Las Vegas Injury & Accident Attorney Blog

Anyone who has had a child (or who has been a devoted uncle or auntie, godparent, or other guardian) will likely agree that the experience is 99 percent blessing and only 1 percent curse. Of course, that 1 percent makes its presence felt: from dirty diapers to early morning awakenings and with the constant fear and vigilance that is never enough to avoid turning every sharp corner and power outlet into a potential hazard. Unfortunately, the aggressive speed with which many products are manufactured today acts to increase the risk of a tragic Nevada unsafe baby product injury.

Some will say that ‘kids will be kids,’ that ‘what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger,’ and so on with other platitudes. In fairness, it is true that no parent can provide his or her child with ultimate protection from risk of harm without denying that child the experiences that will make it a rich, interesting person. But it is one thing to concede these philosophical grounds and it is quite another to be an apologist for companies that knowingly or without concern allow their products and services to put the families that use them at risk of Las Vegas personal injury.

Consumer protection agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) are relatively new entities in our country but they already have a lengthy record of taking harmful defective products off the shelves. Some recent targets of federal investigations and recalls are an estimated 76,000 bed-side sleepers made by Arm’s Reach Concepts and nearly 30,000 pacifiers made sold with the Pampers and/or Key Baby brand names. In the latter case, a refund is available to purchasers of these products from the last few months; in the former case, the product was on shelves more than ten years ago and there is concern that the products may be cycling through the economy in second-hand retail and wholesalers. Nearly a dozen incidents have been reported involving the bed-side sleepers where infants slipped into spaces below or between the intended sleeping surface and became entrapped. The design flaws in these products highlights the many ways that seemingly  harmless consumer products can pose risk of death, serious injury, or long-term brain damage due to asphyxiation or suffocation.

If you believe that your family may own one of these products, you can find more information on the CPSC Web site. One of the advantages of having these dedicated agencies is that they scan the marketplace for potentially harmful products and attempt to intervene before tragic injuries occur. However, manufacturers need to take responsibility for their products and that is one reason why we have a civil court system: to hold irresponsible companies accountable for injuries caused by defective products through Nevada jury awards and lawsuit settlements. If your family has already suffered harm due to one of these or any other unsafe, defective, or recalled products, contact us today for a free consultation with one of our experienced Las Vegas defective product attorneys. We will help you understand any pending class-action lawsuits related to your case and offer orientation in your specific circumstances.

Share and Enjoy

Our last post in our Las Vegas injury and accident blog introduced the concept of uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage for automobile insurance. The general points were these: UM/UIM coverage protects automobile passengers from Nevada motor vehicle accidents caused by a driver who failed to carry appropriate liability coverage; UM/UIM coverage is so important that insurers are required to offer it explicitly and in some cases drivers who did not know that UM/UIM coverage was an option can claim coverage for it because they would have opted for it if it had been offered. In this second part of our two-part series, we will look at a few common conflicts involving UM/UIM insurance and discuss how a knowledgeable Nevada automobile accident lawyer can help her clients collect what they are entitled to.

Insurance companies make their money in two ways: first, by offering protection against risk at a price that is greater than the actuarial value of the risk. In other words, if there is a one percent chance that you will suffer a spinal cord injury that prevents you from working for a year at your $100,000/year job, the statistical cost of that accident to you is $1,000. An insurance company will charge you more than $1,000 to insure against this risk, but you get the piece of mind of knowing that you are covered. Now, the second way that an insurance company profits is a bit messier — in those cases when their clients are the victims of some kind of personal injury, the insurer will typically fight hard to avoid paying out what it promised based on one or another technicality. That’s just the way it works.

