Personal Injury News: Pick Of Last Month: Dec-2022

Family Of A Man Fatally Shot By Police to Get $1M From ATL

The city council of Atlanta has approved a $1 million settlement for the family of a 27-year-old man who was fatally shot by police in a Wendy's parking lot in 2020, according to attorneys for the family.

According to a council spokesperson, the settlement was approved by the city council by a vote of 15-0. In a statement, the family's attorneys expressed disappointment that prosecutors did not pursue criminal charges against the officers, but they remain hopeful that the Justice Department will intervene.

According to the statement, the impacted family is glad to have achieved a settlement with the city of Atlanta that concludes their civil action. Although the children of the deceased have lost their father, settling the case will definitely assist them with future plans as they come of age.

Officers from the Atlanta Police Department were summoned to the incident in June 2020 after the guy fell asleep in his car at Wendy's and spoke with him for around 40 minutes. The cops attempted to arrest him after he failed a sobriety test. He took one of their Tasers and discharged it as he ran before being shot during the videotaped altercation.

Following the event, Atlanta's police chief resigned, and the officer who shot Brooks was dismissed. However, the Atlanta Civil Service Board eventually overturned the officer's dismissal after discovering that the city had failed to follow its own disciplinary processes.

In September 2021, the dead man's wife filed a wrongful death case. The city attorney has conducted a thorough review of the facts and the law and determined that the city of Atlanta's potential financial exposure in defending the plaintiff's claims exceeds the settlement amount.

Life Sentence For The Man Who Killed 6 In Christmas Parade

A court sentenced a man to life in prison with no possibility of parole after he drove his SUV into a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee, killing six people and injuring many more. He and his family argued that mental illness pushed him to do it.

A 40-year-old man was sentenced by a Waukesha County Circuit Judge on 76 charges, including six counts of first-degree intentional murder and 61 counts of reckless endangerment.

Each count of homicide carried a mandatory life sentence, and the only question was whether the court would allow the perpetrator to spend any portion of those terms on extended supervision in the community, the state's current equivalent of parole. She did not do so. The death penalty is not used in Wisconsin.

No one can be secure from the mentally ill guy, according to the court, and the community can only be protected if he is locked up for the remainder of his life.

After being disruptive during her pre-sentencing statements, the judge had bailiffs transport the guy to another courtroom where he could participate via video. As the judge read the sentences, he stood motionless in his jail uniform and handcuffs.

After an argument with his ex-girlfriend, the guy drove his red Ford Escape into the parade in downtown Waukesha on Nov. 21, 2021. Six individuals were murdered, including an eight-year-old boy parading with his baseball team and three members of the Dancing Grannies. Hundreds of others were hurt.

Before the judge sentenced, the guy informed the court that he had suffered from mental illness since he was a child and had no intention of driving onto the parade path. He also made his first public apology to the dozens of people who were injured or lost loved ones as a result of the incident.

Injured Woman Sues Airbnb Over Shooting Incidence

One of the victims of the Airbnb mass shooting in April 2022 has filed another lawsuit.

The plaintiff has filed a complaint alleging negligence on the part of Airbnb, 900 North Group, and K&C Ventures. The plaintiff is a woman who was one of over 200 people, many of whom were minors, who attended the Airbnb party.

According to the lawsuit, the three groups did not take any steps to ensure that the property was monitored or used for its intended purposes. According to the lawsuit, the lady was injured while attempting to flee the building in Pittsburgh's East Allegheny neighborhood.

According to the plaintiff's attorney, Airbnb was aware of the party but chose to ignore it because it was in their best interests to make money by letting others rent out their properties.

In a statement, Airbnb stated that it shares the Pittsburgh community's outrage over the tragic gun violence. Its heart goes out to everyone who was affected, including loved ones of those who died, injured victims, and neighbours. Airbnb strictly prohibits parties and condemns the alleged behaviour that led to this criminal gun violence. Airbnb has issued a lifetime ban to the booking guest, and the company will consider all legal options to hold this person accountable.

The April 17 shooting killed two teenagers and injured several others, including the plaintiff, who, according to the lawsuit, jumped out a second-story window to avoid the gunfire. No one has been charged or arrested.

