California Injury Blog

Published on: October 20, 2007

Insurance Investigators Join Policy Holders’ Church Group Looking For Dirt

By Brian Chase

A Georgia couple is suing their insurance company, Progressive, saying that the company spied on them by having their investigators, undercover, join their private church confessional group. The investigators joined the group in the hopes of getting information to use against the couple in an auto accident claim according to a news article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

An attorney for the couple, Bill and Leandra Pitts, told the newspaper that Progressive tried these tactics to avoid paying the couple’s claim. What’s more, Progressive’s CEO, who had previously admitted on the company’s Web site that their spying was “appalling”, has now issued a statement that those actions were in fact “reasonable.”

According to one of Progressive’s spokespersons quoted in the newspaper article: “While we believe what occurred was wrong, we don’t believe it provides the basis for a legal claim seeking a monetary judgment.” At least Progressive is consistent. It is like saying, “While your insurance policy covers you for the injuries you sustained, we don’t believe it is our best interest to pay your claim.”
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Published on: October 19, 2007

Appellate Court Sides With Victims of Santa Monica Farmers Market Crash

By Brian Chase

By: Staff Writer
A state appeals court has ruled that victims of a crash at the Santa Monica farmer’s market when an elderly driver drove into a crowd of shoppers, may sue the city for failing to adequately protect the people at the market.

According to an Associated Press news report, this ruling reinstates victims’ allegations that the city’s wooden barricades were not sufficient to protect them from the crash caused by 86-year-old George Rusell Weller on July 16, 2006. That crash killed 10 people and injured more than 70. Weller, who was convicted on 10 counts of manslaughter last year, was sentenced to five years of probation.

Many of the people who suffered injuries in this horrific accident, filed personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits against the city of Santa Monica, but a judge ruled in favor of the city, which claimed immunity from liability citing a traffic control map for the market, which officials said showed that they had taken traffic safety into consideration. The appellate court’s reversal of that decision was based on its assertion that the traffic map the city cited was not the same plan approved by the city’s traffic engineer 20 years ago.
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Published on: October 18, 2007

Dog Owner Denies Her Dog is Vicious – After Two Attacks On Toddlers

By Brian Chase

Sometimes, especially in dog bite cases involving young children, it’s hard to tell what’s scarier – the thought of a large dog viciously attacking the child or the denial of the dog owner who vehemently refuses to believe that his or her “pet” could do something like that. Take the example of this dog owner in Honolulu who denies that her dogs are vicious in spite of the fact that the animals repeatedly attacked children on the beach and she was even sentenced to jail time and ordered to pay thousands of dollars in fines in connection with those incidents!

According to an article in The Boston Globe, a jury in Hawaii made a decision against this particular dog owner, Mariko Bereday, and in favor of Keeton Manguso, a 2-year-old boy, giving the boy $856,000 in damages for injuries he suffered when Bereday’s unrestrained Rottweiler attacked the toddler on the beach.

Keeton’s mother, Veronica Tomooka, told the newspaper that she sued not for money, but to have a jury judge this particular dog owner and tell her that she is in fact negligent and liable for injuries her dog caused. And here’s the not-so-surprising part of this story – the dog owner is appealing the jury verdict saying that her dog did not bite the boy and that the photo of the injuries was phony.
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Published on: October 17, 2007

Cremation Errors Result In Grief and a Lawsuit

By Brian Chase

An Alabama family has filed a federal lawsuit stating that a cremation company gave them the ashes of the wrong person. The family later found that the error was the result of a three-way mix-up, according to a news report in the Knoxville News Sentinel. That means two other deceased people’s ashes were interred in the wrong place as well!

The family is seeking $500,000 in damages from Littlebrook Cremation Co. and its owner, the newspaper reported. The remains in question were those of Mark Gibson who died April 29. The family reportedly discovered the error just before a scheduled memorial service when family members noticed that the ashes came labeled under a different name, the article stated.

So the family, which was already in grief, was sent on this most unnecessary quest to find their loved one’s remains. They first thought the ashes were buried in the Veterans Cemetery in Alabama, but later found that another woman’s remains were interred there, also by mistake. An anthropologist determined that the remains sent to the family were not of Gibson, but another man, Keith Vincent.
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Published on: October 16, 2007

Church and Insurance Company Lose Auto Accident Case Appeal

By Brian Chase

An award against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has been upheld by Wisconsin’s Supreme Court to the tune of $16.8 million. The money was awarded to an 86-year-old man who was paralyzed as a result of negligent driving by a church volunteer, according to an Associated Press news report.

Members of the state’s high court deadlocked 3-3, which meant that the appellate court decision to uphold the award to Hjalmer Heikkinen, was good. A diocese spokeswoman told AP that the money will be paid entirely by the church’s insurer, The Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America.

According to the article, the church member, Margaret Morse, while running an errand for the church, ran a red light and hit Heikkinen. Heikkinen was severely injured and paralyzed from the neck down. He sued Morse. Morse in turn sued the archdiocese and its insurer. A jury in 2005 found the church liable for the incident, awarding Heikkinen $15 million for past and future pain and suffering, $1.3 million for medical expenses and $500,000 to Heikkinen’s wife for loss of consortium.
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Published on: October 15, 2007

4-Month-Old Suffocates In Simplicity Bassinet Not Included in Recall

By Brian Chase

Authorities in Pineville, Missouri, are saying that a baby bassinet that was not part of Simplicity Inc.’s recall of 1 million defective cribs, is as much a death trap as the recalled cribs. How do they know? Because a 4-month old girl died in one of those 4-in-one bassinets. Little Katelynn Marie Simon died Sept. 29 of “accident positional asphyxiation,” after she was caught between the rail of the bassinet and the mattress, according to an article in The Joplin Globe.

