Wrongful Death

If you ever carry a child in a car seat in the back seat of your car you must read this article.

Fatal Distraction, an article published in the Washington Post on March 8, tells us that all kinds of adults have forgotten their child in the car, from rocket scientists, to doctors, to postal workers. If you have forgotten your cell phone at home, you are capable of doing this too.

It’s a tough read but please take the time to do so and pass it on to everyone you know who has a child they carry in the back seat.

Already this year, two little ones have been left to die in the sweltering heat of cars by inattentive adults. In Florida, heat stroke or hyperthermia can happen in a matter of minutes. Please let’s not let any more cases of wrongful death in Florida happen to another child.

Kids and Cars, the advocacy organization says you can prevent this with a few no-cost reminders.

• If you carry a child, put something you’ll need like a handbag, a lunch, an employee badge on the floor board of the back seat. Always open the back door of your vehicle every time you reach your destination – make it a habit. It’s called the Look before you Lock campaign.
• It may sound ridiculous, but put a reminder of the child in the back seat with you. A large stuffed toy that you normally keep in the child seat, replace in the front seat when you drive. It’s a visual reminder that you have a little passenger, sometimes a silent one, in the back seat.
• Another good tip is to arrange to have your day care provider call you if the child does not arrive as scheduled. Many children’s lives could have been saved with a simple phone call.

Always get involved by looking inside cars in a parking lot. Pets can inadvertently be left there too. I challenge you to read this article and not recognize yourself in it. Truly this can happen to anyone who just had their mind elsewhere that day. Pass this important article onto everyone you know who carries children – it could save a life.

If you have any questions regarding child safety or if your child has been invovled in an auto accident, please contact Jacksonville’s top personal injury lawyers at Farah and Farah.

You certainly have been passed by fast driving teens on the road. A teenage driver with less that one year experience can be the most reckless driver on the road. Speeding up to your tail, passing on the right side of your car, tailing you, aggressive driving and speeding are just some of the problems. I’ve often said I wish their parents could see them driving so they could provide a consequence – like taking away the car and keeping all of us safer from being in an auto accident.

Technology has heard your concerns and has responded. A GPS tracking system will tell you exactly what your child is doing behind the wheel of your car.

A number of these items are able to monitor speed, location, time, where they went, and how long they stayed. Fitting inside your car discretely, the GPS device works by receiving signals from 24 satellites orbiting the earth. Every second you get a reading and are able to access the tracking data.

GPS Teen Tracking has one for $229 and you can order online.

Now you can get one to monitor your teen’s speed and location. LandAirSea has a GPS device that allows you to monitor your teens speed and location at a cost of about $600. Learn more about it on their Web site.

Almost four thousand teens are killed every year in traffic accidents and hundreds of thousands of teens are injured, some critically and permanently. Add other teen passengers, traveling at night, and distractions such as cell phones, CDs, texting AND the youth and inexperience of the driver, one of these devices might just deliver a little piece of mind.

With auto accidents as the number one cause of teen deaths, this small investment and a slight invasion of privacy should be weighed against the cost of doing nothing. Farah and Farah is always there when you do need someone to help you through the maze of tragedy following a Florida auto accident. Call our Jacksonville offices if you need to talk to someone who is on your side.

The tragic death of a five-year-old boy who suffered an asthma attack at the beginning of school last year has resulted in a wrongful death lawsuit.

Trenton Stokes died in August 2007. It was his fourth day of kindergarten at Orange Park Elementary School.

His mother, Rita Stokes had met with school officials to talk about her son’s condition including the principal, her son’s teacher, the school nurse and PE coach. They were told how to recognize Trenton’s asthma attacks and to keep medication with the teacher with the boy at all times.

Unfortunately when Trenton had an attack on the playground August 24th, his teacher didn’t have the medication with her, even after he asked for it. He collapsed and died.

An asthma attack has to be addressed immediately and it is not predictable. Even prepared with that information, the school failed to take care of the little boy. A spokeswoman for Clay County schools says the school acted responsibly but the child did not make it.

Both sides cannot be telling the truth. No doubt the facts will be sorted out at trail. The lawsuit was filed in the 7th Judicial Circuit court. We are sorry for the tragic passing of this little boy.

An 8-month-old child has died after becoming entrapped and suffocating in a Delta Enterprise Co. drop side crib, so nearly 1.6 million cribs are being recalled.

The death was due to a safety peg that was not installed. This allowed the crib locks to become disengaged and detach creating a hazardous gap. That apparently led to the entrapment and suffocation of the baby. And there was another baby reported to have died, but there are no details.

The Delta Enterprise Corp. of New York cribs are manufactured in Taiwan or Indonesia and have the drop side hardware design. The model numbers are listed on the Consumer Product Safety Commission web site.

Unfortunately many cribs are never recalled, but remain in people’s homes, in day care centers or are resold in second-hand stores. Read the rest »

In order to reduce aggressive driving as part of the teen web site, recently mentioned in another blog Take The Wheel, Florida is defining aggressive driving.

Aggressive driving is responsible for 2/3rds of all fatalities on the road each year, or 27,000 deaths. That number is four times the number of deaths resulting from DUI or drunk under the influence.

Aggressive driving is driving under the influence of “impaired emotions” which then leads to high-risk decisions. It is a choice and can be modified with attitude and behavior modification.

Aggressive driving can precede Road Rage when others react on the roads from aggressive and careless drivers.

In order to crack down on teens who take out their aggression, the state is defining “aggressive driving” (Florida Statute 316.1923) as committing two or more of the following acts simultaneously or in succession:

1) Exceeding the posted speed limit by 15 mph or more
2) Unsafely or improperly changing lanes
3) Following another vehicle too closely
4) Failing to yield the right-of-way
5) Improperly passing
6) Violating traffic control and signal devices

Unfortunately this statute is not a charging statute. The office can mark the ticket that the driver was an aggressive driver. The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles in Tallahassee then takes this data to provide statistical information on aggressive driving in the state which is used to make new laws.