One such technicality has actually been struck down on various occasions by the Nevada Supreme Court. The Court has held that any provision in a UM/UIM insurance policy that attempts to narrow the coverage for the insured’s injuries because she was using a friend’s car, or riding a motorcycle, or was a pedestrian is void. Unfortunately, many insurance companies attempt to break the law by telling unaware policyholders that they are not covered; in these cases, it takes legal action and an experienced Nevada auto insurance lawyer to get the coverage that you deserve. Other common tricks insurers will pull include trying to play other parties and companies off of each other to escape responsibility for payment, even if it leaves the person who has been paying premiums stuck with the bill. This commonly happens when a driver and passenger both have UM/UIM coverage and they are hit by an uninsured driver. Insurers will claim that municipal or corporate vehicles cannot be involved in UM/UIM cases (even though they sometimes ought to be), and they will attempt to force injured clients to spend up all their benefits from auto-related medical coverage before claiming against the UM/UIM policy.

All these details are academic until you or a loved one is involved in a major automobile accident. If you have been affected by a car crash and need a Nevada automobile insurance attorney, call us today for a free consultation. We will help you understand what benefits your insurance company is responsible for paying and help guide you through the process of recovery and compensation.

Share and Enjoy

Despite all their marketing and slogans, the reality is that major insurance companies often look for ways to limit their exposure to paying claims filed by their customers. This is not a knock against these companies: it’s just the way the business works. So whether you are “in good hands” or looking for the care of “a good neighbor,” you should expect to have to dig your heels in a bit to get full compensation from your insurance company after a Nevada motor vehicle accident.

Our experienced Las Vegas insurance claim attorneys have years of experience representing clients as they tangle with their insurers to get the coverage that they had been paying for over months and even years. This article is first in a two-part series looking at the issue of uninsured and underinsured motorists. When a family is involved in a Las Vegas automobile accident, the insurance company of the injured family battles with the other driver’s insurer as each company attempts to get a good deal for their client while dumping all the costs on the other party. A different and more frustrating dynamic unfolds when the at-fault driver was not carrying proper automobile liability insurance to cover the costs of the accident.

In this first part of the series, we will highlight some of the legal requirements surrounding uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage in Nevada. First, not all Nevada drivers have UM/UIM coverage. All motorists driving in Nevada are required to carry a current policy of liability automobile insurance in the amount of at least $10,000 in property damage, $15,000 for another person’s death/injury, and $30,000 for all injured other persons. This minimal coverage protects a third party when a driver is the cause of an accident. However, UM/UIM coverage is often worth the money because of the potential costs of being involved in an accident with an irresponsible driver. After such an accident, injured motorists will often ask if they are covered in these situations. The insurer will typically attempt to tell the driver that s/he is out of luck because s/he indicated that s/he did not want UM/UIM coverage at the time of purchase. However, any savvy Nevada auto insurance lawyer knows that a motorist who declines UM/UIM coverage by completing a written document rejecting this coverage. Further, the company is required to continually offer the UM/UIM coverage, in writing, each time the policy is renewed.

What does this mean for you and your family? It means that in the event of a car accident involving an uninsured motorist, an experienced Las Vegas personal injury lawyer who has an intimate knowledge of the relevant regulations and court decisions affecting the realm of UM/UIM accidents can fight for the coverage that you need. Although each case is different, in many cases it is possible to put the burden back on the insurer if that company did not fulfill its statutory obligations to offer UM/UIM coverage to drivers; in some of these cases a driver who lacks UM/UIM coverage may still be able to advance a claim for it. Call us today to find out how these laws affect your car accident lawsuit.

Share and Enjoy

Even the casual observer of our Nevada injury and accident blog has likely noticed that the combination of increasing competition, improved reporting, and heightened pressures on manufacturers to keep costs down has yielded an unfortunate boom in the frequency of automobile recalls. Although we are used to seeing consumer alerts issued for middle-class vehicles such as during the Ford vehicle recall crisis, recent scrutiny of one of the country’s premier luxury car brands indicates that these problems can affect all consumers.