Families Of Mass Shooting Victims In CA To Get $8M

Officials announced that the families of nine people killed by a coworker at a California rail yard last year will receive $8 million to settle damage claims filed in November.

The Valley Transportation Authority announced an agreement with the families of eight of the nine people killed by a colleague who then killed himself on May 26, 2021, at a San Jose rail yard.

Family members say VTA management and the main union have yet to explain why the accused, who was the subject of four investigations into his workplace behaviour, was kept on the job. The VTA and the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department have conducted no public investigations.

According to two people familiar with the agreement, attorneys who represented the eight families will receive about 40% of the settlement in fees. The remainder will be divided equally among them. According to the terms of the settlement, the families agreed to drop their wrongful death lawsuits against VTA.

Families of victims have previously received one year's salary and workers' compensation death benefits. In addition, the agency agreed to pay $4.9 million in retirement benefits in the form of monthly payments of $3,000 or more.

According to the attorney who represented the eight families, the settlement amount is still low because the victims' families had few options to sue the VTA outside of the workers' compensation process. The family of one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, a 63-year-old human, has not reached an agreement with the VTA. Their attorney stated that they did not believe the offer made to the family was adequate.

Woman To Get $5M For Bike Injuries From A Sports Company

Bell Sports has reached a product liability settlement with an Indiana woman who claimed her Bell Universal pedal broke off while she was riding, resulting in a crash and injuries.

According to the lawsuit, the woman suffered damages totaling nearly $5 million. Bell's Universal pedal is compatible with both 12-inch and 9/16-inch cranks, thanks to included adapters that thread into crank arms; the pedals' non-standard axles then thread onto the adapters.

A jury trial was set to begin on December 5 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in Indianapolis. However, both parties informed the court that they had reached an agreement. They had 30 days to file a joint motion to dismiss the case, according to the court.

A spokesman for Bell, which is owned by Vista Outdoor, declined to comment on the settlement. Terms were not disclosed.

According to the complaint, the plaintiff was involved in a crash in August 2018 when the Bell alloy pedal on her bike failed catastrophically.

According to the lawsuit, she suffered traumatic, permanent, and painful injuries, including a traumatic brain injury, and incurred medical expenses, pain and suffering, and other monetary damages.

In a July 2021 filing, the plaintiff's attorneys stated that she had suffered $4,789,040 in damages.

According to the lawsuit, the Bell pedal and adapter system were defective and unreasonable dangerous.

According to court documents, Bell developed, designed, and marketed the pedals and adapters in collaboration with YinJiang Ningbo, China-based manufacturer Ningo Detai Machinery Co. Ltd. Bell denied that the pedals were defective or that it was responsible for Sandlin's injuries, claiming that the pedals were not manufactured by it. Ningo Detai was not a party to the proceedings.

According to pre-trial testimony from a plaintiff's expert, the right pedal on the bike partially unthreaded from the crank adapter, resulting in a fatigue crack on the adapter and its eventual failure, as well as the pedal's separation from the bike when the woman rode it.

The expert testified that the threads connecting the adapter to the pedal spindle were not the self-tightening threads that have been used on bicycle pedals for more than a century. The traditional threading orientation is intended to use the precession effect to keep pedals from unthreading in normal use. The Bell Universal adapter has a threaded shaft that threads into a hole in the pedal spindle. A report filed with the court concluded that this thread orientation created a self-loosening joint on both the right and left pedals.

However, the court later granted a motion by Bell Sports to exclude Coté's testimony about the precession effect, which Bell's lawyers claimed was an untested theory. One of Bell's expert witnesses did not dispute the precession effect explanation but claimed that the thread lock solution included with the inserts would prevent the pedal from unthreading.

Another report filed with the court for the plaintiff by Material and Engineering Group LLC of Belmont, Massachusetts, concluded that the adapter was made of a case of hardened metal, making it too brittle for the application and prone to fatigue failure.

At Bell's request, the court excluded portions of the MEG report from the evidence. Bell referred to the report as "scientific guesswork," claiming that the author lacked specific industry knowledge, did not test his theory, and did not know if the adapter deviated from manufacturing specifications.

In addition, the court sided with the plaintiff in rejecting testimony from several of Bell's witnesses.

