2 when the younger boy was run over by the truck. Fortunately, he was not killed. I wish him a full recovery and the incident teaches his friend to be careful around motor vehicles.

The two boys lived in the same neighborhood and had played this game for some time, neighbors told police. But this time, the younger boy lost his balance and fell off his skateboard while being pulled by the truck. He let go of the passenger side of the truck, and the truck's back wheel ran over his abdomen. The young boy was then taken to an apartment in the neighborhood, and when emergency crews responded to a call there, they found him unconscious and having trouble breathing. The boy was airlifted to Children's Mercy Hospital, where he remained in critical condition.

Teen drivers are notorious for making bad decisions, which is why state governments often impose special restrictions on teen drivers, like graduated licensing, that don't apply to adults. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, newly licensed teen drivers are about eight times more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than more experienced drivers are, and young males are much more likely than young females to be involved in crashes. In Missouri, about 250 people die each year in an accident involving a teen driver, making Missouri the tenth-deadliest state for such crashes. The factors that make teen drivers more likely to crash, such as inexperience and immaturity, were probably factors in the accident that led the 8-year-old boy's injuries. Unfortunately for the 16-year-old driver, the legal consequences of an accident like this are very serious. He could not only face criminal penalties for reckless driving, but be sued by the younger boy's family, even though the driver undoubtedly did not mean to hurt his friend. The driver's lack of ill will doesn't exempt him from the consequences of his bad judgment.

As a St. Louis personal injury attorney, I work with injured people every day, so I know how costly medical treatment can be for injuries like those that the 8-year-old suffered. The costs for being airlifted to a hospital and requiring overnight care for a critical injury can quickly add up to tens of thousands of dollars or more. Once the young boy is out of the hospital, he will most likely continue to need medical care, especially if any of his injuries are permanent. With permanent injuries, accident victims often need special equipment such as wheelchairs and accessible living accommodations. He may also need special academic help if he misses a lot of school due to medical appointments or illness, and this can mean missed work for his parents, which means lost income. The negative consequences of just one instance of poor judgment can snowball and severely affect the victim's life, not to mention the lives of family members.

Continue reading "Game With Skateboard and Truck Critically Injures Eight-Year-Old KC Boy" »

A recent article about an O'Fallon, Ill., woman who allegedly caused an accident in a construction zone raises the issue of the dangerousness of distracted driving. As a southern Illinois car wreck lawyer, I know that drivers who fail to pay attention to the road can face serious consequences, including jail time and fines, as well as lawsuits from victims. Many accidents are entirely preventable, and as traffic increases from summer travel as well as road construction that couldn't take place during winter months, we all need to be aware of what we're doing on the road. I am very glad that no one was seriously hurt in this accident, which could have had a much worse outcome.

According to the Bellville News-Democrat, Illinois State Police say that Megan C. Gates, 21, was driving a 2006 Honda CR-V SE just after midnight on June 2 on Interstate 55/70 just south of Pleasant Ridge Road. A 2001 Chevrolet Silverado and a trailer were parked on the shoulder with warning lights on, while two construction workers stood on the shoulder preparing to mark off the construction zone with traffic control barriers. Gates swerved to avoid hitting an animal, she told police, and hit the Silverado on its driver’s side, causing her CR-V to tip over onto its side and slide about 300 feet, then tip back upright in a ditch. One of the construction workers, Timothy R. Ahle, 26, of Centralia, was hit by debris from the crash, and the other, Justin W. McQuary, 23, of Collinsville, was hit by the trailer when the CR-V hit the truck. Both men were taken to Anderson Hospital in Maryville with minor injuries. Gates refused medical treatment at the scene.

Gates admitted to talking on her cell phone while in the construction zone, which is illegal in Illinois, though she said she was not on the phone when she hit the truck. She was charged with using a cellular phone in a construction zone and failing to reduce speed to avoid an accident under Scott's Law. This law requires drivers to move over to give room to emergency vehicles and increases penalties for those who fail to do so and cause accidents or injuries to public safety or service personnel. The penalties include a fine of up to $10,000 and suspension of driver's license for up to two years.

In my work as a St. Louis auto accident attorney, I see many crashes like this in which a driver faces charges that suggest negligence, and I frequently counsel victims about how they can recover the costs imposed on them by the crash. Driving while distracted by cell phones or anything else is negligent, meaning that the driver is failing to live up to his or her responsibility to keep others safe on the road. It is unfortunate that distracted driving is so common -- University of Illinois computer science professor Sheldon H. Jacobson reports that driver distraction is behind nearly 80% of auto accidents in the U.S.

Continue reading "Distracted Driver Charged With Construction Zone Violation That Injured Two" »

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the sad story of two teenage sisters killed in a car crash caused by an Illinois State Trooper who was driving at 126 mph in response to an emergency call. Since then, the family of the sisters, Jessica and Kelli Uhl, ages 18 and 13 respectively when they died, has asked for $46 million in a civil lawsuit against the state of Illinois. The Uhl family expressed frustration at the state trooper's insistence that he was not responsible for the girls' deaths, even though he pled guilty to reckless homicide charges and received a relatively light sentence of probation. As a southern Illinois car wreck attorney, I wish the Uhl family well in making the state take responsibility for its employee's behavior.

According to the Bellville News-Democrat, the state of Illinois has not accepted liability for the accident that led to the Uhl sisters' deaths. However, the state has admitted that State Trooper Matt Mitchell was acting in his role as a state employee at the time of the crash, rendering the state liable for damages in the event of a judgment for the Uhl family. The state's lawyers argue that even though evidence shows that Mitchell was driving 126 mph, and was distracted moments before the crash by his patrol car's dashboard computer and a cell phone call to his girlfriend, the accident was actually caused by a white car that pulled out in front of Mitchell. That, the state's lawyers said, is why Mitchell's car went off the highway, crossed the median, and slammed into the Uhl sisters' Mazda.

As a St. Louis car crash lawyer, it's obvious to me that this argument is trying to sidestep an important point. By driving at 126 mph and not devoting full attention to the road at that excessive speed, Mitchell was already driving negligently. At that speed and with those distractions, it’s very likely that he would have been unable to respond to obstacles or sudden changes in conditions on the road. If there was a white car that moved into Mitchell's lane, that driver should have stayed out of the way of a police car responding to an emergency. But state troopers also have a responsibility to drive safely and be prepared for unexpected conditions, including members of the public who may get in their way. The driver of the white car is not responsible for Mitchell's bad choice to drive distractedly at an excessive speed.

There are other factors suggesting that the state should be held liable here as well. One is that other emergency personnel had already arrived at the scene of the call to which Mitchell was responding, making his rate of speed even more unnecessary and dangerous. Another is that according to a University of Utah study, using a cell phone slows a driver's response time as much as being legally drunk (with a blood-alcohol count of 0.08%) does. As a Missouri car accident attorney, I have a hard time imagining anyone making the case that a drunk driver going 126 mph wouldn't be responsible for injuries he or she caused, even if another car unexpectedly moved in front of him or her.

Continue reading "Family of Girls Killed in Car Crash With Illinois State Trooper Seeks $46 Million" »

As a Missouri car accident attorney, I was sorry to read about a serious drunk driving accident that took place in central Missouri. According to the Waynesville Daily Guide, two people from Dixon, Mo. were injured seriously enough to require an airlift to University Medical Center in Columbia after a drunk driver crashed into their car. The drunk driver himself sustained minor injuries and refused medical attention. None of the people involved was wearing a seat belt.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol report about the accident says that Alan L. Threet, 58, of Dixon, was drunk when he attempted to turn his 1995 Ford Ranger left across the path of a 1997 Ford Escort belonging to David Finnigan, 71, and Nicole Finnigan, 72. Threet was apparently trying to make a left turn from a highway onto State Route D. Threet suffered only minor injuries and declined treatment, but his truck was extensively damaged. The Finnigans did not escape so easily. David Finnigan was moderately hurt and Nicole Finnigan was seriously hurt, and both of them were airlifted to a hospital. Their car was totaled. Threet was charged with felony driving while intoxicated, felony vehicular assault, and careless and imprudent driving, and held at the Pulaski County Jail for 24 hours. His blood-alcohol content or other evidence of intoxication was not reported.

The criminal charges Threet faces are not the only potential outcome of this accident. As a St. Louis car crash lawyer, I hardly need to point out that drunk driving is not just illegal; it's reckless and it puts people's lives at risk. When someone gets behind the wheel of a car, they have a responsibility to drive safely. If a driver violates the law and common sense and then injures or kills someone, the law allows victims and their families to sue that driver. The law recognizes that the victim was not at fault for the injuries and should not have to bear the costs of the accident as well as the physical injuries it caused. Instead, victims have the right to sue, compelling the at-fault driver to pay for the harm that he or she caused. The news report does not give enough detail to verify this, but if Threet was drunk as a result of being served alcohol past the point when he was visibly intoxicated, the person, bar or restaurant that served him could also be held responsible, which happened in a recent case I wrote about here.

Continue reading "Two Senior Citizens Airlifted to Hospital After Drunk Driver Totals Their Car" »

As a Missouri car accident attorney, I was interested in a recent story in the Kansas City Star about a wrongful death lawsuit resulting from a police chase that killed an innocent bystander. The parents of Christopher Cooper, 17, settled their lawsuit against the Independence (MO) Police Department and Medevac MidAmerica Inc., an emergency response provider, for $275,000. This is an important case because, as I discussed last week, it emphasizes that police officers need to exercise care when they respond to emergencies, lest they cause danger and damage rather than protecting the public from it.

In the accident that led to the Independence wrongful death lawsuit, an Independence police officer was pursuing a driver who was fleeing the scene of a collision with another car. Christopher Cooper was crossing the street on a bicycle when he was struck by that driver, Wilfredo J. Pujols Jr. of Independence. Pujols is a cousin to St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols. He pleaded guilty in December 2008 to second-degree murder, resisting arrest and two counts of leaving the scene of an accident, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. At the sentencing, Jackson County Circuit Judge Jack Grate described Pujols's actions as "horrific," and acknowledged the Cooper family's "incalculable" pain. But to the Coopers, the criminal case against Pujols did not resolve the problem of what appeared to be a pattern of police chases in Independence that risked public safety. In the fall of 2007, there were three deaths resulting from police chases in Independence within a ten-day period. Two of those killed were the people who were fleeing from the police, and the third was Christopher.