The Daimler motor company is preparing to service some 140,000 Mercedes-Benz M-Class sedans in the fall of this year after complaints to the National Highway Transportation Security Administration about cruise-control systems that fail to disengage properly. Cruise control is a major benefit of the transition in auto manufacturing from mechanical to electronic faculties, providing drivers with predictability, stability, and even improved fuel economy. Although designs vary, virtually every cruise-control system is designed such that the driver’s use of the foot brake automatically overrides the target speed. The thinking behind this engineering is not rocket science — if you are driving along an open highway at 70 MPH and a hazard suddenly appears, you want your foot on the brake pedal to reign supreme over any other commands you may have issued to the vehicle. Failure of one of these systems could result in a horrific Nevada motor vehicle accident.

Although it is encouraging that the automaker and the federal NHTSA have worked together to address this issue, it is concerning that the proposed fix will not be implemented for some six months after reports began to surface in large numbers. The recall includes M-class vehicles from the model years 2000 to 2004 and will touch tens of thousands of U.S. families. We can only hope that serious personal injury is avoided in the face of what appears to be a lack of urgency that could border on corporate negligence.

If your family owns a vehicle potentially affected by this recall, or if you have suffered an automobile accident as a result of this or another defective product contact our experienced Nevada personal injury attorneys today for a free consultation.

Share and Enjoy

The world we raise our children in today is very different from that of our or our parents’ childhoods. The differences are almost too many to enumerate, from geopolitical issues to cultural attitudes. One thing that remains constant across generations is the desire to provide some source of joy to the children we raise, often by means of toys. But for all the joy that today’s child toys can offer — And what a diversity there is! Remember when there was only one color of Slinky? — they can also perversely expose our children to risk of unsafe toy injuries.

One of the biggest corporate names in children’s toys today is Fisher Price, whose products range from action figures to kid-sized vehicles and structures. Recently, many parents’ faith in this long-favored company has been shaken in the wake of massive recalls of several of its products. The recalls affect some 11 million products nationwide, mostly in the company’s line of larger child products. These include more than a dozen models of tricycles and related products, seven “activity centers” with various implements that can pose defective toy harm, and nearly one million child high chairs.

Although evidence of defective product accidents on this scale is disturbing, an even more troubling trend is less widely-known and arguably poses a greater risk to our children’s safety. Recent investigations reveal that unsafe levels of some of the most toxic known chemicals are making their way into, of all things, children’s toys. About two years ago, major outcry from the United States was the basis for a wide-scale ban on the industrial use of the chemical lead in toy manufacturing from China. Lead has long been known as a dangerous substance because of its potential to impair the nervous system and possibly cause serious brain damage. Seeking to keep its economic engine burning hot and avoid losing access to the U.S. market, China and its state-supported industries purged lead from many of the manufacturing processes. But to keep costs down and continue raking in the dollars of American consumers, the lead inputs were largely replaced with the chemical cadmium, also at unsafe levels. As recently as last Christmas the U.S. Consumer Safety Protection Commission was being forced to direct its scarce resources into testing low-cost toys such as children’s jewelry to ensure that Nevada personal injuries would be prevented.

Even as these known threats are removed from manufacturing processes, other chemical dangers remain in our children’s toys unbeknownst to most consumers. The United States is one of only three industrialized countries that has not instituted a wholesale ban on the importation, manufacture, or use of asbestos. Asbestos has been known for millennia to be a threat to human health, and the last forty years of consumer protection advocacy have successfully revived a healthy level of skepticism and caution about the substance’s use despite its desirable qualities for industrial use. Yet in products from duct tape to kids’ toys, asbestos is making a quiet comeback in new forms not recognized by many cautious consumers.

