Alaska Injury Law Blog

America's highways are unsafe because trucking companies routinely violate safety standards, keeping unsafe trucks and drivers on the road. These are not minor violations, but include practices like routinely overloading trucks, failing to maintain brakes and tires, using unqualified and untrained drivers, and paying drivers in a way that encourages them to exceed speed limits and driving hour limits. Given the crucial role of brakes, it is hard to comprehend that defective brakes account for more than 50% of all violations!

Those are just some of the conclusions contained in a new report just released by the American Association for Justice. Researches analyzed more than a million lines of data obtained from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). The full report Warning! Safety Violations Ahead may be read here.

When big heavily loaded trucks hit cars, the cars and their occupants usually lose. That's just the law of physics. So consumers have the right to expect trucking companies to be especially vigilant about equipment maintenance and safety. But many needless injuries and deaths are caused because truckers ignore equipment problems. One egregious example is the truckers who fixed a leak in the air brake line with a toothpick and electrical tape. As any thinking person would expect, the "fix" failed after a short time, causing the needless death of a motorist.

The study found that more than 28,000 trucking companies are operating on U.S. roads with safety violations, representing over 200,000 trucks. Truck crashes caused over 12% of all motor vehicle deaths, even though trucks make up only 4% of all vehicles on the road. And that statistic is not a result of trucks covering more miles, because trucks cause deaths per mile driven that are 56% higher than those caused by all vehicles combined.

Continue reading " New Study Finds Trucking Companies, Unsafe Trucks Causing Injuries and Deaths " »

There has long been a debate in medicine, and consequently one in the law, about whether a concussion caused by trauma can lead to structural brain tissue damage and functional deficits. While many recover from such injuries without lasting deficits, it is estimated that over 30 percent suffer from the traditional hallmarks of traumatic brain injury, such as personality changes, deficits in short-term memory, or deficits in executive functions involved in the ability to make decisions, organize, or plan.

As recently reported in the journal Radiology, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have now demonstrated objectively the areas of the brain injured when concussion occurs. The study subjected patients who had sustained concussions to tradition MRI and CT scans, which routinely demonstrated that no structural injury had occurred. When neuropsychological testing showed effects upon their executive functions, however, the patients were then given a more sophisticated type of MRI scan known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). DTI can detect subtle changes in the brain by measuring the diffusion of water in the brain's white matter. The DTI studies in these patients showed the presence of major areas of structural damage located mainly in the brain's prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain essential for normal executive function. It is this area of the brain that is susceptible to injury in concussion, and such structures are involved in the cognitive processes that cause the functional deficits the patients were experiencing.

It is unfortunately the case that many people suffering mild traumatic brain injury are not properly advised about the possibility of functional deficit by either their medical or legal practioners. It is often the case that problems do not disclose themselves until a patient returns to more full function after orthopedic injuries have healed. It is when they try to reengage life at their former level of function that deficits begin to take shape. Using DTI as an adjunct to clinical evaluation will likely help identify those patients who should receive rehabilitation earlier when it is more useful to the patient.

We previously wrote about the advances DTI brings to this field, and that entry may also be of interest, January 22, 2008 entry.

Source:

Diffusion-Tensor Imaging Implicates Prefrontal Axonal Injury in Executive Function Impairment Following Very Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Radiology

Michael Moody of the Alaska Personal Injury Law Group has been selected for inclusion in the "Best Lawyers In America" 2010 publication. He was named a "Best Lawyer" in two different categories--personal injury litigation and products liability litigation. He has now been selected as a "Best Lawyer in America" every year for 18 years. Selection to the "Best Lawyers In America" listing is based on exhaustive and rigorous peer-review evaluations by the top attorneys in the country.

Litigation Counsel of America has selected Michael Moody of the Personal Injury Law Group to be a Fellow. Litigation Counsel of America is a trial lawyer honorary society composed of less than one-half of one percent of American lawyers. Fellowship is highly selective and by invitation only. Fellows are selected based upon effectiveness and accomplishment in litigation, both at the trial and appellate levels, and superior ethical reputation.

Richard E. Vollertsen of the Alaska Personal Injury Law Group has been selected for inclusion in the "Best Lawyers In America" 2010 publication. He is now in a distinguished group of attorneys listed in the publication for over 10 years. Selection to the "Best Lawyers In America" listing is based on exhaustive and rigorous peer-review evaluations by the top attorneys in the country.

The Alaska Supreme Court recently issued an opinion in Asher v. Alkan Shelter, LLC, which is a case involving an employee’s embezzlement of funds from his employer. The Alaska Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s ruling that the employee and his girlfriend were jointly and severally liable to the employer for the stolen funds, holding that AS 09.17.080, Alaska’s allocation of fault statute, required the court to allocate fault and liability between the employee and his girlfriend.

Significantly, the court ruled that the trial court should not simply determine the total damages suffered by the employer and allocate fault for those damages between the employee and his girlfriend. Instead, the court ruled that the trial court should only allocate fault on those damages it found had been caused by both the employee and the girlfriend. The effect of the court’s ruling is that if a defendant is responsible for a part of, but not all of, a plaintiff’s damages, trial courts and juries must separate the plaintiff’s damages into their divisible parts and make separate allocations of fault for each category of damages.