Diagnosing Errors

Child sexual abuse ranks among the most horrific of all crimes. When allegations of child sexual assault surfaced at Penn State University, many in Pennsylvania were shocked. Jerry Sandusky, an once revered assistant football coach, was charged with abusing eight boys over a 15-year time period. Sandusky denied the charges, but said he did shower with the boys.

While Sandusky is innocent until proven guilty, in general child predators who are convicted tend to receive lengthy prison sentences. For the victims, the assault may cause deep psychological trauma in addition to physical injuries. While no amount of money can truly undo the damage of a sexual assault, victims may need compensation for real financial losses. The only recourse for many victims of sexual assault is to retain a personal injury lawyer. By pursuing compensation through the civil courts, or a child sexual abuse lawsuit, victims may be able to receive compensation to cover the costs of psychiatric care or psychological care. Sadly, many victims may require a lifetime of therapy in addition to needing to address physical injuries.

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The parents of a Maryland teen who died earlier this year during wisdom tooth surgery have sued the oral surgeon and the anesthetist for medical malpractice.

Jenny Olenick, a 17-year-old junior at Marriotts Ridge High School in Woodstock, Md., died in April from complications during the outpatient procedure performed on 5 million Americans each year.

“It’s so hard,” Cathy Garger, Olenick’s mother, told ABCNews.com. “She was the only one we had.”

The civil suit, filed in Howard Country Circuit Court, claims the oral surgeon, Dr. Domenick Coletti, and the anesthiologist, Dr. Krista Michelle Isaacs, were negligent and failed to resuscitate Olenick after her heart rate and blood oxygen level dropped.

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A recent survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that, despite increased legislation forbidding it, texting while driving Click Here is on the rise. The survey estimated that roughly 1 in every 100 drivers on the road at a given moment was texting, e-mailing, surfing the web or using some other feature of their portable handheld devices in 2010: a year that amassed nearly 3100 deaths in automobile accidents due to distracted driving.

The results of the survey are cause for alarm. At the Law Offices of James Morris, our Buffalo lawsuit have seen first-hand the devastation of distracted driving crashes in New York. Our attorneys have represented clients who were seriously injured in auto accidents due to the negligence of other drivers.

The data unveiled a drastic dissonance between driver beliefs and behavior. According to the NHTSA survey, those polled acknowledged very few circumstances where they would NOT talk or text on their cell phone while behind the wheel, despite supporting greater restrictions on both behaviors (seventy-one percent of survey participants supported bans on using handheld devices behind the wheel, while a whopping 94% supported bans on texting while driving). Seventy-five of those same drivers polled said they would answer their ringing phone while driving, without regard to driving conditions at the time of the phone call.

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By: Laura Kelly

Last Monday, a 27-year-old man, Seth Atkinson Jr., was killed at a road side construction site inside the gated subdivision at Landings Way South in Savannah. 66-year-old, Carmencita Limosnero, hit four workers and a dump truck that was in the roadway and a backhoe tractor located in the median of the road, according to the news report.

Three of the workmen were taken to Memorial University Medical Center with injuries and Atkinson died at the scene at 12:16pm. Limosnero was taken to the hospital also, but with no reported injuries. The workers were repairing the pavement at the apartment complex and they were all employed by Groundworks Unlimited.

“On-the-job accidents can be life altering and some cases such as this, fatal. My condolences go out to the families that are affected by this accident,” said personal injury lawyer, Gary Martin Hays. “If someone is injured on a construction site or due to someone else’s negligence, they may be entitled to more compensation through a third-party claim.

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By JIM DANKO

Two men working in a 40-foot high bucket died on Dec. 1 in Atlanta after the lift they were using fell over, according to news reports.

The victims of the construction accident were identified as Rigoberto Lopez, 29, of Marietta, and Karlos Turner, 42, of Dallas, who were working on Dallas Street when the piece of heavy machinery fell over around 1 p.m. The men were not crushed from the machine, but died from the fall, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which quoted the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office. The lift was extended to a height of 40 feet, according to the news report

The newspaper reported that the men were performing maintenance on the exterior of the Amli Old 4th Ward Apartment Homes when the lift got stuck. When workers tried to move the lift, the machine fell onto a concrete walkway across the street.

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Teenagers have the highest car accident rate of any group in the United States, and a recent study reveals just how dangerous new teenager drivers can be.

Los Angeles personal injury lawyer Mickey Fine urges parents of teen drivers to take note of a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Researchers found that teen drivers are about 50 percent more likely to crash in the first month of driving than they are after a full year of experience driving on their own. Furthermore, the young drivers are nearly twice as likely to become involved in an auto accident as they are after two full years of experience, according to the study.

A related AAA Foundation study used in-vehicle cameras to monitor teens when they were learning to drive with their parents. Some of the teens were caught texting behind the wheel, engaging in horseplay with passengers, running red lights, and other potentially distracting or dangerous behaviors.

The AAA Foundation recommends the following steps for new teen drivers:

Practice driving after receiving the license to ensure the basic skills are mastered.
Limit the number of passengers in the car to avoid distractions.
Limit night driving, when the reduced visibility makes for riskier driving for people of all ages.
Set rules extending beyond the state laws, such as possibly limiting highway or city driving or barring the teen from driving in inclement weather.

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n what can only be described as a “sign of the times” to quote the much over used expression. 25 injury law firms around the United States have been awarded “Best Of The Web” by the organization Law Wire News. The factors to determine the winners were depth of website content, use of video, use of social media and use of mobile devices. The idea behind the contest was in part to encourage law firms to reach a new generation of people who may not be looking to traditional yellow pages when injured or understand they have rights in many cases.

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