Road Rage is a felony and a criminal assault using an automobile on another driver/passenger of an automobile. There are at least 200 deaths a year in Florida attributed to road rage. #

This story found its way on the front page of our paper complete with a picture of a smiling, friendly looking elderly couple.

James and Blanch Whiddon had been married for 65 years. They told relatives recently they could never live without each other. After a car accident, they died three days apart last week.

James, 85, and his wife who was 79, were on their way home from the grocery store September 30th. They had gone to dispute a bill, and did many things together.

Just before noon on U.S. 1 a tractor-trailer ran a red light and James, traveling on a green light, drove his pickup under the trailer.

James died at the scene. His wife was hospitalized in a coma. Both had their seat belts on. Blanch died in three days.

She leaves behind her daughter, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “They wouldn’t have been able to survive without each other,” their daughter, Marie Copeland tells Jacksonville.com. “It’s just a tragedy.”
Read the rest »

With more than 36,000 teen drivers involved in car crashes in Florida last year –and a teen killed every 6.5 minutes nationwide, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles has created an interactive web site to drive home the message of safety on the road.

With great graphics, bold music, and production techniques, TakeTheWheel.net was created by teens for teens. It’s a very powerful and effective way to communicate the truth about the responsibility of taking the wheel, including the facts:

• According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) more than two-thirds of teen passengers and drivers who die in nighttime car crashes are not wearing their seat belts.
• Teens are involved in three times as many fatal crashes as all other drivers.
• Distractions such as loud music, texting, cell phone use, driving tired combined with inexperience and speed and drug use all aggravate the problem.
• In addition to the 36,000 involved in teen crashes last year, more than 479 people were killed in auto accidents where a teenager was behind the wheel.
• Auto accidents remain the number one cause of death for teenagers.

In the teen videos- Alexa tell story of her cousin Mandy, now in a vegetative state, after an accident in December of 2004. She was in a car that was t-boned by another car driven by a student driver.

Alexa says, “She starts to cry and she has feelings she needs to get out but she can’t because of the way she is. Being in an accident and almost dying changes everybody life not just around them, but the whole school. People may not realize it but people have a lot of value. People take their life for granted.”

Dustin watched his 19-year-old cousin, Frankie die after his car flipped 15 times. Frankie had been drinking and driving. His much larger cousin stopped him when depressed and drunk, Dustin tried to get behind the wheel. ” I broke down and cried and my parents came and picked me upl. I will not let anybody get in the car if they’re drunk,” he says.

Megan was in a car that hit the back of a truck, then split into a “V”. Her boyfriend died, as did the driver of the other vehicle. Megan begins crying on camera when she tells her story. “I have friends who street race and they still do it, and I don’t undertand why. If someone is in the car with me I make them put their seatbelt on. I’m really serious about it. You’re not going to die while I’m driving.”

Kudos on talking to teens in a language that matters. I hope every young driver in Florida takes the time to listen to the experiences of people who have suffered from the loss of a loved one. I can happen to you. It happened to them.

The web site is here TakeTheWheel.net.

Florida has joined eight states all suing drugmaker Merck & Co alleging deceptive marketing of the recalled painkiller Vioxx.

The lawsuit claims that while Merck offered Vioxx to the Medicaid program it was hiding the drug’s adverse effects in direct violation of the state’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

Florida’s Attorney General Bill McCollum says the state wants to be reimbursed for more than $80 million spent on health programs, such as Florida’s Medicaid program, which included Vioxx as an approved drug. He wants that money back plus interest and he seeks civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation.

Vioxx was pulled from the market in 2004 after patients taking the drug for arthritis pain began having heart attacks and stroke. Merck says its own research showed the pill doubled the risk.

Merck’s promotional campaign convinced doctors and patients that the drug was safe and desirable, and McCollum says in a statement that “The company also allegedly tried to intimidate physicians and researchers who questioned the safety of Vioxx.”

Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck said in a statement that Merck acted responsibly. “We intend to defend ourselves against the complaint,” said Ron Rogers. Merck has already agreed to settle about 50,000 claims for damage from Vioxx for $4.85 billion, all being handled out of a New Orleans District Court. At the present time the heart attack victims, or their survivors, are supposed to be receiving payments.

Florida joins Alaska, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New York, Texas, Utah and New York City which have all brought substantially similar complaints against Merck. #

Incredible details are coming out about a school bus crash in Citra, Florida that killed one 13-year old girl. A tractor-trailer driver was talking on his cell phone when he slammed into the school bus Wednesday. Four bystanders who witnessed the accident ran to the school bus and pulled out half of the students from the burning bus.

The Marion County Superintendent of School Jim Yancy says it amazing most of the students were saved. “This was a tragedy, but it’s also a miracle, he tells the Ocala Star-Banner.

One 13-year old middle school student, Frances M. Schee lost her life.Chris Mann, an elevator installer who stopped to help said, “The kid was lodged and I just couldn’t get her out. There was nothing I could do.” Nine other students were injured- two critically.

Read the rest »

Three auto safety groups wanted to test the strength of vehicle roofs in actually auto rollovers. So they strapped crash-test dummies into the vehicles in seat belts. The vehicles had received passing grades under NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) standards.

What they found was that six vehicles that passed the federal government’s strength standard fared miserably in real-world conditions.

What Public Citizen, The Center for Auto Safety and the Center for Injury Research found was that the dummies suffered traumatic injuries that would have been fatal or paralyzing if humans had been in their place.

Read the rest »