In their wrongful death lawsuit, Christopher's parents alleged that the Independence police shared the blame for Christopher Cooper's death because they had not followed the city's pursuit policy. They also alleged that, along with other emergency personnel, police failed to properly assess his injuries and made demeaning remarks at the scene of the accident. As a St. Louis car wreck lawyer, I could see the demeaning remarks that these emergency workers allegedly made as evidence that they weren't taking the situation very seriously, even though a young man's life was at stake, and ultimately was lost. The police could have chosen to deal with Pujols differently. Rather than chasing him when he fled from the scene of the first accident he caused, they could have alerted other officers to catch up him further down the road, or arrested him at his house later on. Instead, they chose what had already been shown, within the last few days, to be a dangerous course.

Continue reading "Independence Police Department Settles Wrongful Death Suit from Police Chase" »

As a southern Illinois car accident lawyer, I took note of a recent news item in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch concerning an Illinois state trooper who pleaded guilty to two counts each of reckless homicide and aggravated reckless driving. Matt Mitchell, 31, was responding to a call when he lost control of his patrol car while driving at 126 mph. Mitchell was also sending and receiving emails 2.5 seconds before the crash, and had been talking on his cell phone prior to that. Jessica Uhl, 18, and Kelli Uhl, 13, of Collinsville, were driving home from a photo shoot when Mitchell's patrol car plowed into them and set their car ablaze. The young women died at the scene. Christine Marler, who was pregnant at the time, and Kelly Marler, both of Fayetteville, Ark., were injured in a third car.

Mitchell was on duty at the time of the crash, and is now the first Missouri state trooper ever to be convicted of reckless homicide for an on-duty wreck. By pleading guilty, Mitchell avoided a trial that could have gotten him up to five years of prison time for the four charges. Instead, Mitchell will be on probation for 30 months. The Illinois State Police put Mitchell on paid leave during the case and will likely fire him. The agency has also set new policies to rein in the speed at which officers can drive, require them to use hands-free phones, and keep the patrol car's video recorder on whenever the car's emergency lights are in use. The Uhl family is pursuing a separate wrongful death lawsuit against both Mitchell and the state of Illinois. A detail of that case nearly held up Mitchell’s plea deal, but has since been smoothed out. A hearing in the civil case was scheduled for April 19.

As a St. Louis car crash lawyer, I am glad that the State Police is making changes to ensure public safety. Police officers are given greater privileges than other drivers -- the right to speed and break some other traffic laws -- in order to respond to emergencies. But those privileges come with greater responsibility to drive carefully. Mitchell's driving was clearly careless and reckless, even if he was responding to an emergency. His speed may or may not have been appropriate for the situation, but it’s unlikely that he needed to use his phone or email while responding. And even people who don’t support restrictions on cell phone use while driving can probably agree that it is not safe to use a phone at 127 mph. As a result of that recklessness, two young women are dead and Mitchell’s career as a law enforcement officer is likely over.

Continue reading "Illinois State Police Officer Gets Probation for Car Wreck That Killed Two Girls" »

A police officer and a restaurant in Sunset Hills have settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the families of four people killed by a drunk driving crash on March 21, 2009. The officer, Christine L. Miller, is accused of driving drunk on the wrong side of the road while she was off duty, crashing into a car full of five students originally from India. The crash killed Anusha Anumolu, 23, of Charleston, Ill.; Satya Subhakar Chinta, 25, of Aurora, Ill.; Anita Lakshmi Veerapaneni, 23, of Charleston; and Priya Muppavarapu, 22, of Charleston. Also injured was the driver, 28-year-old Nitesh Adusumilli of Balwin, who recently returned to work. In addition to the lawsuit, Miller is also facing criminal charges including four counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of second-degree assault.

The settlement means Miller and O'Leary's Restaurant & Bar have agreed to $331,375 to each family. Most of the money will come from O'Leary's, whose employees allegedly served alcohol to an intoxicated Miller and allowed her to drive afterwards. Miller then turned the wrong way down Dougherty Ferry Road in Sunset Hills and smashing into the passenger side of the students’ Honda, which was turning right. This settlement ends claims from the families of the four students who were killed, but Adusumilli has filed a separate personal injury claim as well, and that claim continues. Miller’s next court date in her criminal case is April 22. She is on unpaid suspension from the Sunset Hills Police Department.

As a St. Louis car crash attorney, I wish these families the best as they continue to grieve and heal after this tragedy. Drunken driving is inexcusable for anyone, of course, but alcohol-serving establishments in Missouri also have a responsibility not to serve alcohol to a minor or to a “visibly intoxicated person.” This was part of the argument made in the lawsuit against Miller and O'Leary's, which argued that both parties were negligent. According to police, Miller's blood-alcohol content was 0.169%, more than double the legal limit of 0.08%, three hours after the crash. The suit also claimed that the restaurant's employees knew Miller was drunk, kept serving her alcohol despite her slurred speech and unsteady gait, and did not stop her from driving or call her a taxi when she was ready to leave. If true, these allegations clearly show negligence by the restaurant, as well as by Miller.

Continue reading "Off-Duty Police Officer and Bar Settle Wrongful Death Lawsuit after Drunk Driving Crash" »

As a St. Louis automotive product liability lawyer, I was interested in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times that said lawsuits have spurred some of the most important automotive safety innovations that exist. Many of us are thinking about auto safety lawsuits, given the recent Toyota recalls. But lawsuits against automakers are not new at all. As far back as 1916, a New York man sued Buick when a defective rear wheel on his car caused an accident that lacerated his eye and broke his wrist. In the 1916 case, the New York Court of Appeals established an important legal precedent by ruling that automakers have a "duty of care" to ensure that their products are safe. Their award to the plaintiff showed that negligence would be punished.

Since then, legal and auto safety experts agree, lawsuits over automakers' duty of care have pushed car companies to develop better and better safety technologies. For example, designs for steering columns and dashboards had to be altered so that they would absorb impact. This was also true for other design elements that could cause injury during crashes, like gear shifts that impaled drivers or shattered glass that lacerated occupants. All of these improvements came after a 1968 ruling that held an automaker responsible for injuries suffered in a collision -- even if the design features in question did not actually cause the crash. That is, this ruling allowed injured motorists to sue over features that worsened an accident, creating injuries that might otherwise never have existed.

Consumers who sued automakers over their unsafe vehicles or parts have not just recovered financial damages. They also helped to send automakers a message that they could not ignore product safety and get away with it. An especially important lawsuit, Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co., concerned Ford's liability in the Ford Pinto's gas tank's propensity to explode rear-end collisions. Evidence showed that Ford was aware that the gas tanks were defective and prone to explosion, and that repair of the problem would have cost about $11 per car. Yet Ford declined to recall the Pinto. In light of this evidence, a California appeals court ordered Ford to pay victims of these explosions $125 million in punitive damages, later reduced to $3.5 million. As a Missouri automotive defect attorney, I am glad that the courts provide this avenue for holding negligent companies responsible for the damage they do.

The article goes on to cite many more examples of automakers' reluctance to address safety problems with their products over the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first with Toyota's current problems. As a southern Illinois defective car parts attorney, I’m disappointed that some companies continue to place convenience and higher profits over customers' health and lives. History has shown that this problem will not go away on its own. Drivers who have been hurt because of flaws in their vehicle's design can work with an experienced products liability attorney to determine whether the automaker is liable.

Continue reading "History of Automotive Safety Shows Lawsuits Play Important Regulatory Role" »

As a Missouri auto accident lawyer, I work with people who sustained very serious injuries in car wrecks. That gives me a sobering, but often inspiring, look at the obstacles they face as they work toward a full medical and personal recovery from the accident. On March 1, the Quincy Herald-Whig published a story about one accident victim who is working hard to get back his mobility and start working toward the dreams that were put on hold when he was injured by a wrong-way driver. Dustin Morris, 26, was hit by a driver who crossed the center divide and ran head-on into his pickup truck. He suffered a broken pelvis, compound left-leg fracture and broken femur and was in a coma for 40 days before waking.

Morris spent six years in the Air Force, including time in Iraq, after finishing high school in Quincy in 2002. Last October, he was living in Mascoutah and attending community college in St. Louis when the accident happened. He had just dropped his girlfriend off at her car and was following her home when the other driver crossed the center lane. He doesn’t remember the accident, but emergency workers had to airlift him to St. Louis University Hospital, where his parents kept a vigil by his bedside. He awoke in mid-November and was discharged in January, after he showed hospital staff that he could cross the room using a walker. Now, he’s continuing his recovery from his father’s house in Quincy, where he’s taking speech and physical therapy sessions. He’s still determined to finish school and meet his obligations as part of the Air Force Reserves. In fact, he drove for the first time since the accident in late February.

As a St. Louis car crash attorney, I suspect that the coma and the speech therapy mean Morris sustained injuries beyond the broken bones. That makes it all the more impressive that this young man is working so hard to overcome his injuries and live his life. I frequently work with auto accident victims with injuries like these, or worse. Like Morris, they have months or even years of work to do in order to relearn tasks of daily life, like walking or holding a toothbrush. Sometimes, they have injuries they can’t ever fully recover from, such as paralysis from spinal damage or permanent damage to the brain. These are physically and emotionally devastating injuries, and it’s not hard to imagine that victims might sink into depression instead of fighting to regain their abilities.

Continue reading "Article Chronicles Struggle of Car Accident Victim to Return to Normal Life" »

A recent column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch caught my eye because it underscores the importance of having an experienced Missouri auto accident lawyer involved in your injury case. Columnist Bill McClellan wrote Feb. 21 about Jen Dotson of Oakville, who ran into serious financial trouble after her health insurer refused to cover the cost of an operation intended to alleviate debilitating pain. Dotson was injured in a 2004 car accident that was not her fault. She had sued the at-fault driver, but her settlement was reached before she realized she needed the operation.

The column says Dotson was driving straight through an intersection when someone pulled out and hit her. The other driver’s insurance company paid for repairs to her car, but she was also left with chronic, severe pain from a condition called thoracic outlet syndrome, which is caused by compression of the passageway between the collarbone and the first rib. The pain was so bad that she had to quit her job as a travel agent and go to work in the family business. Dotson sued and eventually settled for enough money to cover her portion of her medical bills.

