Truck accident results in home evacuations

Ohio authorities evacuated more than 200 homes in northeast Ohio in December after two vehicles struck a bridge. The collision caused a gas line to rupture. That endangered people in the area, and also threatened the structural integrity of the overpass. According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, a truck crashed into the Niles-Vienna overpass. That incident resulted in two other accidents that resulted in one death in addition to the ruptured has line. State Route 11 between Interstate 80 and state Route 82 had to be shut down while officials examined the bridge.

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Firemen suspended after fatal crash

Two Baltimore firemen have been suspended without pay following an accident in which their fire truck crashed into a sport utility vehicle. Three occupants of the SUV died in the crash. Nathaniel Moore, the driver of the fire truck, and Lieutenant Thomas Moore were suspended pending a hearing. Their fire truck was the third of four fire vehicles traveling north on Park Heights Avenue on their way to a fire. Details of the administrative charges brought against the two were not revealed, but they were said to involve operating an emergency vehicle in an unsafe manner.

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Truck driver ticketed in fatal crash

Police in Mattoon, Ill. ticketed a truck driver for failure to yield in an accident that claimed the life of Jason Alexander. The accident happened when Daniel Zacha of Stewardson turned his Coca-Cola truck in front of Alexander’s van. Alexander died later in the emergency room of Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center.

Wheel flies off truck, kills Wisconsin man

A doctor from Mequon, Wis. died last month when his car was struck by a large wheel that flew off of a heavy truck. Dr. Krishna Chintamaneni, 55, was on his way home when a tire flew off a truck heading in the opposite direction. It bounced over a wall between the two lanes of traffic and hit Chintamaneni’s car, shattering the windshield and killing him. The truck driver didn’t stop, and police say he may not have known what had happened. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, such accidents are rare. It says out of 349,000 truck accidents each year, wheel separation accidents account for only about 750 to 1,000. But truck wheel-tire assemblies can weigh 200 to 300 pounds and can cause very serious damage if they come loose.

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New bonds includes money for Connecticut’s weigh stations

The state of Connecticut’s legislature has approved a new bond package – and those bonds include money to keep the state’s truck weigh stations open longer hours. Some critics claim that the state’s weigh stations haven’t been open enough hours – and they have also complained that the state Department of Transportation hasn’t kept good records to document just how many hours the stations are open. The result, they say, may be an increase in deadly truck accidents. The Citizens Transportation Lobby was founded to push for more rail transit funding. But now the group is also spending time and resources trying to get better truck weight inspections in Connecticut. They claim the longer weigh station hours are needed to help catch truck drivers who are overtired – or who may be operating unsafe vehicles. The new bond legislation – signed earlier this month by Gov. M. Jodi Rell – includes a provision which requires the departments of Public Safety and Motor Vehicles to create truck violation logs to document how long the weigh stations are open. The log system must be up and running by Jan. 1.

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Nebraska farmers turning to bigger semi-trailer rigs

More and more Nebraska farmers are replacing their older trucks with newer, larger semi-trailer trucks to haul grain from their fields. Those newer trucks hold three times as much grain as the old trucks did. But it appears their also are involved in more traffic accidents. The bigger trucks are harder to stop, and they require more experienced drivers. In 2006, semis registered to farms totaled 6,597 — 40 percent more than in 2003. Nebraska (and Iowa, too) require drivers license tests for operators of semi-trailer trucks, and in Nebraska farmers must possess the same commercial licenses as over-the-road truckers. Highway statistics don’t break down truck accidents enough to show how many of the accidents involve farm-owned trucks. But police say they are concerned that more accidents are happening that involve the farm-owned trucks, especially in the fall gravest season.

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Propane truck strikes pickup, overturns

Three people were injured recently when a pickup truck was struck broadside by a propane tank truck in the Brunswick, Ga. area. State police say the pickup truck pulled into the path of the larger vehicle, which was carrying a full load of propane. The Georgia State Patrol said the driver of the pickup, John Anderson of Brunswick, failed to yield the right-of-way and his vehicle was broadsided by the propane tanker. No propane was spilled in the accident, even though the propane tank truck overturned.

