Articles Posted in Personal Injury

The news of another train collision was frightening and unwelcome. This time in Washington, D.C., on the Metro commuter trains.One train rear-ended another on the same track which, obviously, is not supposed to happen and you can bet doesn’t happen absent someone’s negligence or carelessness. The crash resulted in the loss of nine lives and injuries to 80 other passengers.

How do you miss a full size commuter train on the track ahead of you?

Could the answer be the train operator was texting while driving? It’s too early to tell, but if it turns out it’s because the at-fault train operator was texting while driving, I won’t be shocked and I’ll say you heard it here first. When I first heard of this horrible tragedy, I immediately thought of the MARTA train operator here in Atlanta who was caught texting while he was supposed to have been operating the train. But a diligent MARTA passenger caught him red-handed.

Have you seen this video? http://www.11alive.com/video/default.aspx?playerId=newsmaker&maven_playlistId=1f23dc40ee67898d157716d17d3efded65dbd23b&maven_referrer=mrss&maven_referralPlaylistId=1f23dc40ee67898d157716d17d3efded65dbd23b&maven_referralObject=1138688802 It is of a MARTA train operator texting on his cell phone while the train is running down the rail. The operator is texting on his cell phone while he is supposed to be driving a train carrying hundreds of Georgians just trying to get to their jobs safely. Unbelievable!

Congratulations goes to Everyday Georgia Citizen Matthew Jones, who uses the MARTA subway train system to get to work and relies on the train operators to get him to work, and then back home, safely every day. Matthew spotted the train operator texting while the train was in operation on the tracks and took the smoking gun photo. Amazingly, the GM of MARTA says maybe the only thing that will happen to this train operator is a suspension. A slap on the hand! What will it take to insist on passenger safety? A train wreck while a MARTA operator is texting? Will that do the trick? We already know how deadly it can be for a train operator to be texting while he is operating a train, as evidenced by deadly train wrecks in Boston and in California (which I previously blogged about). Don’t we want to spare Georgia citizens that horror?

We should all be vigilant like Matthew Jones. When we see a MARTA bus driver or MARTA train operator operating his bus or his train in unsafe manner, we must report that to MARTA. MARTA buses are identified by a bus number on the outside. The next time you see a MARTA bus operator run a red light, or other similar dangerous behavior, call MARTA with that bus number and report what you saw. The same should be done if you observe a MARTA train operator texting while driving, or asleep at the switch. Maybe MARTA won’t do anything to the employee after just one complaint, but I would hope after more than one complaint the employee would get more than a mere slap on the hand. The more we do this, the safer our public transporatation will, hopefully, become. Be vigilant, Georgians!

Just like the Peanut Corporation of America in Blakely, Georgia, the Imperial Sugar Refinery in Savannah, Georgia knew of the dangers its plant exposed its employees and Georgia citizens to and did absolutely nothing. In an article today in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, it is obvious the sugar corporation deliberately exposed its employees to the very real chance of death by ignoring an expert consultant’s report warning the corporation’s executives of the danger. Which brings to mind the question: What is wrong with Corporate America? Has corporate greed become so all important that dollars over safety is a corporation’s creed now? Or is it that the past administration of the last eight years has permitted Corporate America to thumb its nose at corporate responsibility for the sake of unregulated profit such that even when human life hangs in the balance, the Almighty Corporation gets by with murder?
It is clear that in the case of the Savannah Sugar Refinery, the fourteen employees who died in the explosion and the dozens of other Georgians injured in it were asked to sacrifice too much for corporate greed. These Georgians are left with nothing but inadequate workers’ compensation claims now as the Imperial Sugar Refinery is protected from the rough justice of twelve jurors in the Georgia Civil Justice System by the “exclusive remedy” of the workers’ compensation system. And that is a crime.

A new law has gone into effect for commercial pools that requires these pools all to have drains with anti-entrapment devices. Without these devices, a swimmer, usually a small child, can become entrapped by the sheer force of the drain suction. Some children have even been eviscerated by the strong suction in pool drains. This new law is designed to insure no other entrapments occur. Pools must be compliant with the new law as of December 18, 2008, so now all commercial pools should have these non-entrapment devices installed on their drains. Below is more information from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. If you regularly use a commercial pool, e.g., a country club pool, a county park pool or homeowner’s association pool, now is the time, before summer, to verify with the Board of Directors that your pool has the proper drain and is compliance with this new law. We want to make sure all Georgia swimmers are safe this summer!

Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act

June 18, 2008 Staff Interpretation of Section 1404:

Governor Perdue is again trying to eliminate the rights of all Georgians to seek legal redress when they have been injured by another person’s negligence or carelessness. Please do your part to tell the Governor “No Thanks and No Way.”