Unfortunately, the pain continued after Dotson’s settlement. She had two more surgeries -- one to remove a rib, and another for a nerve. Her husband’s employer-based health insurance covered both, but her pain didn’t stop and she was forced to take heavy pain medications. Finally, her doctor referred her to a neurosurgeon who recommended a surgery to implant a spinal cord stimulator. The surgery was a success, but her health insurer refuses to cover the cost -- leaving Dotson and her husband owing $72,900. They cannot pay this debt and are now afraid they’ll lose their home.

The column is about the health insurer’s refusal to pay, despite the surgeon’s claim that he called to pre-authorize it. This is an important and politically relevant issue, but as a St. Louis car crash attorney, I’d like to talk about Dotson’s original settlement. Most people don’t realize that you only get one opportunity to sue over an accident. Once you accept a settlement, you generally must sign a waiver of all future claims. That means it’s essential to include all claims of financial damage in your lawsuit, including claims for future medical care. Dotson and her injury attorney undoubtedly claimed everything they thought she needed at the time, but as time went on, it was clear that her medical needs weren’t over. In cases like this, I advise my clients to delay a lawsuit, as hard as that can be, until a doctor believes their symptoms are fully manifested can make a treatment plan.

Continue reading "Oakville Woman’s Story Shows Importance of Fully Claiming Damages" »

Our St. Louis car crash attorneys wrote last October about a growing call in St. Charles County for improvements to Highway DD. The area has grown from a rural community to a fast-growing suburb, and improvements to Highway DD have not caught up. At least some residents believe that this has resulted in a sharp increase in fatal accidents, and many have called for the Missouri Department of Transportation to make improvements a priority. One of those residents was Daniel Windler, 61, who signed a petition asking MoDOT to speed up improvements. On Feb. 14, Windler was the victim of a fatal accident on the very same highway, while waiting for a tow truck to help him retrieve his disabled car.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Windler’s wife and law enforcement agree that the fatal accident itself was a weather-related accident. As Windler waited for a tow truck, an SUV driven by a teenager from St. Peters slipped down an icy hill and struck him. That driver will not be charged. However, 61-year-old Karen Windler said she believes Highway DD is unsafe, with a rate of accidents about twice the state average for highways of this type. The highway is narrower than the 12-foot federal width standard, yet has no shoulders. It also has steep embankments on either side, inviting the possibility that drivers could slip off the edge of the road and be unable to return to lanes. This, along with the icy weather, may be why Daniel Windler slid off the road Feb. 14.

As a Missouri auto accident lawyer, I don’t believe this problem is going away. Authorities believe part of the reason for the high accident rate on Highway DD is that it wasn’t designed for heavy suburban traffic. Rather, the community grew around the road, using it as a major commuter artery rather than a rural highway. In fact, St. Charles County continues to grow -- two new schools along the highway are slated to open in 2010. To protect those schoolchildren and everyone else who uses Highway DD, the state has an obligation to ensure that the road can safely accommodate them. MoDOT has already lowered the speed limit, but as this accident may show, that’s unlikely to be enough to bring down accident rates.

Continue reading "St. Charles Residents Renew Call for Highway Improvements After Fatal Accident" »

Recalls and image problems continue for Toyota, which has issued two more recalls since I wrote last week about the first unintended-acceleration defect lawsuits. This week, the automaker announced that it would recall third-generation Prius and 2010 Lexus HS 250h hybrids because of a problem with their braking software. That’s 155,000 vehicles in the United States and 437,000 worldwide. In papers filed with federal regulators, Toyota said the vehicles’ electronic anti-lock braking system doesn’t work as well when driven over rough or slippery roads. This can increase the time necessary to stop the vehicle, the Detroit News reported Feb. 9. It will also open the company up to further liability from angry customers and Missouri auto accident lawyers like me.

Significantly, the article said Toyota knew about the braking problem at least a month ago, but didn’t tell customers or regulators about it. The company has already readied a software patch for the Prius and is working on another for the HS 250h; both will be installed as part of the recall. However, the brake recall is just one of Toyota’s new problems. The automaker has also recalled 7,300 2010 Camrys because of a possible problem with a power steering hose. The hose is placed in a way that may wear a hole in brake tubes, decreasing the brakes’ effectiveness. This recall is not a result of complaints, but stems from an observation by an employee in Kentucky. However, the federal government may investigate power steering problems in 2009 and 2010 Corollas, after receiving more than 80 complaints from drivers.

As a St. Louis car wreck attorney, I am particularly disturbed to read that Toyota knew about the brake problem and even worked on fixing it before revealing it. The desire to have a solution on hand is understandable, but failing to disclose the problem takes away drivers’ options for dealing with it. Some drivers undoubtedly won’t mind, but others may have preferred to park the car for the time it took Toyota to prepare the software patch. That could be particularly true because the braking problem is worse in winter. As with the floor mat and brake pedal recalls, Toyota’s behavior leaves observers like me wondering whether it was as forthcoming as possible and acted as early as possible to save lives.

Continue reading "Toyota Issues New Recalls for Hybrid Brakes and Camry Power Steering Problem" »

Last week, I wrote here about Toyota’s recall of millions of vehicles that may accelerate suddenly and without the driver’s intervention. This is a major story for drivers and auto dealers, but also for Missouri car wreck attorneys like me, because we may end up handling lawsuits related to the recall and its defect. Now, it looks like that prediction is already coming true. According to a Feb. 2 article from Reuters, Toyota faces at least 10 lawsuits filed since November of 2009, all of which allege that the automaker sold a defective product, failed to warn drivers about the problem or both. They all seek class-action status, which means they’d combine claims from all Toyota owners affected by the defect. Depending on the circumstances, this could include tens of millions of drivers in the United States alone.

Toyota has taken a beating in the press for handing the unintended acceleration problem poorly. It has issued two recalls, blaming the problem first on floor mats and then on accelerator pedals, sending mixed messages. Furthermore, evidence has emerged that the automaker had received at least 2,000 complaints over the past decade, and knew about the pedal problem nearly three years ago. Legal experts in the Reuters article said this could form the basis of a claim that Toyota failed to warn drivers about the problem in a timely manner, in addition to a possible claim about a design defect. If Toyota is found liable in this type of claim, they said, it could owe its customers billions of dollars because of the seriousness of the claims and the sheer number of affected vehicles.

Reuters reported that four of the claims alone were filed on Jan. 29, and given that at least 19 people have died because of unintended acceleration, more are almost certainly coming. As a St. Louis auto accident lawyer, I think it’s only a matter of time before we hear about claims filed locally. There’s evidence that, at the very least, Toyota was slow to respond to the problem. At worst, the automaker could face charges that it actively tried to cover up the problem by blaming it on easily fixed mechanical parts rather than its expensive and complicated computerized accelerator system. You may remember the movie Fight Club, in which a major automaker decided whether to recall products based on whether it would cost more to fix the problem or settle lawsuits from families of people who died. This was based on a real memo put out by Ford in 1968. If we find that Toyota used similar math to calculate the value of human lives, it could take such a beating in court that it may never recover financially.

Continue reading "Toyota Faces First Lawsuits Connected to Unintended Acceleration Recall" »

Toyota announced news this week that made a major impression on Missouri car crash lawyers like me, as well as drivers and auto dealers around the U.S. As the Columbia Daily Tribune reported Jan. 27, Toyota has asked local auto dealers around North America to stop selling the eight vehicle models involved in its latest recall. That recall, of 2.3 million vehicles, addresses reports of sudden and unintentional acceleration in late-model Toyotas. The automaker originally blamed the problem on floor mats that were installed incorrectly and recalled 4.3 million vehicles to replace the mats. In the newest recall, it says flaws in the accelerator pedal cause the pedal to “stick” open.

During the original recall, some safety experts expressed doubts that floor mats were the cause of the unintended acceleration. Rather, they suggested that the problem could lie with the “drive by wire” system, which uses a computer rather than a lever to relate pressure on the accelerator pedal to the engine. Toyota denies this, and the newest recall doesn’t have to do with the computer system. Rather, the automaker says parts of the pedal can wear down and catch, opening the throttle. Toyota asked drivers with recalled vehicles to continue driving unless they feel that the accelerator pedal is slow to move or moves poorly. However, all of those drivers will be eligible for repair or replacement pedals when Toyota devises a solution, which is expected to be soon. A full list of the models involved in both recalls is available from the Los Angeles Times, and a Toyota press release about the recall is available here.

As a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer, I am pleased that Toyota is taking action on this problem. However, it’s disturbing to realize that by initiating the second recall, Toyota is reversing its previous stance that accelerator pedals are not the problem. If the automaker was wrong about that -- unintentionally or not -- what’s to stop it from being wrong about the driver-by-wire system as well? That is an important question, because the drive-by-wire system is installed in far more Toyota (and Lexus) vehicles than just the eight involved in the current recall. If Toyota is intentionally hiding important safety information just because it hurts sales, it’s putting millions of North Americans at risk of death or life-changing disabilities. Not only is this ethically unsound, but it could put the automaker on the wrong side of multiple defective auto part lawsuits.

Continue reading "Toyota Motor Company Stops Selling Certain Models as Part of Safety Recall" »

Authorities in Madison County are investigating a crash that’s particularly unusual, in my experience as a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer. As the Belleville News-Democrat reported Dec. 15, Madison County Transit bus driver Danny Floyd Senior veered into a private home on St. Louis Street early on Dec. 13. One of the six people home at the time suffered a minor injury, and Floyd refused treatment at the hospital. The one bus passenger was also taken to the hospital, but transit authorities are withholding that person’s name during the police investigation. However, the Willeford family’s home sustained structural damage significant enough to force them to move temporarily to a motel.

The accident occurred just after midnight on Sunday. According to the News-Democrat, Floyd’s bus left the road, traveled through the parking lot of a tire store and over a chain link fence before hitting the Willefords’ side porch. Other media sources reported that Floyd fell asleep behind the wheel, though that explanation was not given in the newspaper. Police are still investigating and have not said whether they plan to file charges. Six of the home’s eight residents were home at the time, including homeowner June Willeford. She told the News-Democrat that after the crash, she heard her son screaming in the basement about what turned out to be a cut lip from flying debris. No one else was hurt, but the damage was significant enough that the family turned the power off for safety reasons and relocated to the Drury Inn in Collinsville.

