Las Vegas Injury & Accident Attorney Blog

A new report out this week shines a dim light on Nevada’s marquee industry of entertainment gambling. Although aggregate gaming revenues increased some eight percent over last year in the rural community of Elko and revenues were up slightly in the Reno area, the Las Vegas region saw revenues fall by 5.7 percent and state revenues overall were down nearly six percent. As the languishing economy continues to undermine this major part of the state’s economy, might a benefit be a decline in Nevada personal injuries?

This suggestion may seem silly, but we have to analyze it in the context of the state’s larger economic activities. Although Nevada saw record growth for nearly two decades, the bursting of the housing bubble left thousands of Nevada construction workers out of work. In addition to those individuals laid up by Las Vegas workplace injuries, these unemployed individuals drag down the economy because they cut back their spending and thereby starve other businesses and facilitating further lay-offs. Now, the unemployed do not voluntarily make this impact; it is just an unfortunate downstream effect of a struggling economy.

But with gambling comes a host of uniquely Nevadan risks. We have seen how the glitzy entertainment of the Strip can result in Las Vegas casino injuries when high-flying shows go awry; even earlier this year a woman died under mysterious circumstances when she apparently fell from a high casino balcony. Add to phenomena like these the fact that many visitors to our state use casino entertainment as an excuse for reckless bacchanalia that frequently results in bar fights, DUI accidents, and Las Vegas personal injuries. If you or a loved one have been hurt on or around Nevada casino property, contact us for a free consultation.

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Northern Nevadans were shaken to learn of two accidents last week that diminished public confidence in the safety of commercial and municipal vehicles on the road. Three fatalities and one serious injury resulted from these two crashes, one in urban Reno and the other occurring on a lonely portion of Highway 50 near Fernley. As we will examine next, these crashes highlight the unique legal issues of commercial entity liability.

A week ago today, a 45-year-old woman who was riding her bike onward through a busy intersection was struck and killed by a Waste Management truck that overtook her and struck her as it made a right turn. Investigations of the crash have so far concluded that alcohol and speeding were not factors in this Nevada automobile accident but simply that the driver was negligent in not properly checking in the large garbage truck’s blind spot.

The other accident was even more bizarre. Two women were stopped on the side of Highway 50 Alternate in northern Nevada, possibly reviewing a road map Monday morning. A Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) truck that was doing striping work on the highway apparently left its intended path and struck the pickup truck parked on the shoulder. One of the women — both were in their 50s from Texas — was pronounced dead at the scene, and the other woman succumbed to her significant personal injuries later that day in the hospital. The 61-year-old driver of the NDOT truck was also hospitalized with minor injuries.

Investigations into these cases are ongoing, and anyone with information on these cases is encouraged to contact the appropriate authorities. Our office is saddened to hear of these tragic and seemingly avoidable losses of life. Whenever there is a Las Vegas car accident involving public vehicles, we are available to help victims and survivors understand their legal rights and options for redress.

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This year had more than its share of stories about medications recalled due to defects or safety concerns. Parents from Las Vegas to Reno and across the country were alarmed to find that they had been inadvertently over-dosing children’s medication with potent over-the-counter cough syrups and flu remedies. The popular antacid brand Rolaids suffered a massive recall after bits of metal, wood, and other debris were found in some of its chewable tablets. And just this week there was a recall of the prescription medication Lipitor — a leading cholesterol drug — after an entire lot of the drug was found to have a strange odor. With all these problems, it is obvious that consumer advocates still have their work cut out for them in terms of promoting greater product safety and quality regulation. But there is another threat to patient well-being in the realm of medication safety: Nevada pharmacy error.

Whereas Clark County — like most communities — were once served by small, independent pharmacists and druggists, the trend across the country has been toward increased scale and lower prices. Major pharmacy chains have battled for over a decade and, as the Rite Aid franchise slowly unwinds itself from the Las Vegas and Henderson market in Southern Nevada, the remaining titans appear to be CVS and Walgreens. These chains employ thousands of people across the country, and they help all of us obtain our prescriptions quickly and at ever-lower cost. However, the trade-off is more frequent mistakes.

These companies manage dozens of pharmacy branches across the country, each of which employs one or more licensed pharmacists. These pharmacists oversee the operation but seldom do the mundane work of scraping pills into bottles. That task is generally delegated to pharmacy technicians, whose expertise will vary mostly with the length of time they have been in the relatively low-wage, low-skill position. Thus, as formal pharmacological training decreases down the chain of command, the actual level of hands-on responsibility increases. Add to this pattern the fact that there are hundreds of prescription medications on the market now — including competing brands of similar drugs and their generic counterparts — and you can see the prescription for disaster.

Clark County pharmacy negligence can be devastating. A benign case is someone who seeks antibiotics for a passing illness and gets instead a drug with no effect beyond mild nausea. An extreme case might be a medication-dependent person not only missing needed doses of medicine but also mistakenly ingesting potent drugs that worsen the condition or compound it. Cancer patients have been given excessively strong tablets for their chemotherapy or have been mislead by erroneous directions, with tragic results.

If you or a loved one have suffered from a pharmacy error, contact our Nevada medication error attorney right away. We know the best legal strategies to help you seek compensation, even from a major corporation with thousands of employees. Call us today for a free consultation.

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Our Clark County personal injury attorneys have logged a good number of hours on Highway 95 and elsewhere on Nevada’s rural highways in the course of working with clients in Mesquite, Pahrump, Primm, Reno, and Stateline. But safety has to come first, and drowsy driving cannot be taken lightly. Large numbers of Nevada drivers fall asleep behind the wheel, and the consequences can be devastating automobile accidents.

According to a recent telephone survey, fully 20 percent of drivers have previously fallen asleep at the wheel. One-in-four drivers say that they have driven under conditions where they struggled to keep their eyes open. (And because the survey was conducted by phone, it may have had a common statistical bias toward older, less itinerant individuals that may have understated the number of individuals who have driven while drowsy.) With nearly 1.5 million registered drivers as of 2004 in addition to hundreds of thousands of visitors traveling Nevada’s roads every year, the volume of drivers who have or habitually do drive without sufficient sleep could number in the hundreds of thousands.

Road Warriors take note: this is no joke. Drowsy driving impairs judgment and makes drivers less alert and slower to react. Sound familiar? These are the textbook cognitive impairments that make driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol so dangerous. Social acceptance of drunk driving has changed massively since the 1980s, and we are beginning to take note of the perils of distracted driving in the wake of new technology. Perhaps the next frontier is drowsy driving.

According to the federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, one-in-six U.S. road fatalities from motor vehicle accidents involve a drowsy driver. Drowsy driving most often happens at night, and the results can be even more devastating than under other circumstances: the combination of somnambulance and speed can result in full-speed collisions with other vehicles or with stationary objects such as guard rails or telephone poles.

At the federal level, laws are in place to regulate the number of continuous hours drivers may operate a commercial vehicle. There is some dispute over whether or not these laws have been enforced enough to reduce the number of big-rig, semi-truck, and 18-wheeler accidents in Nevada.

Experts recommend that drivers not drive on less than six hours of sleep from the night before, that they drive when they are normally awake (for most of us, during daytime), and that they take a break every two hours. Many of our readers may see that they have violated one or more of these suggestions, perhaps on a recent trip.

If you or a family member have been harmed in an automobile accident, no matter the cause, contact us for a free consultation. We will help you understand your legal rights and guide you toward restoration. Call us today for automobile injury legal help in Las Vegas. Drive safely out there, and get some sleep.

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