A 2-year-old boy has died after becoming entangled in a drapery cord in his Damascus, Maryland home. Thapelo Andre Kwofie’s parents found him unconscious at around 3pm. They administered CPR to him before an ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital. He was pronounced dead soon after his arrival at Shady Grove Hospital.
Montgomery County, Maryland police are investigating the tragic accident.
Window Cord-Strangulation Accidents
In Maryland, a woman is suing Ocean City, the Ocean City Convention and Visitors Bureau, and ThyssenKrupp Elevator Company for personal injury over an escalator accident that occurred in May 2006. Rebecca Beall filed her Maryland premises liability lawsuit in US District Court.
Beall was a high school student at the time of the escalator accident that injured her and several other students from her school band. The band was in Ocean City to attend the Youth Music Competition taking place at the Convention Center.
On May 5, 2006 the escalator they were riding to the next floor stopped abruptly and began moving in the opposite direction. A number of students fell and some of them were taken to a hospital for treatment of their injuries.
A number of catastrophic car accident victims and their families went to Capitol Hill in Washington DC on Wednesday to call on the Obama Administration and Congress to ensure their ability to obtain medical reimbursements from the now bankrupt General Motors and Chrysler. Both auto manufacturers have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcies, which places car accident victims waiting for medical reimbursements from products liability settlements and verdicts into the category of “unsecured creditor” waiting along with everyone else for their payouts.
On Monday, a bankruptcy judge overruled the Ad Hoc Committee on Consumer-Victims of Chrysler LLC when he approved the sale of the company to Fiat. The group had asked for a retroactive insurance policy or a fund that would cover the costs of medical treatment and lawsuits. Last year alone, Chrysler paid more than $250,000 in medical settlements. Now, anyone that gets involved in a catastrophic or fatal car crash while riding in one of the approximately 10 million Chrysler cars will not be able to pursue products liability compensation if a motor vehicle was responsible for causing the defect. The vehicle occupants of about 30 million General Motor vehicles are facing the same dilemma.
About 500 to 1,000 serious injuries or fatalities involving defective car parts occur every year. The bankruptcies filed by the two car manufacturing giants prevents injured parties from holding them financially accountable for making cars that are defective enough to cause catastrophic injuries or death.
Examples of common kinds of car defects that can lead to catastrophic injuries:
• Defective tires
• Faulty engine
• Defective windows
• Faulty seat belt or safety restraint system
• Structural defects
• Seat back defect
• Design defects
Car accident victims fight for payouts, Washington Times, June 4, 2009
Families and Severely-Injured Victims of Defective GM and Chrysler Cars Travel to Washington to Seek Urgent Help, RedOrbit, June 3, 2009
Related Web Resources:
GM and Chrysler’s bankruptcy cases at a glance, AP, June 4, 2009
To date, Bausch & Lomb has spent over $250 million to settle almost 600 products liability lawsuits filed by contact lense wearers that say they sustained a potentially blinding fungal infection from using multipurpose contact lense solution ReNu with MoistureLoc. The optical products company still has dozens of individual products liability lawsuits to resolve.
In the United States alone, over 700 contact lense wearers say they suffered from Fusarium keratitis while using the solution for cleaning, moistening, and storing their lenses. In a number of cases, including one in Maryland, the injure parties had to have an eye removed. Some 60 contact lense users had to undergo corneal transplants to save their vision. One man in Baltimore got hooked on painkillers after losing his eye and had to go through rehab. Both his marriage and his business fell apart.
Between June 2005 and September 2006, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were at least 180 eye injury cases related to Fusarium keratitis in 35 states. Broadway actress Andrea Martin’s eye became scarred after she used the Bausch & Lomb solution and the fungal infection ended the career of one race car driver, who had to undergo a corneal transplant.
Certain US lawmakers are taking steps to give back to US citizens the right to sue medical device makers for damages. In February 2008, the US Supreme Court issued a decision preventing patients and surviving family members from filing personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits against medical device manufacturers if the device had Food and Drug Administration approval.
The outcome of that particular case prevented a man, seriously injured when his Medtronic balloon catheter burst during an angioplasty procedure, and his wife from receiving products liability compensation. Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, more defective medical device lawsuits have been tossed out.