I’m pleased that nobody was hurt. But as a St. Louis motor vehicle crash attorney, I know that expenses in a crash like this can add up quickly, even without the added expense of medical bills. A motel stay for eight people is likely to cost well over $100 a night. The family will also have to rebuild the affected walls and structural supports, a task that’s likely to include electrical work. These costs can add up quickly for ordinary people. Homeowners’ insurance may cover the costs -- but even if it does not, legal responsibility for the crash almost certainly lies with the bus driver who caused it and his transit agency. (Employers are generally held responsible for the actions of employees who were performing employment duties during an accident.) That means that the family may be able to recover compensation from them for all these costs and others, through an auto accident lawsuit.

Continue reading "Injuries Unclear After Southern Illinois Bus Driver Swerves Off Road and Into Home" »

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" »

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" »

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" »

As a Missouri defective automotive product attorney, I had already heard about Toyota Motor Corp.’s safety recall of 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles. This recall, the largest in Toyota’s history, was announced after the automaker and federal regulators found that floor mat problems could cause the accelerator pedal to jam while open. (Toyota and Lexus owners can check Toyota’s press release for information on how to stay safe.) Regulators believe the problem has caused at least five fatal crashes and hundreds of other incidents, including a crash in suburban San Diego that killed an off-duty Highway Patrol officer and three family members. But an Oct. 18 article in the Los Angeles Times said the problem may be exacerbated by problems with electronic systems in the vehicles.

According to the article, in fact, the systems that pose the problems tend to be newer and may even be selling points. For example, most people in an uncontrollable speed situation think first about braking -- but modern vehicles have power-assisted brakes, which draw vacuum power from the engine. When the throttle is open all the way, that vacuum power disappears, and the power brake feature goes with it. Similarly, Toyota suggests that drivers turn off their engines when accelerating out of control. In a key-operated vehicle, drivers can turn the key to off/ACC, but this leaves them without power steering or brakes. And if they take the key out, it will lock the steering wheel. Meanwhile, newer vehicles with push-button starts require the drivers to hold the button down for three seconds to stop the engine (and remove power steering and brakes), which is a long time when your vehicle is out of control. And shifting into neutral, another Toyota solution, can be difficult and confusing in vehicles with “automanual” shifters.

I applaud Toyota for taking action on this issue, rather than actively trying to cover it up or blame after-market use. But as a southern Illinois product defects lawyer, I wonder whether it acted as quickly as it could have. The San Diego crash was at least the fifth fatal crash caused by this issue in two years, according to the Times, and federal agencies have opened nine investigations into sudden accelerations in Toyota vehicles since 2000. And the article noted that some have criticized Toyota’s lack of a fail-safe mechanism in its computerized engine for nearly 10 years. Speeding, even voluntary speeding, has been a safety issue for decades; it’s not hard to predict that involuntary, uncontrolled speeding could be deadly. To save lives, manufacturers have a responsibility to come clean to the public as soon as reasonably possible.

Continue reading "More Than Floor Mats May Underlie Toyota Safety Recall of 3.8 Million Vehicles" »

A recent article on road improvements in St. Charles County caught my eye, as a St. Louis car crash lawyer. According to an Oct. 2 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, residents of a rapidly growing area of the county are pushing for improvements to the area’s Highway DD after a crash claimed the life of a sixteen-year-old girl from Wentzville. Elise Sunderhuse died Sept. 3 after the driver of the car she was riding in veered off the road, overcorrected and smashed into a sign. The accident was the fifth fatality on Highway DD in five years and one of more than 140 crashes during that same period. A town hall meeting is planned for Oct. 22 in New Melle to discuss the problem.

According to the article, rapid growth in this area of St. Charles County has put more traffic on the once-rural highway than originally envisioned by its designers. State officials say the accident rate on Highway DD is twice the state average for highways of the same type, putting it among the most dangerous. Residents cite the highway’s lack of shoulders and steep roadside embankments as safety problems, along with deer, sun-blindness and heavy trucks heading to a nearby quarry. A spokesman for MoDOT added that lanes on the highway are 10 to 11 feet wide, falling short of the 12-foot federal standard and making shoulders important. MoDOT has already lowered the speed limit on the highway from 55 to 50 mph, and plans to add shoulders and turn lanes in certain areas.

I wrote last week about safety improvements to the MLK Bridge into East St. Louis, which also has a disproportionately high rate of accidents. Chief among the safety concerns about the bridge are its lack of shoulders and ten-foot lanes -- problems that Highway DD shares. As with the bridge, the narrowness of Highway DD presents serious problems because motorists have no place to go if, for example, a vehicle in the oncoming lane swerves into their paths. As with the bridge, Highway DD is a major artery for people in the area -- and unlike the bridge, it will have two schools on it by this time next year. As a Missouri auto accident attorney, I hope the efforts to address the problems with the bridge lead to similar efforts on Highway DD before someone else is killed in a preventable accident.

Continue reading "St. Charles County Residents Call for Improvements to Rural Highway After Teenager’s Death" »

As a southern Illinois auto accident lawyer and a commuter who maintains officers in St. Louis and southern Illinois, I was pleased to see that the Illinois Department of Transportation has set dates for its work on the Martin Luther King bridge. According to the Belleville News-Democrat, the department plans to close the bridge, which connects St. Louis with East St. Louis, for 12 days starting Oct. 12. The work will add a concrete center barrier and widen the lanes on the bridge by turning four 10-foot-wide lanes into three lanes of 12 feet -- safety measures IDOT and other observers hope will decrease the high number of accidents on the bridge.

In fact, the News-Democrat said, the project was explicitly intended to address the bridge’s unusually high number of fatal accidents. According to an older story, 14 people had died on the MLK bridge between 1998 and summer of this year, almost all in head-on collisions. As I have written here before, this gives motorists a 25 times greater risk of death if they choose the MLK bridge. Safety experts told the newspaper that the bridge’s safety problems include its narrow width, which can pressure drivers traveling alongside a semi truck and leaves no safe place for people to stop if they have car trouble. Other safety problems include the lack of a center barrier to prevent crossover accidents and its connection to a major highway, which encourages speed. Authorities have already reduced the speed limit on the bridge and may install cameras to automatically ticket speeders.

The work is expected to slow commutes for people who routinely cross the river, and that is understandably generating a lot of complaints. But as a St. Louis car crash attorney, I believe the inconvenience will ultimately be worthwhile if it stops the unusually high number of deaths and serious accidents on the bridge. The design of the MLK bridge may have made sense when it was built, when vehicles were smaller, semi trucks weren’t widely used and there was less traffic overall. But these days, when ordinary people drive SUVs and must share the highway with 18-wheelers, 10-foot lanes are simply not safe. It’s not surprising that drivers with literally no room to swerve or stop are involved in an unusually high number of serious accidents -- with that little wiggle room, it takes just one driver to cause a catastrophe.

Continue reading "IDOT to Start Work in October to Widen Lanes and Install Barrier on MLK Bridge" »

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" »

Used Chevy Impalas sold by rental company Enterprise Rent-A-Car were missing a standard safety feature, the Kansas City Star reported Aug. 15. Side air bags were standard on Impalas sold to consumers between 2006 and 2008, the article said -- but Enterprise asked the manufacturer to delete that option when it placed its order, as a cost-saving measure. When the cars were later retired from the fleet and sold as used cars, the Star reported, consumers may have mistakenly believed they came with the same standard equipment other Impalas had. Furthermore, the newspaper found that hundreds of online advertisements by Enterprise incorrectly touted the cars as having front and rear side air bags.

Safety experts consider side curtain air bags important because side-impact crashes are the second deadliest kind of crash. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, side-impact crashes caused 17.4% of all fatal crashes in 2007, second only to head-on crashes (32.2% of fatal crashes). And according to the Star article, studies have found that side air bags with head protection reduce drivers’ deaths by 45% in driver-side collisions. Side air bags are not federally required, as front air bags are, but observers expect side air bags to be near-universally standard soon, in order to comply with stricter federal side-impact safety rules taking effect Sept. 1.

According to the article, Enterprise ordered about 66,000 Impalas nationwide without the side air bags. This did not violate federal safety standards, the company said, and helped save $175 per car, for a total of $11.5 million. Nonetheless, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research organization funded by auto insurance companies, called the decision “astounding.” He noted that used-car buyers researching safety ratings could be misled, because cars are rated according to their standard safety features, and suggested that Enterprise’s decision could provoke numerous car accident lawsuits in Missouri and around the U.S. He and another safety expert said deleting a standard safety feature is not a practice they’d ever heard of before.

In response to the article, Enterprise pulled the incorrect advertisements off its Web site and said it planned to correct the information. It also said it would write to the owners of the 745 Impalas it had already sold to explain the problem and offer to buy the cars back at $750 over their Kelly Blue Book value.

As a St. Louis car crash lawyer, I have read a lot of the research into the dangers of side-impact crashes. They are considered extremely dangerous, in part because they can cause jagged metal and broken glass to protrude into the passenger area of the car, endangering all the occupants nearby. They can also trigger a rollover accident, which throws occupants around the inside of the vehicle or out of it, exposing them to head injuries and spinal cord damage that can leave them permanently disabled. Parents and others concerned about safety may well want to look up which vehicles contain side air bags before renting or buying -- but when Enterprise and other sellers provide misleading information, consumers can’t make well-informed decisions. If they are later involved in a serious accident and discover that they’re missing the air bags they thought they had, the law says they may hold the sellers legally liable for their injuries.

Continue reading "Newspaper Investigation Finds Rental Car Company Advertised Cars Had Side Airbags When They Did Not" »

An Iowa girl is recovering from injuries sustained in a serious St. Louis car crash, the Fort Madison Daily Democrat reported Aug. 4. Shyanna Hoenig was on her way to the St. Louis Zoo with her family when a driver pulled out unexpectedly and hit the side of her mother’s van. Shyanna sustained damage to her aorta as well as intestinal damage so serious that three sections had to be removed. She was taken to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in St. Louis, which released her last week -- in time to start the first grade at the end of August.

Shyanna’s mother, Sarah Hoenig, said she was on Highway 61 when she passed a car stopped on the median. When she saw that driver pull out suddenly into the road, she swerved to avoid a collision. Unfortunately, the car hit the side of their van, sending it into a rock bluff. Shyanna was the most seriously hurt of the seven people in the van -- in part because she was wearing a lap-only seat belt, which her mother said was improper for children of that age. Because the belt was around her abdomen rather than her lap, the impact damaged Shyanna’s aorta -- the vital arterty that comes from the heart -- and parts of her intestine that Sarah Hoenig said looked like hamburger.