The article states local officials contacted the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) right away to make sure the bassinets are included in the recall list of defective products as well. These bassinets now join the long list of defective and dangerous children’s products that were made in China. The bassinets have a model number of 3112DOH6 with Winnie the Pooh decorations. CPSC or Simplicity have not yet recalled the product. Last month the company recalled 1 million cribs after reports of three infant deaths.
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Published on: October 14, 2007

Street Racing Causes Serious Auto Accidents In Southern California

By Brian Chase

By: A Staff Writer
This is extremely scary. Street racing in Southern California has become a pastime, a hobby – like baseball or a video game. An article in the Los Angeles Times that analyzes the issue of street racing, which has recently claimed several lives in the southland, says 100 people die each year in California alone because of this phenomenon. What a dangerous, reckless and inconsiderate way to exercise your freedom! It comes at the cost of innocent bystanders’ lives.

There have been a string of tragic collisions over the last year in California in street-racing related crashes, the Times points out. And police officers are scratching their heads about how to combat this menace. A lot of victims have been very young people – children as young as 14 years old. A lot of these cases involve young, inexperienced drivers behind the wheel of souped up vehicles. Consider these tragic cases:

* Four teenagers, Perris High School kids, died in a crash on their way to a San Diego trip in February * A 14-year-old Riverside boy also in February died when the car he was riding in slammed into a light pole during an impromptu street race * Two UC San Diego students died in January when their BMW crashed into two trees, again during a race * Then this week, a mother and her two children, 8 and 4, died when a street racer slammed into the family’s car.
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Published on: October 13, 2007

Fiery Collision and Pile-Up on 5 Freeway Kills 3 and Injures At Least 10

By Brian Chase

By: A Staff Writer
A fiery collision, which ended with a 15-truck pileup on the Interstate 5 in Santa Clarita Friday killed three people, including two adults and one child and left at least 10 people injured. According to an Associated Press news report, the chain reaction crash, triggered off when two trucks collided, started out in a tunnel near the Antelope Valley Freeway, which serves as a major connector between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Fire officials who described the scene to the wire service, said flames that shot out of the tunnel leaped as high as 60 to 70 feet and snagged traffic on the freeway over the weekend.

Emergency personnel evacuated 20 people out of the tunnel while five trucks were caught inside, the report said. Officials say although the tunnel is a primary route for trucks, passenger cars also travel through it. They were worried that others unable to escape may be trapped in the tunnel, seriously or even fatally injured.

Many who were evacuated reportedly suffered burns, neck and back injuries. The injuries were described as moderate to minor, which was of course very fortunate given the seriousness of the incident. That part of the freeway, about 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles could be shut down for a day or two, officials told the Associated Press.
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Published on: October 12, 2007

Hit And Run Drive Who Struck and Injured 13-year-old Skateboarder Arrested

By Brian Chase

By: A Staff Writer
Police last week arrested a man on suspicion of striking and critically injuring a 13-year-old boy who was riding his skateboard Monday night. According to a news report in The Orange County Register, the boy, a student at Santiago Middle School, was trying to cross an intersection on a marked crosswalk while riding a skateboard when 28-year-old Robert Quintanilla reportedly struck him and then took off.

Police widely publicized descriptions of the suspect vehicle among the media. And on Wednesday they arrested Quintanilla after getting several tips from the public and witnesses who happened to see the crash. The boy is reportedly in critical condition and has suffered brain injuries and is still on a ventilator. The Register article states that he was not wearing a helmet when he was riding his board.

What a tragedy for the boy’s family! According to the article, police officers have started a fund for the boy to help with medical costs because the family does not even have medical insurance. Of course, the man who is arrested and was allegedly heartless enough to drive away when a young boy was lying on the road, must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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Published on: October 10, 2007

Speeding, Alcohol and Street Racing Cause Fatal Costa Mesa Auto Accident

By Brian Chase

A 21-year-old Huntington Beach woman, said to be one of the best softball pitchers in Orange County at one time, died in a tragic car crash in Costa Mesa over the weekend. Police now believe the single-vehicle crash was caused by what turned out to be a deadly combination of speed, alcohol and street-racing. According to an article in the Daily Pilot, Sara Noel Harris’ boyfriend told Costa Mesa police that the two were racing after drinking Sunday morning in a Newport Beach bar.

The article said Harris was drinking beers while the boyfriend had a few Mai Tais, a rum-based drink. Both then drove in separate cars apparently racing on the streets of Costa Mesa. Several witnesses told police that both the Audis were cutting and weaving in and out of traffic. At some point the boyfriend lost sight of Harris. Police say Harris may have lost control of her car and overturned on a curve and then over-corrected and crashed into a pole.

Harris was wearing her seatbelt, but it didn’t save her life. The Pilot report says she died of multiple traumatic injuries. This kind of a terrible tragedy is a no-win situation for everybody involved.
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