Tire tread separation blamed for death on I-20 in Douglas County
This afternoon in Douglas County, my former home, a 2001 Ford Explorer crashed due to tread separation on a tire and predictable driver reaction to that event. The 39 year old driver from Austell was killed.
Tire failure is a well known cause of fatal crashes. Some time back I made the joint damages presentation for a team of products liability lawyers who recovered a total $9.2 million for members of a college cheerleading squad who were riding in a passenger van that rolled over after tread separation in a defectively manufactured tire.
Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability, brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.
Feds question Jeep gas tank safety
As a a trial attorney based in Atlanta, some of the more interesting cases on which I have worked have involved defectively designed or manufactured vehicles.
This week the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration launched an investigation of the safety of gas tanks on three million Jeep Cherokees. The investigation covers Grand Cherokees in model years 1993 to 2004.
The advocacy group Center for Auto Safety in October asked NHTSA to review whether the gas tank's position below the rear bumper and behind the rear axle could cause fuel to spill if the SUV were struck from behind. The group also said that the neck of the fuel tank could tear off in crashes.
The Center for Auto Safety says that the Grand Cherokee fuel tank storage system was defective and posed a hazard in a crash in that the plastic fuel tank was behind the rear axle, extended below the rear bumper, and had inadequate shielding, leaving it vulnerable to rupturing or leaking in a crash. Chrysler put the fuel tank in front of the rear axle and shielded it in the 2005 model year.
The risk of explosion, fire and catastrophic injuries with that design cannot be ignored.
Fortunately for people harmed by explosion of one of these gas tanks, Chrysler Group LLC agreed to assume legal responsibility for injuries drivers suffer from defects in vehicles produced before it emerged from bankruptcy protection..
Researchers find possible path to regeneration of injured spinal cords
It's a long way from experiments with lab mice to clinical treatment of humans, and as a Georgia trial attorney in Atlanta, I only represent human spinal cord injury survivors.
However, it is interesting to observe progress in animal experiments that may someday carry over to treatment of humans.
According to an article published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers from UC Irvine, UC San Diego and Harvard recently announced they had induced nerve regeneration in mice with severe spinal cord injury. They deleted an enzyme called PTEN (a phosphatase and tensin homolog), which controls a molecular pathway that regulates cell growth. PTEN activity is low during development but turns on when growth is completed. Previously, researchers showed they could block PTEN in mice to regenerate nerve connections from the eye to the brain after optic nerve damage. The new research gives some degree of hope that such nerve regeneration could take place in the injured spinal cord.
Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability, brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.
Accutane on trial for causing loss of colon due to Crohn's
Accutane is a drug originally developed for cancer treatment but that has been widely used for treatment of acne. Unfortunately, there have been widespread reports of terrible side effects, including bowel diseases including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. It was taken off the market last year. As an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, handling civil liability cases including products liability, I have been interested in this topic.
Earlier this month, according to a news article by Laura Clarizio, actor James Marshall was in court for a lawsuit against pharmaceutical manufacturer Roche in which he asserts that Accutane taken for acne caused the loss of his colon.
Personally, I have spent many a long night on cots in hospital rooms attending to a family member suffering horribly with Crohn's disease. No one who has not seen the effects of this disease can really know how painful and debilitating it can be.
Ken Shigley, is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability, brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.
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