Iowa law does not require children over six to use booster seats, although safety experts recommend it. Here in Missouri, children ages 4 through 7, or weighing between 40 and 80 pounds, must use an appropriate safety seat or booster seat. As the article notes, this elevates the child to allow the seat belt to cross his or her lap, preventing serious injuries like Shyanna’s or possibly even death.

I am glad that this little girl and her family have what appears to be a good outcome to her medical care. But as a St. Louis auto accident attorney, I know that they probably also face substantial financial losses as a result of the accident. Shyanna spent more than two weeks in hospitals -- and even if the family has insurance, that’s likely to be very expensive. Because St. Louis is a fair drive from their home, her parents may also have had to take all of that time off work to be with her and be part of her care. And of course, they probably faced costs for repair or replacement of the van and care for the other family members. All of this can be financially devastating for an ordinary family, which is why so many accident victims come to our Missouri car crash lawyers for help.

Continue reading "First-Grader Released From Hospital After Catastrophic St. Louis Car Accident" »

Two people were seriously hurt and another suffered minor injuries in an unusual Missouri pedestrian accident, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported July 13. Randy Smith of Steele, Mo., was driving north on the interstate at around 10:30 p.m. when he saw pedestrian Henry Dempke of St. Mary’s, Mo. in the road. He swerved to avoid Dempke, but his Ford Explorer hit the man anyway, then overturned. Smith, who was wearing his seat belt, was not seriously hurt, but his passenger, Lacrisha Arender of Steele, was partly ejected. She was not wearing a seat belt. Arender and Dempke were both hospitalized in serious condition.

As a St. Louis auto accident attorney, I was interested in this accident because the investigators may ultimately decide that it was the pedestrian’s fault. That would be unusual, and it goes against most people’s ideas about pedestrian accidents. Cars are larger and more powerful than human bodies, which gives drivers a greater legal responsibility to avoid accidents. However, pedestrians also have a legal responsibility to take reasonable care for their own safety. When they fail in that duty, they can be held liable for the injuries and costs in any accident they cause -- even though they weren’t driving.

If investigators do decide that the pedestrian is responsible for the accident, it could create interesting problems for the insurance claims of everyone involved. Legally, the insurance company for the person responsible for causing the accident should cover the injuries. However, insurance companies don’t like paying expensive claims -- and when the responsibility for an accident goes against most people’s ideas, insurance companies are not afraid to use that fact to simply deny the claim. Frequently, accident victims in unusual situations must hire a Missouri car crash lawyer to force their insurance companies to provide the coverage they are legally entitled to.

Continue reading "Driver Involved in SUV Rollover Accident After Trying to Dodge Pedestrian on Interstate 55" »

After more than a month of waiting, Gov. Jay Nixon has vetoed the Legislature’s decision to repeal Missouri’s mandatory motorcycle helmet law, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported July 2. The vetoed legislation would have given riders 21 and older the option to not wear helmets, except on interstate highways. With the veto, riders of all ages must continue to wear their helmets in Missouri, although they may take them off in many neighboring states, including Illinois. Lawmakers may still override the veto when they convene in September, but the newspaper suggested that this will not be easy.

News reports suggested that Nixon had genuine doubts about the law, which may explain the long gap between the veto and the Legislature’s passing the law in early May. Supporters of the repeal argued that it was a question of freedom; adults should be able to choose whether to take the risk of riding without a helmet. Opponents, who included the Missouri Department of Transportation, countered with statistics showing that helmets substantially reduce motorcyclists’ risk of death and brain damage in an accident. Nixon cited some of those statistics when he vetoed the bill, adding that he was concerned about the likely increase in the financial cost of treating motorcycle accident victims.

As an American, I sympathize with concerns about where individual freedom ends and responsibility to others begins. But as a Missouri brain injury attorney, I believe that voluntarily using a helmet is the smartest choice for motorcyclists (and bicyclists and ATV riders). As the article points out, the federal Department of Transportation has found that helmets cut the risk of death by in a motorcycle accident by 37% and the probability of brain injury by 67%. They also cut costs to public health programs, as well as to riders and insurance companies. One DoT study estimated that helmet use saved $1.3 billion in 2002 alone in the U.S., and universal helmet use could have saved $853 million more. That’s a high price to pay for feeling the wind in your hair.

Continue reading "Governor Vetoes Repeal of Motorcycle Helmet Law, Leaving Helmets Mandatory for All Riders" »

It's that time of year again, and the Missouri State Highway Patrol is ringing it in with somber statistics that unfortunately ring all too true with a Missouri auto accident attorney like me. In a press release on Monday, they reminded motorists to buckle up, obey the speed limit, and keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road.

MSHP participated in a campaign last year called Operation C.A.R.E. (Combined Accident Reduction Effort) from the evening of July 3 through the night of July 6, 2008. During that time, Operation C.A.R.E. had all available officers patrolling Missouri's highways and roads to enforce Missouri's speed limit, seat belt and alcohol laws. They also were there to tally a staggering number of injuries and deaths.

According to MSHP, seven people were killed and 194 people injured in car crashes over last year's holiday counting period. That's an average of one person being killed and injured every 20.3 minutes. In addition to those injured and killed, state troopers arrested 195 people for driving while intoxicated -- just one less than the number of reported injuries, and those are only the ones who got caught.

This year's counting period for the Fourth of July holiday takes place 6 p.m. Thursday, July 2 through 11:59 p.m. Sunday, July 5, 2009. To prepare, MSHP advised motorists to make sure their cars are in good condition before starting a trip to see friends, relatives or fireworks. It also suggested checking the Missouri Department of Transportation's traveler info map at www.modot.mo.gov to anticipate detours for construction or flooding.

In closing, MSHP reminded drivers who need assistance or witness crime while traveling on Missouri roads to contact their nearest Highway Patrol headquarters via their emergency hotline. All I can add is that if any Missouri motorists are injured in a July Fourth drunk driving accident, they should contact a Missouri reckless driving attorney right away to learn about their legal options. People hurt by an irresponsible drunk driver have the right to hold that driver legally responsible for the injuries he or she caused, including wrongful deaths, permanent disabilities and all of the financial costs related to the crash.

With offices in St. Louis and Belleville, Ill., The Lowe Law Firm represents victims of serious personal injuries caused by car crashes in Missouri and southern Illinois. Our Missouri auto accident lawyers help people who have been seriously hurt or lost a loved one in a car, truck or motorcycle wreck recover the money they need to pay medical bills, make ends meet and eventually move past the incident. If you and your family are in this position and you’d like to learn more, please contact The Lowe Law Firm online, or call us toll-free at 1-877-678-3400.

This week I read a local news story that was remarkable by any measure, and of particular interest to a Southern Illinois car accident attorney like me. On May 27 in Jefferson County, Ill., a school bus driver with a full load of children passed out at the wheel. The bus veered off course, hit a tree and continued about 100 yards before the students onboard managed to shut off the bus.

Miraculously, none of the children were harmed. However, the driver, 41-year-old Tonya Glass, was taken from the accident site to a nearby hospital with minor injuries. This week, Jefferson County Sheriff Roger Mulch revealed that blood drawn from the Glass at the hospital had tested positive for a controlled substance. Glass was subsequently charged with a DUI.

“The story is that the kids did physically shut off the bus,” Mulch stated. “They checked on each other and made sure each other were all right.” They also were the ones to call for help, he said. The students' ages ranged between 5 and 14. As for Glass, Mulch said, “She’s received one citation for failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident and a second citation for DUI.”

Naturally, this story interests me as a Southern Illinois auto accident lawyer -- particularly because so many questions remain unanswered. The substance found in the driver's blood has still not been disclosed; further tests are pending from the Illinois State Police Crime Lab, according to Mulch. The sheriff said the case will undergo further investigation as to what the substance was; he did not say whether information would be released as to whether it was prescribed to Glass, but that would be one of my first questions as a Southern Illinois personal injury attorney.

As of press time, no charges have been filed. Time will tell as to whether the driver will be charged for this incident, but at any rate the case bears extremely thorough investigation and is far from over.

If you or a loved one has been injured by or suffered trauma due to a driver who was incapacitated by a substance, legal or otherwise, you should seek legal advice as soon as possible. Based in St. Louis, The Lowe Law Firm offers free, confidential consultations, so you can learn more about your rights and your claim with no risk or commitment. We handle personal injury lawsuits for people throughout Missouri and southern Illinois, and our Southern Illinois auto accident lawyers are ready to help you. To set up a free consultation, please contact us online or call us toll-free at 1-877-678-3400.

A Belleville city police cruiser was involved in a three-car accident Tuesday on Illinois 161, the Belleville News-Democrat reported May 27. The officer, who was alone in his car, apparently lost control just before 8 p.m. and veered into oncoming traffic, hitting a minivan head-on. Another sedan then rear-ended the minivan. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured, but the police car and the minivan were both badly damaged, and emergency responders had to cut the doorjamb off the minivan to release the two children who were passengers.

According to the article, it was raining hard at the time of the accident. A spokesperson for police declined to say whether the officer had his lights and siren on to respond to a call, and the Belleville chief of police referred questions to Illinois state troopers.

This could be an important question for southern Illinois auto accident lawyers like me, because whether the officer was speeding, and whether he was responding to an emergency, are both important questions for establishing liability in any Belleville car wreck lawsuit. Under Illinois law, local government employees, including police officers, are not liable for acts that arise out of doing their jobs. However, they can be liable for unsafe acts that fall outside their jobs, or doing their jobs in a “willful and wanton” way. If the officer was driving at a safe and reasonable speed, especially if he had warning lights and sirens on, he probably cannot be held liable for the accident.

This is not to say that suing a government agency in Illinois is easy. Every Illinois lawsuit has a deadline by which you must start your claim, called a statute of limitations. These deadlines vary according to the type of claim you’re making and your own circumstances, but they typically give plaintiffs two or three years. By contrast, if you’re suing a local government agency (such as a city, township or county), you have just six months to start your claim. For claims against a state government, that deadline is one year.

The process of starting a claim against a local government in Illinois is also more complex than usual, requiring you to give written notice to the government of your claim, including details about the accident, before you can file a formal lawsuit. Mistakes could take away your right to sue at all, which is why experts recommend that plaintiffs call a southern Illinois car crash attorney as soon as possible. At The Lowe Law Firm, we prefer to hear from potential clients with these cases as soon as they begin to consider a lawsuit. One of the least pleasant parts of our job is telling clients that they are unable to get the compensation they’d otherwise by entitled to because a deadline has passed.