$3.65M For A Family Over Misdiagnosis By VA Pathologist

The second of eight wrongful death cases involving a former Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks pathologist's missed diagnoses resulted in a $3.65 million settlement one day after the first family to bring their case to trial received $4.7 million.

According to court records, a settlement was reached and the case was dismissed following the plaintiff's death. The settlement amount was not disclosed in the dismissal. The amount was confirmed by an attorney for the plaintiffs. He stated that the remaining six cases have not yet been resolved.

After a two-day trial, a federal district judge awarded the survivors $4.7 million. The previous lawsuit's plaintiff was an Army veteran whose cancer went untreated for more than six years due to a missed diagnosis at the VA facility. The award to the family was a significant factor in the US reconsidering its position on the current cases and the remaining cases.

The plaintiff's attorney stated that the plaintiff's son can now put this matter behind him and know that his perseverance resulted in justice for his war hero father's preventable death at the hands of the VA.

Both cases involve a former chief pathologist at the Fayetteville VA hospital. In both cases and others, the pathologist missed the cancer diagnosis. In both of these cases, the defendant went years without receiving cancer treatment. According to the lawsuit, the pathologist in the current case falsified the plaintiff's medical records by claiming that a second pathologist at Fayetteville hospital agreed with him.

The pathologist was suspended following an arrest in Fayetteville on March 1, 2018, for driving under the influence. He was later fired after a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs investigation determined that he had worked while intoxicated for years and had an error rate that was more than 12 times the normal for pathology. According to the lawsuits, both plaintiffs died as a result.

In June 2020, the defendant pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter for missed diagnoses. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in January 2021.

In 2016, the defendant was discovered drunk on the job for the first time. According to court documents, a review of some of his test results at the time revealed no serious errors. He returned to work after completing a rehabilitation programme and agreeing to submit to random alcohol tests. He then used his medical training to obtain and use 2m-2b, an intoxicating drug that cannot be detected by traditional blood or urine tests for alcohol. After returning to work, he passed 42 drug tests in two years.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has begun reexamining all 33,902 cases on which the defendant worked from 2005 to 2017. The investigation began following the DUI arrests. Pathologists examining the original tissue samples discovered 3,029 errors, 30 of which were serious enough to have long-term health consequences.

Paralyzed Man From Arlington Gets $9.2M From Tarrant County

A Tarrant County jury awarded $9.2 million to an Arlington man who was paralyzed following back surgery.

According to a lawsuit filed against the hospital and the doctor who performed the surgery, the plaintiff was 48 years old when he was admitted to Bianco Brain and Spine Hospital for lumbar surgery. In 2019, the lawsuit was filed in Tarrant County District Court. The civil suit was heard in the 348th Judicial District.

The surgery began at 9:20 a.m. on Oct. 20, 2017, according to the lawsuit. The defendant doctor performed the surgery, while another doctor monitored the plaintiff's neurological activity. According to the lawsuit, the second doctor informed the defendant at least twice during the operation that there were significant changes in the plaintiff's neurological activity. According to the lawsuit, the doctor suggested a wake-up test due to concerns about surgical injury, but the defendant proceeded with the surgery.

The attorney representing the plaintiff said that the doctor chose to ignore those warnings and his patient, as a result, the man who just wanted some relief from suffering, now has to learn to live with an irreversible outcome that was completely preventable. A message was left for the attorney representing the hospital and the doctor was not immediately returned.

The plaintiff awoke from surgery with no feeling in his feet. According to court records, he was previously a machinist and umpire who enjoyed fishing on his boat. He is unable to participate in most of the activities he previously enjoyed due to the surgery.

According to a medical consultation included in court documents, the plaintiff, who is now 51, uses a wheelchair. According to records, he is unable to work as a baseball umpire and has lost significant earnings as a result of his paralysis. To accommodate his disability, he and his family had to renovate their home, purchase medical equipment, and pay for a variety of physical therapy and medical treatments.

On October 25, a jury awarded the plaintiff $1 million for past mental anguish and $2 million for physical impairment. The plaintiff was also awarded compensation for lost wages and the cost of medical equipment by the jury.

Nothing can undo what happened to the plaintiff, according to his attorney, but this will at least provide financial support for his family so that they can focus on his ongoing care. He added that, in the end, this is a case about accountability, and that he hopes it sends a message to surgeons that they cannot gamble with people's lives.