Enacting ‘Victim Pays’ would be like taking away David’s Slingshot

SB 108 would allow intimidation and fear to rule our court of law

A South Carolina jury recently returned a verdict for a woman who was wrongfully accused by Target of attempting to pay for an item of merchandise with an allegedly counterfeit $100 bill. Target violated its own procedures by sending out email with surveillance photos of the plaintiff attached. After suspecting the plaintiff was trying to use a counterfeit bill, Target then took it upon itself to notify 31 other businesses about her, telling them to keep an eye out for the plaintiff in their stores. The Secret Service then visited the plaintiff and determined her $100 bill was legitimate! The stress of the investigation and the false accusations made against her reputation caused the plaintiff to lose 40 pounds.

Do American corporations simply have no common sense any more?

Cantrell v. Target Corp., U.S.D.C. (S.C.), October 22, 2008

We have just recently observed the one year anniversary of the tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota that killed thirteen people on August 2, 2007. Our hearts and prayers remain with those families as they continue to heal from that horrible accident. The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) ruled that the collapse occurred because the bridge design was inadequate. The new bridge currently being built in its place across the Mississippi River costs $235 Million and is to finished by December 24, 2008. You may remember that this Minnesota tragedy exposed the Georgia Department of Transportation’s failure to inspect Georgia bridges adequately and I blogged on that back in August 2007. The Minnesota bridge collapse anniversary was a good excuse to reexamine where Georgia is regarding the safety of its bridges.

Unfortunately, the answer is not good news. A recent review from the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts found about 9 percent of the state’s bridges were classified as structurally deficient in 2007. According to TRIP, a national transportation research group, however, twenty percent of Georgia’s bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete. What is going on? Is the Georgia DOT doing anything differently to discover dangerous bridges in Georgia? Or must Georgia citizens wait until a tragedy hits the citizens of this State, as it did the helpless citizens of Minnesota, before our bridges are made safe? Who is looking out for Georgians’ safety on bridges in Georgia?

GDOT spokeswoman Crystal Buchanan says “You should go over a bridge and you shouldn’t worry about that bridge falling down.” Do you trust her with your life??

A very sad article appears in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution today about the unnecessary and tragic death of a North Georgia youth at an alternative school. The child hanged himself after being left for hours alone in a “seclusion” room. My friend Wyc Orr represents the mother and father of the child and they are in good hands.

The school’s actions really are indefensible with obviously tragic results. This school had put the child in the “seclusion” room 19 times in his final two months there. The school’s own policy required the teachers not to leave a student in the room for more than 25 minutes, but this poor child was left alone for over seven hours. And in an unbelievable act of stupidity, a teacher gave this child some string to hold up his pants and then left him alone for hours on end, during a time when this child was having a difficult time emotionally. The mother states had they just called her she would have come and picked him up. So one has to wonder “if only….”

Why didn’t the school call the mom? Why did the school callously leave the student alone for seven hours? Why did the teacher give the child the rope with which to hang himself? What is going on here?

Once again, in typical corporate fashion, the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Lovejoy, Georgia, has denied any responsibility for its role in serving a customer a meal that, literally, killed him. The customer, who was allergic to crab meat, ordered Chicken Fresco, but, instead, was served Chicken Oscar, which has crab meat on it. Within thirty minutes of eating his meal, this poor customer died.

Now the Ruby Tuesday restaurant denies any culpability and says they served the customer what he ordered. Now let’s stop for a moment and think about that. An adult who knows he is deadly allergic to crab meat orders a dish with crab meat on it. How likely is that to have happened? No chance! It is idiotic for the Ruby Tuesday corporation even to insinuate it, much less blame their own customer who KNEW he was allergic to crab meat.

What is wrong with corporate America today in refusing to accept responsibility for its wrongdoing? It is absurd to blame their own customer, and yet here they are doing that to avoid admitting their own tragic conduct. This is the prevailing sentiment in corporate America today. Even a death in their own restaurant after eating their own food doesn’t make them admit fault! I certainly hope this family is able to get some justice for this death with Ruby Tuesday. It, apparently, is going to take the Georgia Civil Justice System to make Ruby Tuesday take ownership of killing its customer. How absurd!

Today is Day 37 (out of 40) of the Georgia Legislature and it can be a dangerous time for Georgia citizens’ rights during these last four days. A prime example is what occurred last Friday when an amendment was attached to a bill at the last moment that would adversely affect Georgia citizens’ rights who wish to bring a products liability case against certain manufacturers. This products liability amendment was attached to, of all things, a bill that seeks to change the words “seat belt” to “life belt” in the Georgia Code. Fortunately, the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association was ready to defend Georgia citizens’ rights and not let the Civil Justice Dismantlers get away with it. For an inside look at this, below is the “Political Insider’s” take from The Atlanta Journal and Constitution this morning.

Buckle up your life belts. We’re in for a bumpy finish

Sunday, March 30, 2008, 04:00 PM