Based in St. Louis, The Lowe Law Firm handles personal injury lawsuits for people throughout Missouri and southern Illinois. If you or a loved one was seriously hurt because of someone else’s negligence, our Missouri auto accident lawyers would like to help. We offer free, confidential consultations, so you can learn more about your rights and your claim with no risk or commitment. To set one up, please contact us online or call toll-free at 1-877-678-3400.

Lawmakers in Missouri and Illinois are both on the verge of making it illegal to send and read text messages behind the wheel, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported May 18. Missouri’s legislature has already passed a bill forbidding drivers under the age of 21 from texting while driving, while their counterparts in Illinois are considering a broader bill that would apply to drivers of every age. The goal is to reduce the number of crashes caused by irresponsible uses of cell phones while driving, which even opponents of the bills agree is a problem, the article says.

The Missouri measure was originally written to apply to all drivers, but died in the state House and was passed in its current form as an attachment to a different bill. The article did not specify a penalty for those caught breaking the new law, but judging by other states’ approaches, the drivers would be ticketed. Opponents of the bill argued that it could give bad police officers an excuse for racial profiling, and that police have better things to worry about. But the sponsor of the original bill, state Sen. Ryan McKenna, D-Crystal City, worried only that the bill doesn’t go far enough. After all, he pointed out, the conductor in the recent Boston train accident involving texting was over 21.

In Illinois, the texting ban would apply to drivers age 19 and over outside Chicago; younger drivers and Chicagoans are already banned from using cell phones in any way while driving. Lawmakers debating the texting ban brought up concerns about allowing police officers unfettered access to drivers’ phones. They also worried that the use of GPS devices, which are intended to help drivers navigate unfamiliar roads, would be illegal under the bill. Nonetheless, the paper said, the bill is expected to pass and go to Gov. Pat Quinn for approval. The bill was driven in part by a fatal 2006 crash in which a teenaged driver hit a bicyclist while she was downloading new ringtones to her phone.

As a St. Louis car accident attorney, I believe these bills, if they are enforced properly, could do a lot to prevent accidents caused by cell phone use. Anyone who drives has a story about driving behind someone who is drifting or driving at the wrong speed for conditions with a phone pressed to one ear. While cell phones are far from the only distraction that can cause an accident, they are one of the most common -- even people who cannot afford a car can afford a phone. While a ticket may seem like a cynical revenue-generating device, our Missouri car crash lawyers believe it has value both as a deterrent and as a way to show younger drivers that cell phone use while driving is a safety problem, teaching them to change their behavior without the need for tickets.

Based in St. Louis and Belleville, Ill., The Lowe Law Firm represents victims of serious personal injuries caused by car wrecks in Missouri and southern Illinois. Our Missouri auto accident lawyers help people who were seriously hurt or lost a loved one in a car, truck or motorcycle accidents recover the money they need to pay their medical bills, make ends meet and eventually move past their accidents. If you and your family are in this position and you’d like to learn more, please contact The Lowe Law Firm online or call us toll-free at 1-877-678-3400.

Legislation repealing Missouri’s mandatory motorcycle helmet law has passed the Legislature and is headed for the desk of Gov. Jay Nixon, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported May 1. The legislation, passed 95-63 in the Missouri House, makes helmets optional for riders age 21 and over. Riders below age 21 would still be required to wear helmets. If the bill is approved, Missouri would become the 31st state with partial or no helmet laws, including almost all of our neighboring states.

The law has provoked several disapproving editorials in the past few days, with the Post-Dispatch claiming that the repeal is “a spectacularly bad idea.” I know this is a sensitive subject for those who ride, many of whom feel strongly that they should have the right, as adults, to make their own decisions. The issue pits public safety arguments against freedom arguments, and both are worthy goals. I do not wish to comment on whether helmets should be mandatory. But, using my experience as a Missouri brain injury lawyer, I would like to explain why I believe that motorcyclists in our state should freely choose to wear helmets when they ride.

Helmets protect the brain, one of the few tissues in the body that cannot heal in the same way a cut or bruise heals. Once the brain is damaged, the abilities controlled by the damaged parts of the brain are most likely gone forever. Practically speaking, that translates to a lifelong disability of some kind -- physical, mental, sensory or emotional. In mild cases, this could leave the victim functional but with a permanent loss of abilities, personality changes or trouble controlling emotions. In serious cases, the victim will need lifelong care in an institution or with a live-in helper. It is also extremely expensive to treat -- hospital costs for a serious brain injury easily total five or six figures, and the lifetime cost reaches into the millions.

It’s well-established that states with mandatory motorcycle helmet laws have much higher helmet use rates than states without. It is more controversial, but still well-established, that helmets save lives and prevent brain injuries without adding risks. Studies by the federal Department of Transportation have found that an un-helmeted rider is 40 times more likely to suffer a fatal head injury and 15 times more likely to sustain a non-fatal injury than one wearing a helmet in the same crash.

Furthermore, of the states that have repealed their universal helmet laws, all have seen a pronounced rise in motorcycle crash fatalities -- a 31% rise in fatal motorcycle injuries in Texas, for example. And according to a 2002 study by the federal DoT, just under half of motorcycle accident victims have no health insurance, meaning that hospital charity care and government health programs pick up their bills. Given the staggering cost in abilities and money, I believe the protection a helmet offers is well worth the cost, both financially and philosophically. Riders may soon have the chance to make this choice for themselves, but as a St. Louis brain damage attorney, I hope they do it with full awareness of their risks.

Based in St. Louis, the Lowe Law Firm represents clients throughout Missouri and southern Illinois who have suffered brain injuries through another person’s careless actions. In addition to motorcycle accidents, this includes car and truck accidents, crashes with semis and big rigs, ATV crashes and accidents in the workplace. In a Missouri brain injury lawsuit, we can help our clients win the money they need to pay their sky-high medical bills, make ends meet while they cannot work and ensure that they get the care they need throughout a lifetime of disability. If this sounds like your situation and you’d like to know more, please contact the Lowe Law Firm today for a free, confidential consultation.

St. Louis County prosecutors have taken more than a month to consider whether to file charges against an off-duty police officer for her role in a fatal car crash, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported April 28. According to the Post-Dispatch, off-duty Sunset Hills policewoman Christine Miller drove her car the wrong way down Dougherty Ferry Road early in the morning of March 21. No charges have been filed, but the Missouri Highway Patrol said it handed the case to St. Louis County prosecutors on March 25. A spokesman for the prosecutors’ office said it may take six months to a year to hear from accident reconstruction specialists.

The crash killed four people and injured two, including Miller herself. The Post-Dispatch said that Miller was driving east at a high rate of speed when she hit a westbound Honda head-on in the westbound lane. The crash killed three young women studying at Eastern Illinois University: Anusha Anumolu, Anita Lakshmi and Prya Muppvarapu. Also killed was Lakshmi’s cousin, Satya Chinta of Chicago. Lakshmi’s fiancé, Nitesh Adusumilli of Ballwin, suffered serious injuries. Miller herself was critically injured in the crash. A Missouri Highway Patrol spokesman said after the accident that police suspected Miller may have been drinking, but no further information was reported.

Judging by comments to the article, the delay in prosecutors’ decision has generated some anger among people who believe Miller is receiving special treatment because of her job. However, as an experienced St. Louis car accident attorney, I see a couple of possible legitimate reasons to delay filing charges. One has to do with the seriousness of the alleged crime. If they can file stronger charges after proving that Miller was legally intoxicated, prosecutors may feel that waiting is worthwhile. Given the seriousness of Miller’s injuries, they may also be delaying charges until she is well enough to give her side of the story. And in last July’s tragic trucking accident on I-40, it took nine months for prosecutors to bring back charges, suggesting that the wheels of justice turn slowly and carefully in all cases.

Regardless of whether law enforcement presses charges against an irresponsible driver, victims of that driver have the right to pursue their own cases in civil court. People who have been hurt on our roads because of another driver’s carelessness may file a southern Illinois auto accident lawsuit to seek compensation for their injuries, the deaths of loved ones and all of the costs of a serious accident such as this one. Money cannot undo a serious accident, unfortunately, but it can help victims put their lives back together by paying for past and future medical care and other bills caused by the accident, helping them make ends meet if they cannot work and compensating them for a permanent disability or loss of a loved one.

If you are in this situation and you’d like to learn more, The Lowe Law Firm can help. For more than 20 years, our Missouri car wreck lawyers have won millions of dollars for clients injured through no fault of their own. To tell us about your case at a free, confidential consultation, you can contact The Lowe Law Firm online or call us toll-free at 1-877-678-3400.

Loose cattle and dense fog caused one Missouri car accident and one train accident outside Springfield, Missouri April 11. According to the Springfield News-Leader, the first cow was struck by a passing train early in the morning. A short time later, the driver of a pickup truck found 10 to 15 cows standing in the roadway near the railroad tracks. That driver struck three cows. Two of the cows hit were killed; two others were so badly hurt that they had to be euthanized. The pickup was so badly damaged in the accident that it had to be towed.

If you have never lived near livestock, you may be surprised at how serious an accident between a cow and a car can be. Cows are fragile creatures without metal shells, seatbelts or airbags -- but unlike human beings, they weigh up to 1,600 pounds. Hitting one with a passenger vehicle is not totally unlike hitting a wall. Cattle have been known to total cars and cause serious injuries to the people inside those cars. To all appearances, this driver must have been lucky, given that his truck was not drivable after this accident. Under normal visibility circumstances, cow-car accidents are rare because cows just don’t move that quickly.

Cows don’t carry auto insurance, of course, but drivers who hit one in Missouri may be covered by the insurance of an at-fault party, depending on the circumstances. Under the law, farmers who have livestock must maintain fences to corral their livestock; owners of neighboring land often must split the cost of these division fences. If either neighbor has failed to maintain a solid fence that meets legal standards, that person is legally responsible for the results of cattle escaping. That includes causing an auto accident. Of course, drivers may also be liable for the accident -- including the cost of the cow -- if they were driving carelessly. Many drivers must file a Missouri auto accident lawsuit in order to prove they were not at fault and get the insurance settlement they are owed.