These persistent chemical threats are all the more insidious because they appear in the products — children’s toys — that we most expect to be safe and not made targets of unsafe, profit-driven practices. But individual consumers are limited in their power to fight back. Concerned parents can attempt to inform other moms and dads to organize large-scale boycotts or demonstrations against these products, but the scope and effectiveness of these movements will be limited by the creativity and savvy of the parents at the reins. In this regard, demonstrating against these products has both the most potential and the highest “starting costs.” Another option is to turn this energy toward elected officials to push for more aggressive regulation of these substances or even for all-out bans of chemicals known to be threats to human health. But we all know how this story unfolds — entrenched politicians want to keep their jobs and are therefore vulnerable to pressure from industry groups with deep pockets for upcoming campaigns. Arguably the best and most democratic avenue available to parents of children harmed by unsafe baby products is civil action. A Las Vegas product liability lawsuit can not only restore a family after one of its most treasured members has been hurt, it also sends a strong message to the culpable company that the marketplace will not tolerate unsafe products. To learn more about a Nevada child product injury lawsuit, contact us today for a free consultation.

Share and Enjoy

For some Nevada accident victims, the pain and risk of recovery can be worse than the injury was in the first place. Imagine the frustration some families feel as they attempt to seek care for their sick loved ones: they took responsibility and purchased costly medical insurance, paying hundreds of dollars every month in insurance premiums; after the Las Vegas automobile accident, they went to an approved care provider and waited patiently for the urgent medical care; and they paid the substantial deductibles and admittance fees. But for some families, all this diligence is not enough.

Although rare, there have been reports recently of unsafe inputs and implements that can entirely compromise the integrity of 21st-century medical treatments. Not only can Nevada tainted medical supplies undermine the care that is vital to Las Vegas accident victims, they can actually turn the curing power of modern medicine on its head by creating Nevada medical treatment harm.

The details of these incidents are disturbing: iodine prep pads infected with potentially lethal bacteria, a variety of other alcohol-based cleaning wipes, tainted surgical implements. These events combine with recent reports of over-the-counter remedies with foul or chemical odors, medications with dosages higher than intended, and even HIV drugs contaminated with dangerous anti-fungal compounds.

If you believe that a loved one’s medical recovery has been compromised or worsened due to sub-standard medical inputs, contact our Nevada personal injury lawyers to learn more about legal actions affecting victims of tainted medical supplies.

Share and Enjoy

For most Las Vegas residents, the news that an electrical transformer exploded early Sunday morning was just a blip on the local news report. For the handful that witnessed it, it was a powerful and even entertaining display of the tremendous power of high-voltage electricity. For all of us, it should be a lesson that Nevada electricity accidents can be unforgettable tragedies.

It took fire crews about an hour to put out the blaze, which erupted shortly after midnight at a transformer station behind the facade of the Monte Carlo casino in downtown Las Vegas. When electricity is not being converted into energy to power our gadgets, run our lights, and do other work, electricity at high concentration has an immense ability to produce heat and even to create Las Vegas explosion accidents that can destroy property and leave personal injury victims with serious or deadly burn injuries.

Just as putting out a fire requires more than just a hose — it also demands planning and strategic thinking — so too must a family affected by a Clark County personal injury must approach its case carefully. One consideration is deciding which parties to hold responsible. Concentrating solely on the owner of the facility could ignore liability that resides with equipment managers, regulatory bodies, and first-responders. Failing to recognize these and other entities’ roles in the accident could permit one party to deflect blame onto another that is not represented.

A case from North Carolina illustrates another key lesson. There, a young man suffered electrocution injuries after a vehicle that he was in crashed into a power pole. He was unhurt by the crash but was electrocuted when he exited the vehicle to find help and to assist his fellow passengers. He sued the power company for negligently allowing some of its emergency-stop mechanisms to fail and thereby leave the power line “live,” but the company countered with a deceitful strategy. By dispatching agents with legal responsibilities to the power company during the initial response to the accident, the company was able to claim in court that the information from the scene was privileged and therefore did not have to be entered as evidence.  Only because the victim’s attorneys were thinking ahead and acting with confidence was this strategy defeated and the case allowed to continue.

Being a great personal injury advocate means looking for the best way to win needed compensation for the victims that one represents and being able to adjust to changing circumstances and counter-strategies. If you or a loved one have been hurt in a Las Vegas electrocution accident, contact us today for a free consultation and experienced legal guidance.

