Jacksonville Personal Injury Blog

The debate is whether Jacksonville Sheriff’s officer Marcus Kilpatrick had his lights and sirens on when he ran his police cruiser into a truck driven by 86-year-old Matthew Brice Ogden Jr. in January. According to a report, Ogden turned his truck left into the path of the police cruiser in the middle of the day.

Ogden was not wearing a seat belt and was thrown from the truck and died at the scene. The officer suffered minor injuries in the Jacksonville car accident.

Now we are beginning to learn more about the auto accident in Florida. While the siren and lights issue is unresolved (witnesses say they didn’t see or hear them), Officer Kilpatrick was traveling 98 mph in a 40 mph zone through a residential area that included a school. In the middle of the day anyone could have found themselves in his path with absolutely no notice. Imagine a school bus filled with kids, or a soccer mom with youngsters in the back.

This is not to denigrate the loss of one life, this time an 86-year-old man. Our condolences go out to his family. The loss is particularly sharp when the Florida Highway Patrol tells us that Kilpatrick was trying to catch up with someone to check its tinted windows.

Continue reading " Florida Car Accident Kills Elderly Man " »

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Posted In: Auto Accidents

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A bill in the Florida legislature, HB 903, would limit the amount a trial attorney could take home when the action is brought by the state.

In a high profile case such as a Jacksonville tobacco lawsuit or pharmaceutical litigation in Florida, the state Attorney General’s office will bring in outside firms to help.

The proposed bill would cap attorney’s fees at $50 million, while outside law firms helping with a case would be capped to 24% of the first $10 million, 20% of the next five million and 15 % of the following five million.

The lawyer would be paid at the end of the day, but remember, these trials never take a day, or a month, or even a year. Sometimes they take decades of expensive litigation that is not compensated until the case is finally resolved.

Continue reading " Limit Fees on Attorneys- Is It a Good Idea? " »

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Posted In: Law & Information , Personal Injury

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An Elkton, Florida man, Brandon C. Marlow, 22 was not wearing a helmet, when he slid his motorcycle under a car in St. Augustine last Tuesday. According to the Florida HighwayPatrol, Marlow was trying to avoid a vehicle when he forced the bike down. He was hospitalized in critical condition.

Marlow was lucky. Jerry Williamson, 42, died in February when he crashed his Harley Davidson into a car that turned into his lane in St. Pete Beach.

Benjamin Mower died last month in Florida when he crashed his motorcycle into a car. He was 19-years-old.

Florida tops California and Texas for the number of motorcycle deaths – 489 in 2008.
And today there are many more motorcycles on the road. The St. Petersburg Times tracked the numbers in an article. 350,000 motorcycles were sold in 1997, reports the Motorcycle Industry Council. The number rose to 1.2 million in 2006.

Continue reading " Florida Motorcycle Accident Deaths Down Slightly " »

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Posted In: Motorcycle Accident

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A tragic Florida pedestrian accident occurred Sunday afternoon when an unlicensed teenager got behind the wheel of the car.

The 16-year-old was asked by his family to move the family car after a church service at the Summerville Baptist Church near downtown.

The teen accidentally struck his three-year-old nephew when he rolled backward onto the sidewalk. He hit the child and then hit a fence. It turns out the driver’s seat latch broke, putting the seat in the reclined position, causing the teen to lose control of the car. The toddler was taken to Shands Jacksonville with life-threatening injuries.

We wish the family the best and hope the baby makes a full recovery.

This story is reminiscent of another unlicensed teen auto accident two years ago in St. Petersburg. A 42-year old mother let her unlicensed 15-year-old boy have the keys to drive his friends home. The Florida Highway Patrol determined the unlicensed teen was going 70 mph in a 40 mph zone. During his joy ride, he was involved in a crash trying to overtake another car. A 14-year-old cheerleader was killed.

Continue reading " Florida Toddler Struck By Unlicensed Teen Uncle " »

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Posted In: Auto Accidents , Law & Information , Pedestrian Accidents , Wrongful Death

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According to an online report, the first of thousands of Florida tobacco lawsuits to be filed against Philip Morris concluded Wednesday with a Fort Lauderdale jury awarding the widow of a smoker $8 million in damages.

It took the six jurors two days to return the favorable verdict to Elaine Hess.

Her husband, Stuart Hess, died in 1997 at the age of 55 of lung cancer after decades as a chain smoker. He was hopelessly addicted and unable to quit. Philip Morris said smoking was not addictive and Hess could have quit.