A car accident involving a cow may sound funny, but it can destroy vehicles, cause serious injuries and cost many thousands of dollars. If you or someone you care about was involved in an auto accident in Missouri or southern Illinois -- whether or not it involved livestock -- you should talk to the Lowe Law Firm. Based in St. Louis and Belleville, Illinois, our St. Louis car crash lawyers represent people who sustained serious injuries or lost a loved one in serious traffic accidents. To learn more about your options at a free, confidential consultation, please call the firm toll-free at 1-877-678-3400 or contact us online.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an in-depth article March 1 on problems with how our criminal justice system handles drunk drivers. As a St. Louis car accident attorney, I was pleased to see attention being paid to the problem of chronic drunk drivers, who form a large minority of drunk driving arrests every year. The article appeared after chronic DUI defendants with long past records killed innocent people around Missouri and southern Illinois in three separate accidents within a month, including one accident I blogged about, in which a man with six prior DUIs killed a young mother, her son and their friend.

According to the Post-Dispatch, drunk drivers stay on the road in part because police sometimes don’t always notify prosecutors or state driver licensing agencies about drunk driving arrests. In some cases, this is an oversight, but in others, it’s an intentional choice. Fed up with the paperwork a serious drunk-driving case requires and battles with DUI defense lawyers, officers sometimes choose to charge the defendant with a lesser traffic violation instead. In other cases, prosecutors don’t know about prior convictions in other states, so they charge repeat offenders as if they were first-timers who made an isolated mistake.

The result is that people like Donald Canterbery stay on the road. Canterbery was suspected of driving drunk Feb. 23 when he rear-ended a couple’s car, pushing them into oncoming traffic and killing both along with their unborn child. He had four prior DUI arrests, including one that resulted in a plea bargain in January. A Madison County state’s attorney told the newspaper that if he had known about Canterbery’s three previous out-of-state arrests, he would have pushed for felony charges carrying prison time.

As a traffic accident lawyer in Southern Illinois and greater St. Louis, I applaud the Post-Dispatch for investigating the apparent high rate of drunk-driving recidivists in our region. It’s well-established by research that driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs is very dangerous, raising the chances that an innocent passer-by will be killed or left with a lifelong disability. The Lowe Law Firm has handled many cases on behalf of clients who were seriously injured or lost a loved one due to intoxicated driving. Under Missouri and Illinois law, you have the right to pursue these cases regardless of whether prosecutors have chosen to pursue criminal charges.

If you or someone you love has been hurt by a drunk driver in southern Illinois or Missouri and you’d like to learn more about filing a legal claim, please contact the Lowe Law Firm for a free consultation.

A St. Louis family lost two of its members a fatal car crash near Edwardsville, Ill. Feb. 5. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Tawanda Jackson and her two children, nine-year-old Arnold and 11-year-old Takia, were headed home from Tennessee to attend her grandmother’s funeral, along with Jackson’s friend, Jon Moss. Authorities told the Bloomington Pantagraph that the other driver, Newton Keene, was drunk and driving without a license when he drove the wrong way on Illinois 255, crashing into Jackson’s car and killing her, Arnold Jackson and Moss. Takia Jackson remained hospitalized Feb. 6.

In fact, the Bloomington paper reported that Keene had six previous intoxicated driving convictions in Illinois and Missouri, as well as two convictions for driving without a valid license. Local law enforcement agencies also told the paper that Keene had been pulled over three times for driving on the wrong side of the road while drunk. Despite all of this, he had never served more than 120 days in jail. In fact, he had petitioned the State of Missouri to restore his license, a matter that would have been heard Feb. 9.

Public education efforts have done a lot to reduce drunk driving over the past three decades. According to research by the federal Department of Transportation, 48% of drivers involved in fatal crashes had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08 or higher in 1982, the first year for which this record was kept. In 2007, that percentage was 32%. Education and outreach have eliminated many casual drunk drivers, making chronic or repeat offenders like Keene the majority of DUI offenders.

Drunk driving is illegal, of course, and it can and should be prosecuted as a crime. But when the criminal justice system fails to stop a drunk driver from hurting the innocent people around him or her, victims also have the option of filing a Missouri or Illinois car accident lawsuit. A lawsuit won’t send anyone to jail, but it helps victims recover the often substantial financial costs of a drunk driving accident, including hospital bills, repair costs and sometimes funeral costs. It can also help victims win compensation for their non-financial injuries, such as the loss of a loved one, a permanent disability or lifelong scarring from serious burns.

The Lowe Law Firm can help. Based in St. Louis, our experienced auto accident attorneys help clients in Missouri and southern Illinois who were seriously hurt in motor vehicle accidents caused by someone else’s carelessness. If you believe you or someone you love has a claim and you’d like to know more about your options, we offer free consultations. To set up a free evaluation of your case with our experienced Missouri car wreck lawyers, please contact us online as soon as possible or call 1-877-678-3400, toll-free.

The mother of a young man hurt in a single-vehicle accident wants to know what caused ice to appear in the road, MyFox St. Louis reported Jan. 12. A truck driven by Keyon Matthews, a 25-year-old father of three, slid on the road in North St. Louis and fishtailed before hitting a tree, according to his brother, who was following in another car. Neighbors said they reported a leak in a manhole cover, which froze into ice, Jan. 10, but the City of St. Louis Water Division told the television station that there was no record of the leak. Crews from the Water Division later confirmed the leak and took steps to repair it.

Ice in the road is nothing new here in Missouri -- but drivers who don't realize it's there don't know when they should be especially careful. If the allegations in this article are true, the city may have been negligent (a legal term for "extremely careless") in its handling of the neighbors' complaints. Like businesses and individuals, government agencies have a legal duty to remove hazards on their property as soon as they reasonably can, especially when the hazard may be hidden, like this one. However, the key there is "reasonable." Is it reasonable to expect immediate action on a leak that creates a large patch of ice in the road?

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules about what is considered reasonable. A jury or a judge might ultimately decide in any St. Louis car crash lawsuit the family might choose to file. City governments may be held legally responsible for their negligence, just like private citizens. However, thanks to a doctrine called sovereign immunity, city, state and even federal government agencies can set special rules about how they may be sued. These include special deadlines -- some as short as 30 days -- by which you must give them notice that you intend to sue. Missing those deadlines takes away your right to claim any relief at all, which is why it is so important to get help from an experienced Missouri personal injury attorney.

At The Lowe Law Firm, we have successfully represented many people who were seriously injured on the road by someone else's carelessness. That includes the carelessness of other drivers and of manufacturers of defective tires, seatbelts and other auto parts, as well as bad decisions by government authorities. Our record of success includes multiple verdicts and settlements of more than $1 million in motor vehicle accidents, and multiple millions for victims of defective products. If you were hurt in a car wreck in Missouri or southern Illinois, and you believe it was caused by someone else's careless or illegal behavior, The Lowe Law Firm can help. Contact us as soon as possible for a free evaluation of your case.

A Webster Groves-area high school student is recovering after being hit in a pedestrian accident Jan. 9, the Webster-Kirkwood Times has reported. The teen was crossing at a crosswalk outside the public library to meet his ride home, the paper said. One car stopped at the crosswalk and motioned him forward, but another passed the first car on the right and hit the teenager. Authorities told the paper that the teen's padded bookbag and the tough clipboards inside may have taken some of the force of the impact. Nevertheless, he sustained a broken shoulder, a sprained ankle and some cuts and bruises.

As a Missouri pedestrian accident lawyer, I believe this is a good chance to discuss the importance of yielding at crosswalks. Most drivers realize that they absolutely must stop at crosswalks when pedestrians are crossing, but not all of them realize that it's also a crime to pass a car that's stopped at a crosswalk. These laws were likely designed to help pedestrians avoid just this sort of accident, in which the oncoming driver literally can't see the pedestrian until it's too late. The penalty is normally just a ticket, but when someone is hurt, the driver may be legally liable for both serious criminal charges and a Missouri pedestrian accident lawsuit.

The article also mentions numerous calls for a stop sign at the intersection, many of which predate this accident. This is a common concern; many people can point to intersections in their own neighborhoods that they wish had stronger traffic signals. It is rare for roadway design to cause or contribute to accidents, but it does happen. And when it does, the local government agencies that design, build and maintain roads may be partly or entirely to blame. As a motor vehicle accident attorney in Missouri and southern Illinois, I handle cases of defective road design as well as cases of vehicle defects and negligent driving.

Lawsuits involving government agencies are generally much more complex than other legal claims. To sue a local, state or federal government agency, you generally have a very short deadline (just sixty days for federal claims) to give the agency advance notice, without which you cannot sue at all. In some cases, you may have to fulfill other requirements before filing. Because this process can be difficult and confusing, experts recommend that you talk with an experienced car wreck lawyer as soon as possible. If you or someone you love has been hurt in a Missouri car wreck, with or without roadway defects, and you'd like to learn more about your legal rights and options, The Lowe Law Firm offers free consultations. To set up a meeting today, please contact us online.

A Plattsburg, Mo., man was killed and two other people were injured in a traffic accident on Missouri Highway 116 on the evening of Friday, January 2, the St. Joseph News-Press reported.

Gailon V. Green, 45, was killed after his eastbound 1997 Dodge crossed the center line and collided with a westbound Chevrolet Monte Carlo driven by Melissa R. Prescott, 29, of Riverside, Mo., the highway patrol said.

Mr. Green was pronounced dead at the scene. Ms. Prescott was transported to North Kansas City Hospital, according to the patrol report.

A passenger in Mr. Green’s vehicle, Jessica A. May, 21, of Plattsburg, Mo., was taken to Liberty Hospital, where she was reported in good condition Saturday evening.

Drivers who lose control of their vehicles are legally responsible for the results of any serious car wreck that results. If you or someone you love was hurt in this kind of auto accident in Missouri, you have the right to claim compensation for your financial, physical and emotional injuries. The Lowe Law Firm can help. To set up a free case evaluation with our experienced attorneys, please contact us online or call us at 1-877-678-3400.

A 50-year-old man was killed Jan. 10 in a crash on Interstate 70 near Kansas City, the Kansas City Star reported. Gregory Hawley, who was known for his role in unearthing the sunken Steamboat Arabia and turning it into a museum, was on his way home from that museum when he was hit by an out-of-control BMW. The BMW was reportedly racing another vehicle on the highway when the driver lost control and hit Hawley's pickup truck. The truck left the highway and rolled over, throwing Hawley from the vehicle and killing him. The BMW's driver was charged Jan. 12 with involuntary manslaughter.