Share and Enjoy

Because it is home to the lion’s share of the Silver State’s population and tourist activity, Las Vegas’ movement in recent years toward more family-friendly entertainment offerings has been encouraging. From the Las Vegas monorail and the Children’s Museum to a host of family-oriented shows and outdoor adventure vacation packages, there are more options than ever for groups of all ages to enjoy our lovely city. Unfortunately, much of this new entertainment infrastructure is more dependent on machinery and heights and other elements that provide thrills at the risk of Nevada amusement ride accidents.

Accounts from across the country highlight these risks. A beloved children’s amusement park in New Jersey was the scene of an unfortunate Mother’s Day accident that hurt a toddler along with his aunt and grandmother. When their car derailed from its track on a circular children’s ride, all three riders spilled out and suffered injuries that warranted a trip to the hospital. The 19-month boy now wears a splint on his leg, which is a bittersweet reminder that this accident could have involved more serious personal injuries such as spinal cord damage in the boy’s fragile back.

In another children’s thrill ride accident, the tragedy was not merely theoretical. in Illinois a family is devastated after one of their twin boys suffered fatal head injuries when he fell from his restraints on an indoor children’s rollercoaster. A wrongful death lawsuit is underway even as the ongoing investigation reveals that a ride operator attempted to engage the emergency brake mechanism but to no avail. The personal injury for the family is leading an aggressive lawsuit, alleging that the amusement park was negligent in not maintaining a ride that could be stopped immediately in an emergency situation.

These thrill ride injuries do not only affect children. A lawsuit is now taking shape to address a family’s shocking loss at a Cleveland Indians baseball game. An Ohio man suffered massive injuries including a fatal embolism after a 25-foot, 400-pound inflatable slide fell on him at a family event outside the professional baseball team’s stadium last summer. After an agonizing week in intensive care, the man died from his injuries. His survivors allege that the Indians organization as well as the ballpark’s owner and the company that furnished the inflatable slide all bear responsibility for commercial negligence in the case.

In each of these cases, an accident has changed a family forever — in some cases creating distrust that may never fade, and in others taking a loved one from their lives forever. At times such as these, financial and legal concerns are often far from survivors’ minds, but these devastating losses have not only emotional but also very urgent practical impacts. If a loved one has been hurt or killed in a Nevada thrill ride accident, contact us today for a free consultation.

Share and Enjoy

The city of Las Vegas has taken great strides toward reinventing itself as a tourist destination. Separating itself from the old-time moniker of “Sin City,” the Southern Nevada metropolis has spent the last two decades embracing family-friendly entertainment and a growing range of outdoor recreation activities as supplemental tourist draws that have wider appeal than the classic (cliché?) Las Vegas of debauchery and madness. Although mostly successful, this transformation has not been without its setback. Reports in recent weeks about unlicensed bus driver accidents highlight a latent risk to the city’s new image.

A mental checklist is helpful. First of all, the sour turn the Nevada economy has taken in the last three to four years has had an impact on tourism generally, which in some circles has meant that new, unproven forms of tourist entertainment have been sidelined for other offerings thought to be more reliable revenue sources. Increasingly extreme weather in the last couple of seasons has had an effect not only on garden-variety tourism like outdoor concerts and golf courses but also has added new perils to some niche markets such as aerial tours of Southern Nevada. In a handful of cases from recent years, there have been Las Vegas airplane accidents or near-misses throughout the Southwest.

Investigative reports grabbing headlines in the last few weeks have focused on an increasing worry for those in the Las Vegas tourism industry: the potential for Las Vegas motor vehicle accidents involving commercial buses. These investigations have turned up a number of trends, none of them positive. On the east coast, at least two high-profile Greyhound bus crashes shocked observers who had taken for granted the safety of these high-volume, low-cost discount bus services. Similar crashes occur from time to time in the west as well, in some cases in our very community. A variety of factors are to blame, including aggressive scheduling, driver fatigue, and other problems we see in the context of Nevada tractor-trailer accidents.