During the trial, jurors were shown video from the 1994 testimony of the “Seven Dwarfs” – the seven top executives of major tobacco companies who denied that smoking cigarettes was addictive.

This phase of the trial was to establish financial damages. $3 million was awarded in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, sending a message to the Richmond, Virginia-based Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group. The company announced it plans to appeal.

This case and the thousands of others, many represented by Farah and Farah, were forced to file individual cigarette lawsuits in Florida courts after a record $145 billion award in the Engle class-action was thrown out by the state Supreme Court in 2006.

While the outcome of this trial will not dictate what future individual juries could decide, Philip Morris has to be worried. It is already appealing a $79 million jury award in an Oregon case.

For years Big Tobacco enjoyed favorable rulings but this case at least agreed with the findings of the Engle class-action - that tobacco companies knew they were selling dangerous products and that they deceived the public by hiding those known risks.

Contact our Florida tobacco lawsuit attorneys at Farah and Farah today if you have any questions or feel you may have a potential claim. We’d be happy to talk to you about your case.

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Posted In: Tobacco Lawsuits

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We’ve all heard the term medical malpractice. There are an estimated 100,000 medical errors caused every year and often it is the same doctor who hurts patients.

In an ideal world, the medical profession would have tighter oversight over doctors who are not professional. But instead, doctors would just like you to stop talking negatively about them online.

A new service, Medical Justice, forces dissatisfied patients to keep quiet.

When you sign up with a new doctor, look for the form in the pile you are asked to sign. It’s called the “Mutual Agreement to Maintain Privacy” form, and the patient promises they “will not denigrate, defame, disparage, or cast aspersions upon,” the doctor on the Internet and will prevent friends and family from doing so as well.

Nationwide, about 2,000 doctors have joined Medical Justice, a Greensboro, North Carolina company that provides the forms to doctors for their patients to sign.

Medical Justice founder and neurosurgeon, Dr. Jeffrey Segal, formed the company in 2002 to prevent so-called “frivolous lawsuits.” a favorite phrase of the business-backed tort reform campaign.

Continue reading " Doctors Don’t Want Patients Talking Online " »

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Posted In: Insurance Claims , Law & Information , Medical Malpractice

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Can mold kill?

The families of three young children have filed a lawsuit against St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, accusing the hospital of failing to protect the leukemia patients from mold.

The hospital was undergoing an expansion in 2008 on the ground floor. The suit charges that mold was stirred up during the construction and that the hospital should have known the children suffered weakened immune systems making them susceptible to infections.

Three children died in April and May, 2008, and their parents have filed the lawsuit. Mathew and Karen Gliddon are suing on behalf of their son Mathew, age 5; Patricia Gunn on behalf of her daughter Kaylie, age 2; and Daniel and Mary Lynn Kesler over their daughter Sierra, age 9, according a story from the Tampa Tribune.

Continue reading " Tampa Hospital Mold Causes Infections Killing 3 Children " »

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Posted In: Health & Information , Medical Malpractice , Wrongful Death

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Was your used car in an auto accident before you bought it? Might the odometer have been rolled back? Was it used in the commission of the crime?

On January 30, the U.S Department of Justice put an auto database online to help consumers uncover automobile fraud, a report states. The system will allow the state department of motor vehicles, law enforcement, and consumers to check a car's title and history. Best of all, law enforcement can track the car from state to state by logging onto the nationwide system.

Continue reading " Auto Fraud Database Now Online " »

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Posted In: Auto Accidents , Auto Product Liability , Law & Information

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Until now, Florida was one of seven states that did NOT have a salmonella outbreak. But now, a North Florida resident has shown signs of salmonella poisoning, according to a Florida Department of Health report issued on February 5th. There are very few details about the person or what they might have eaten to make them sick, but Florida is now the 44th and most recent state to have residents who have been sickened with the same type of salmonella that came from the Blakely, Georgia peanut processing plant. Salmonella Typhimuirium has sickened more than 550 and killed eight.

This time the resident of Bradford County was temporarily hospitalized. The city of Starke is in that county, but no other information on his/her location except that he had the same DNA match of salmonella Typhimuirium involved in the food recall.

Continue reading " Florida Joins 43 States With First Salmonella Case " »

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Posted In: Food Recall , Health & Information , Law & Information

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