It's well-known that street racing is dangerous, which is why it's also illegal in many states. The federal Department of Transportation doesn't keep Missouri car wreck statistics for street racing in particular, but it does keep national statistics on speeding-related crashes. According to the department, speed caused or contributed to 31% of fatal accidents in 2007, at a cost of more than 13,000 lives nationally and 434 in Missouri. Speeding is a problem because it reduces the driver's control over his or her vehicle -- as was the case here -- and makes it harder to react in time to hazards. And of course, higher speeds translate to greater force in a crash, raising the likelihood of a serious injury or a wrongful death.

Unfortunately, enforcement of criminal laws against street racing is spotty, in part because law enforcement cannot always charge racers unless they are caught in the act. Too often, it is only after a tragedy like this one that racers face criminal charges. If those charges seem like too little, too late for some victims, they also have the option of filing a civil claim -- a Missouri car wreck lawsuit. A lawsuit cannot undo a terrible accident, of course, but it can help victims defray some of the more severe consequences of a crash, including high medical bills, loss of income and sometimes funeral costs. Just as importantly, it can also compensate victims for the pain and lost quality of life they suffered when they became permanently disabled or lost a loved one forever.

At the Lowe Law Firm, we're proud to handle both injury-related car accident claims and wrongful death lawsuits. Based in St. Louis and in Belleville, Ill., we represent clients throughout Missouri and southern Illinois. If you or someone you care about has suffered a serious crash, we want to learn about your case and help you understand all of your legal options. And we offer free consultations, so there is no risk in speaking with us. To set up your free consultation today, please contact us through our Web site or call 1-877-678-3400, toll-free.

The parents of a young man killed during a police car chase have filed a lawsuit against the city of Independence, Kansas City’s KCTV reported. Seventeen-year-old Chris Cooper was riding his bicycle in November of 2007 when he was hit and killed by a vehicle driven by Wilfredo Pujols, Jr. Pujols had earlier hit another car and run from police; he hit Cooper after running a red light.

The Cooper family’s Missouri wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the city of Independence didn’t train its police officers properly in chase procedures, which led to Cooper’s death. It also alleges that police officers made jokes at the scene. In addition to the city itself, the lawsuit names the police, the paramedics who responded and Pujols, the fugitive, as defendants.

The case has attracted attention in part because Wilfredo Pujols is a cousin of star St. Louis Cardinals batter Albert Pujols. Police eventually apprehended Pujols, who has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, resisting arrest and fleeing the scene of an accident. He faces up to 80 years in prison at his sentencing this spring.

Many people don’t realize that victims may file a Missouri car crash lawsuit even if the defendant is also charged criminally. (Naturally, they may also sue if police cannot or will not pursue criminal charges.) A wrongful death lawsuit might also be filed in a situation like this, where victims believe that law enforcement or another government agency is legally responsible for the death.

A wrongful death is any death caused by the wrongdoing of another. That includes criminal wrongdoing, but also reckless driving and other forms of extreme carelessness. The Lowe Law Firm has handled numerous wrongful death claims in Missouri and southern Illinois, including wrongful deaths stemming from serious car accidents. If you have lost someone you care about in a car accident and you believe another person’s negligence was to blame, we can help you learn about your legal options. To speak to an experienced auto accident lawyer today, contact the Lowe Law Firm online or call 1-877-678-3400 for a free consultation.

In 2008 an Illinois state trooper driving 120 miles an hour slammed into a car killing to sisters. Near that site another state trooper has been involved in an accident, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

This time the trooper, Jeffrey Gagen, was driving the wrong way on Interstate 64 near the Scott Air Force Base exit when he struck an oncoming car. Fortunately, the driver of the other vehicle only suffered minor injuries.

Gagen was arrested at the scene and charged with driving under the influence.

The lawyer representing the sisters who died last year called the latest incident an example of a department that can’t control its officers.

If you have been hurt in a motor vehicle accident resulting from the negligence of another or a loved one has been hurt or killed in such an accident, please contact our attorneys for legal assistance as soon as possible.

A woman who was driving an estimated 70 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone and weaving in and out of traffic has been convicted of reckless homicide in the death of a 9-year-old boy.

According to The News-Gazette, Melissa K. Darr, 42, of Gifford, Ill., was darting in and out of traffic on U.S. 136 headed toward Interstate 57 on May 25, 2007. Darr testified that she had argued with her husband the night before and that her husband had taken their 4-year-old son. While she was driving, her husband told her she would not be getting their son back.

Darr got onto the I-57 ramp which limits speed to 35 miles per hour because of a tight curve. Her SUV blew a tire then went through the grass and up on the highway.

Raymundo Vazquez Sr. of Chicago was driving his van southbound. He testified that Darr’s SUV hit the back of his van, causing him to a hit a guardrail. His 9-year-old son, Raymundo Vazquez Jr. was thrown from the van and died of head and chest injuries.

Two state troopers testified that, in their opinion, the vehicles did not touch because there was no paint transfer.

But that didn’t matter, Assistant State’s Attorney Chris Kanis told the jury.

“She’s flying on that ramp. It was inevitable. She couldn’t hold the curve. If she didn’t hit him, he was avoiding her.”

It only took the Champaign County jury 90 minutes to convict Darr of reckless homicide. Her sentencing is set for Oct. 23. Darr faces a maximum of five years in prison.

In this case, it didn’t matter if Darr intended to hurt or kill someone. All that mattered was that she meant to drive recklessly.

If you have been hurt in a motor vehicle accident resulting from the negligence of another or a loved one has been hurt or killed in such an accident, please contact our attorneys for legal assistance as soon as possible.

The lawyers of The Lowe Law Firm are experienced in helping people who have been hurt as a result of the negligence of another. We will seek compensation for past and future medical expenses, past and future wages, pain and suffering, disability and other damages. We also represent family members in wrongful death cases.

Two Missouri motorcyclists were injured in a Labor Day crash, when a pick-up truck crashed head on into the motorcycle they were riding, The Carthage Press reports.

The accident occurred on County Road 130 just south of Carthage. The driver of the pick-up truck failed to remain on his side of the road and crashed into the motorcycle when the vehicles reached the crest of a hill.

Daniel L. Cupp, 55, and Deborah Cupp, 54, were riding on the motorcycle. They suffered moderate injuries as a result.

The seminal “Hurt Report” noted that in two-thirds of multiple-vehicle accidents involving motorcycles a motorist violated the motorcyclist’s right-of-way. The failure of motorists to notice motorcyclists was also found to be a common cause of motorcycle crashes. Drivers involved in accidents often did not see the motorcycle before the accident or until it was too late to avoid the crash.

If you have been hurt in a motorcycle accident resulting from the negligence of another or a loved one has been hurt or killed in such an accident, please contact our attorneys for legal assistance as soon as possible.

The lawyers of The Lowe Law Firm are experienced in helping people who have been hurt as a result of the negligence of another. We will seek compensation for past and future medical expenses, past and future wages, pain and suffering, disability and other damages. We also represent family members in wrongful death cases.

As the number of motorcycle riders continues to climb, so, too, does the number of motorcycle-related fatalities. In the Illinois area of Champaign-Urbana, ten people in the past five months have died in motorcycle accidents, The News-Gazette reports.

The News-Gazette reporter Steve Bauer writes in “Local fatalities illustrate bad trend in motorcycle accidents,” that local motorcycle crashes have claimed the lives of riders between the ages of 20 and 66. In addition, two husband-and-wife couples were killed in separate accidents when cars struck their motorcycles.

In a related article, “Police attribute increase in motorcycle accidents to rise in riders,” Bauer notes that motorcycle fatalities now account for 13 percent of total traffic deaths in the United States. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration also reports while auto-related deaths have dropped 3.9 percent from 2006 to 2007, motorcyclist deaths roses 6.6 percent.

Several factors seem to account for the increase. The number of motorcycle registrations has been rising steadily for the last ten years. In 2006, there were 2.3 million more motorcycle registrations than the previous year.

In addition, as oil prices soar, owners who might have limited their motorcycle outings to weekends are now riding daily to save on gas.

Safety experts urge riders to wear gloves, heavy jeans, a heavy jack, over-the-ankle boots, and helmets for protection. Motorcyclists should drive defensively, make their presence known to motorists and never drive impaired.

If you have been hurt in a motorcycle accident resulting from the negligence of another or a loved one has been hurt or killed in such an accident, please contact us online for legal assistance as soon as possible or call 877-678-3400. The experienced motorcycle accident lawyers of the Lowe Law Firm will contact you immediately.

A car crash killed three Missouri teens and the deaths may have been preventable; this maybe one of the worst thing that could happen to a parent. Three Missouri teens died after a crash Saturday in Morgan County.

The crash happened at 12:44 a.m. on Missouri 135, near state Route BB in Florence, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Ashton drove off the right side of the road, then back onto the road before the truck overturned several times.

"The truck was beyond recognition," Hibdon said. None of the victims were wearing a seat belt, reports stated.

very time I read the paper about a automobile accident fatality in Missouri, Illinois or any other state I look to see it the deceased was wearing a seat belt. I know as a personal injury lawyer that modern cars are designed to have safety features for persons wearing seat belts. These safety features include front, side, and side curtain air bags, pillars designed to keep the roof from crushing in a roll over accident, and most of all wearing a seat belt will keep occupants from being ejected from cars.

Statistics in Missouri revealed that approximately 69 percent of the 1,096 people that died in Missouri car crashes last year were not wearing a seat belt. Based on an analysis of traffic accidents, anyone involved in a traffic accident has a 1 in 31 chance of dying if they were not wearing a seat belt, however, if the passenger was wearing a a seat belt the chance of dying decreases 1 chance in 1,300.
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As for the dividing line between genders, the study showed that 82 percent of women wear their seat belts while only 76 percent of men wear theirs. Teens and pickup truck drivers tend to wear their seat belts the least. Pickup truck drivers only wear theirs 66 percent of the time while only 61 percent of teens buckle up. Within past years, teens have been the group to be least likely to buckle up when either driving or being in a car at all.

On a better note, the numbers of people wearing their seat belts has gone up in general. Back in 1998, only about 60 percent of drivers did not wear their seat belts while the current number is number is up to 77 percent this year.

Source: MDOT. "Missouri Seatbelt Use Remains Below National Average." http://www.modot.org/newsandinfo/District0News.shtml?action=displaySSI&newsId=12984

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