Perhaps most startling are revelations that some significant subset of commercial bus drivers are not even licensed. In some cases this means the drivers are not authorized to operate any motor vehicle, but far more often they lack any specialized training in operating large, many-passenger buses that make up the fleet of tour companies and other Las Vegas ground transportation services. Anyone who has ever borrowed a friend’s car knows that it can be daunting to drive an unfamiliar vehicle; in the context of enormous, unwieldy commercial buses, the importance of proper training, testing, and demonstrated competence cannot be overstated. Although it seems absurd that an untrained individual could get behind the wheel of one of these vehicles, our willingness to accept that things are as they should be sometimes prevents us from asking the most fundamental questions. Regulators at the state and federal level seem to be aware of this growing problem but with budgetary concerns at a fevered pitch any hopes for additional regulatory efforts are ill-placed.

If you or a loved one have suffered an injury that you believe was related to an unlicensed or improperly trained commercial bus driver, you should contact our Nevada commercial bus injury lawyers today. Strategic decisions regarding civil litigation strategies can be just as important as building the case itself, which makes an experienced legal team all the more necessary. Call us today for a free consultation.

Share and Enjoy

If you ask your nearest Hollywood-movie skeptic, he’ll wear out your eardrums with critiques of easily shattering windows, extraordinarily accurate pistol skills (among heroes, not villains), and any of a number of jaw-dropping stunts so familiar from today’s action movies. But if the conversation turns to the far-fetched notion of gas tanks exploding from automobile accidents, you’ll have some fodder for a counterargument. This week has seen yet another series of recalls on defective cars including a new Ford vehicle recall.

Some of the most popular vehicles currently in use are under scrutiny for suspected product liabilities that can cause serious risks to passengers’ wellbeing. Among them is the top-selling Ford F150 pickup, which has seized the media’s attention in recent weeks as the government National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has ordered the recall of 1.4 million of the vehicles. The mandated recall — now expected to double to some 2.7 million automobiles — has to do with the premature failure of the steel straps that hold the truck’s fuel tank to the body of the car. It’s not hard to imagine what happens when these straps oxidize, weaken, and break: twenty-odd gallons of gasoline in a metal container begin thudding and dragging on the asphalt beneath the car. Sparks fly, fumes leak, and in some cases explosions occur that have engulfed a handful of the trucks in flames and burnt them throughout. There do not appear to have been any fatalities reported yet due to this vehicle defect, but if there is not swift action it will be just a matter of time until the first tragic Nevada wrongful death due to this resolvable issue.

In light of recent incidents such as the much-lampooned Toyota vehicle recall, one would think that Ford would act swiftly, decisively, and err on the side of caution. The consequences of a Las Vegas motor vehicle accident stemming from this defect would be horrific both for the public and for Ford’s PR efforts, and the fix is very inexpensive — it’s a couple of metal strips for each affected vehicle! Yet Ford’s overtures toward a wider recall have been lukewarm and unclear. It is unclear how many families will have to suffer the terror or even tragedy of living out these accidents firsthand rather than being spared the harm through proactive efforts on Ford’s part.

Other vehicle defects to be aware of this week include a problem with MINI Cooper model vehicles, which appear to be experiencing sudden loss of power-steering capabilities. We all rely on power steering to allow us quick, responsive control of our vehicles as we drive them at high speeds. Additionally, some 70,000 Volkswagen Jetta vehicles in the 2010-2011 model years have been recalled due to a wiring problem that can cause the windshield wipers and headlights to cease functioning. In Northern Nevada, such a loss of visibility could leave motorists stranded or even at risk of serious Nevada automobile crashes.

For all the gadgets we rely on and the luxury devices that we take for granted, ours is still a country where the hunt for profits can get ahead of the need for caution. If you or a loved one have suffered a personal injury due to a defective product, contact our team of experienced Las Vegas product liability attorneys today.

Share and Enjoy