Just this week, a state supreme court ruled against a man who underwent surgery to take out his Medtronic defibrillator because there was a chance the device device’s battery could fail. Other personal injury lawsuits against medical device makers that have been dismissed since the Supreme Court ruling include a products liability case involving a man who sustained internal injuries because of a prostate treatment device, a woman who sustained internal burns from a device supposed to decrease menstrual bleeding, and a number of patients who are claiming injuries caused by heart implants or faulty joints.
Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-Ca) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-New Jersey) are planning to reintroduce legislation to nullify the Supreme Court decision. In the US Senate,Senator Edward M Kennedy (D-Ma) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt) are expected to reintroduce a similar bill.
Critics of the Supreme Court ruling say the decision does not take into account the fact that the FDA doesn’t always do a thorough job when approving medical devices for consumer use. For example, the Project on Government Oversight says the FDA has dramatically scaled back on inspections of “good laboratory practices” at places where early round testing of medical devices take place. The independent watchdog group also says there has been a decline in the federal enforcement of quality regulations at labs where medical devices are developed.
The Center for Devices and Radiological Health, which is the FDA division that oversees medical devices, has received complaints from its own scientists who claim managers have discouraged debate and that this has resulted in the approval of medical devices that are not entirely safe or effective.
Lawmakers Seek to Return Right to Sue Device Makers, New York Times, February 19, 2009
Report: FDA quietly scaled back quality enforcement at medical device testing lab, Chicago Tribune, February 18, 2009
Related Web Resources:
Supreme Court Shields Medical-Device Makers, The Washington Post, February 21, 2008
Read the Supreme Court Decision: Estate of Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., Cornell University Law School
The family of Shirley Mae Almer is suing Peanut Corporation of America and King Nut Companies for her wrongful death. The 72-year-old nursing home resident allegedly died after she ate the peanut butter that was served to her at the facility where she was staying. A tub of peanut butter found at the nursing home contained Salmonella typhimurium, the same strain of salmonella that has made a number of other people in the US sick.
The Centers for Disease Control says there have been at least 501 reports of Salmonella typhimurium-related food poisoning. 108 people required hospitalization. 8 of the cases resulted in deaths. Over 280 cases involved minors.
Almer died on December 21, 2008. Her family’s wrongful death lawsuit accuses the defendants of failure to safely manufacture, package, and transport the peanut butter, failure to properly train and supervise employees, failure to maintain hygienic conditions at the peanut butter plant, failure to test the peanut butter before sending the products off, and failure to prevent cross-contamination.
A 21-year-old Baltimore County woman is dead after a tire that broke off from a truck being towed landed on her car on Wednesday. The deadly motor vehicle accident took place on Interstate 495 in Prince George’s County.
According to Maryland State Police, tow truck driver Roger Smith was towing a delivery truck when one of the tires with a metal wheel broke off the vehicle, rolled across lanes, struck two guardrails, rolled across a grassy median, and hit a tractor-trailer. The impact of this collision caused the tire to fly back across the median and land on Channing Quinichett’s Honda Civic, crushing the windshield and roof of her vehicle. The 21-year-old Maryland resident was pronounced dead at the crash scene.
If you have been injured in a Maryland traffic accident because a party’s negligence caused flying or falling debris to strike you and/or your motor vehicle, you may have grounds to file a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit.
For example, last September, the family of 39-year-old Milena Del Valle, who died after part of the Big Dig tunnel ceiling in Massachusetts fell on her car, received a $28 million wrongful death settlement. In another personal injury lawsuit, the wife of Pawel “Paul” Swierczynski sued five companies after her husband was struck by a 250-pound grate that crashed through his windshield. Swierczynski sustained numerous injuries, including a traumatic brain injuries.
Just this month, a 6-year-old boy died and a man sustained injuries after they were struck by flying metal chunks at a monster truck rally. The catastrophic accident occurred when a truck’s driveline malfunctioned, causing the fragments to fly toward the crowd. Witnesses have expressed anger that the show was not stopped even after both victims started bleeding.
While freak accidents do happen, there may have been steps that a liable party could have taken to prevent the personal injury accident or wrongful death.
Tire kills Baltimore Co. woman on Capital Beltway, Baltimore Sun, Associated Press, January 22, 2009
Boy, 6, killed by flying debris at Tacoma monster truck rally, Komonews.com, January 17, 2009
Boy, 6, killed by flying debris at Tacoma monster truck rally, Komonews.com, January 17, 2009
Settlement Reached In Big Dig Death Suit, CBS News, September 30, 2008
Related Web Resource:
Wrongful Death Overview, Justia
The mother of a six-year-old boy whose right big toe was mangled when his Crocs clog got caught in an escalator at the National Aquarium in Baltimore is suing Crocs Inc. for products liability. Kerry Burdick filed her federal lawsuit in court on Monday. She is seeking over $7.5 million in damages.
The accident occurred last April. Burdick’s lawsuit alleges that Crocs was aware that the popular clogs posed a hazard on escalators yet failed to warn consumers.
This is not the first incident where a person got hurt while using Crocs shoes. Over 200 people around the world have been involved in similar escalator entrapment accidents while using the popular clogs. Children especially appear more prone to injuries while wearing Crocs.
In 2007, a 10-year-old girl hurt her toe after her Crocs clog got stuck on an escalator at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. This year, a 3-year-old Croc wearer had two of her toes partially amputated because of injuries she sustained while also riding an escalator at the Atlanta airport. The parents of another 3-year-old sued Crocs for $7 million after her toe was mangled in an accident at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport.
In April, Japan’s Trade Ministry asked Crocs Inc. to redesign its popular clogs. The ministry said that over a six-month period last year, it had received 65 complaints of escalator injuries involving Crocs clogs. In May, the US Consumer Products Safety Commission warned that it had received 75 injury reports between January 2006 and May 2007 about people who got hurt in escalator accidents while using Crocs.
Last July, Crocs Inc. said it would add warning tags about possible escalator entrapment-related injuries to its shoes. While the shoes that come with these warnings will become available in 2009, there are still millions of Crocs clogs out in the marketplace for sale or that have already been purchased that lack the entrapment warning.
Son hurt, Pa. woman sues Crocs firm, Baltimore Sun.com, December 4, 2008
Pa. mother sues Crocs over son’s escalator injury, Examiner.com, December 4, 2008
Related Web Resources:
Crocs and similar soft shoes linked to escalator entrapments, Consumer Reports, May 20, 2008
Personal injury lawyers for a woman who is suing Victoria’s Secret for injuries she says she suffered from using the brand’s Very Sexy Extreme Me Push-Up and Angels Secret Embrace bras say that tests they ordered show that bras from those lines contain formaldehyde, which is used in embalming. They think that their client, Roberta Ritter, is allergic to the chemical.
Ritter, who sued the company in May, says she sustained itchy, inflamed, and blistery welts after using the bras. Since then, dozens of other woman have come forward claiming that they experienced the same injuries after using the Victoria’s Secret bras. At least two other products liability lawsuits have been filed. Class action status is pending.
The bras have not been pulled off store shelves, but a spokesperson for Victoria’s Secret says the company is investigating the complaints. Victoria’s Secret denies that any of their bras contain formaldehyde.
Importer Bayside Furnishings and the Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced the recall of approximately 9,350 Pirates of the Caribbean Twin Trundle Beds and LaJolla Boat Beds because of concerns that the toy chests pose an entrapment or strangulation hazard to kids.
There is concern that the toy chest lid supports do not stop the chest lid from shutting too fast. The CPSC says that they have received reports of one incident in which a boy, 22-months, was strangled to death after the toy chest lid fell on the back of his head and his neck became trapped.
This is not the first time toy chests have been recalled over entrapment/suffocation worries. One child suffocated while in a toy chest three years ago. In separate incidents in 2001, another child fell while another child suffocated. Both children died from their injuries.
At least 10 other toy chest recalls have taken place over the last 10 years. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that since 1975, there have been at least 45 reported deaths. At least three children that were injured injured in toy chest-related accidents suffered brain damage. The majority of injury victims are younger than 2 years of age.
Common toy chest-related accidents:
• The chest falls on a child’s hands or neck.
• Suffocation, from children climbing into or get trapped in the toy chest.
Manufacturers of toys and other children’s products are supposed to design and make products that are safe for use. If your son or daughter was injured because of a product defect, you may be able to file a products liability claim or lawsuit to obtain compensation for his or her personal injuries.
Toy Boxes and Toy Chests, CPSC.gov
Bayside Furnishings Recalls Youth Bed Toy Chests Sold at Costco After the Death of a 22-Month-Old Child, CPSC.gov, July 3, 2008
Toy Chests are Not Toys, Washington Post, July 4, 2008
Related Web Resources:
Maryland Accident Law Blog