Many states are changing their workers comp laws. Injured workers need to keep up with those changes to protect their rights and secure benefits

Palm Harbor, Fla. — Even though a number of states are considering revisions to their workers compensation laws, people who are injured on the job may still qualify for a number of workers’ compensation disability benefits, Attorney Jeffrey Hensley said today.

A number of states, such as South Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona, New York, Delaware and others, are looking at changes to their workers compensation laws. Others, such as California and Florida, have made changes to their laws in the last two or three years, Hensley said. That means that injured workers need to look more carefully than ever at the workers compensation laws in their home states to see how the laws’ benefits apply to them.

“Those benefits may depend on a number of factors, but injured workers may qualify for temporary or permanent disability payments covering partial or even total disability, even though the laws may have changed,” Hensley said. “An attorney trained in the latest workers comp issues can be useful in sorting out appropriate benefits and strategies.”

A person who cannot work while receiving medical treatment for a work-related injury, and who has not reached “maximum medical improvement,” may qualify for temporary total disability. Just exactly what “temporary total disability” means can vary from state to state, but many states fix that amount at two-thirds of a worker’s average weekly wage, with some sort of cap on total benefits paid out.

Here are some other common workers’ comp benefits:

- Temporary Partial Disability - This benefit is usually paid out to injured workers as they perform limited work while recovering.
- Permanent Partial Disability/Impairment Benefits - This benefit is usually paid to workers who suffer permanent injuries of a type that do not result in total disability.
- Permanent Total Disability - Paid to workers who demonstrate permanent injuries or conditions that prevent them from returning to work.
- Disfigurement/Mutilation — Workers who suffer disfigurement or scarring may qualify for compensation even in the absence of work-capability impairment.

Since workers compensation benefits are provided via state statutes, workers comp benefits and program details can vary from state to state. Because of that, it is critical that workers understand the programs that exist in the states in which they work. They also must have a clear picture of what responsibilities are required by those state programs.

Workers comp programs generally cover all employees, whether or not they are minors, non-citizens or part-timers. Occasionally, the type of occupation, the size of the employer’s business, or the length of the employment will influence or impact entitlement to workers’ comp benefits.

Generally speaking, workers comp is considered to be a no-fault system of insurance. It is designed to provide medical care and pay benefits to injured workers even if they are at fault for their injuries.

The goal of most workers comp programs is to restore the injured worker to health and to get him or her back to work. If that is not possible, then the program’s aim is to provide replacement for the wages that would have been earned if the injured person had not been injured and was able to work.

Workers comp programs are designed to provide benefits to the injured worker in exchange for prohibiting the injured worker from suing his or her employer for negligence. There are, however, a few exceptions to the rule. For one, workers may be able to sue their employer if they can prove their employer engaged in conduct that was intended to cause them harm, or if they can show that the conduct of the employer was so negligent that their conduct was substantially certain to result in harm to the employee. Finally, the injured worker can sue for his or her injuries when there is some third party, or a product that was responsible for the injury.

Here is what injured employers need to do:

- Report the injury to the employer. Employers must be able to provide medical treatment and must file certain reports and other paperwork.
- Obtain medical attention promptly. Employers should immediately direct injured workers to the company medical facility, walk-in clinic, a physician, or hospital. The injured worker should initially accept such employer-offered treatment.
- File a written notice of claim. This makes a permanent record of the claim.
- Contact the employer’s workers’ comp insurance carrier if, within two weeks of becoming disabled, a disability benefit check has not been received.

If a claim is disputed by the employer, the injured worker will need to prove that the claim is valid, perhaps at a hearing. An attorney versed in workers comp law can help present the case.

Information about the workers compensation laws in any state may be obtained by searching the Internet. Entering “workers compensation and (the state’s name)” in Google or some other search engine should lead to the appropriate Web site.

Attorney Jeffrey Hensley says the health courts, supported by the AMA, “are like having the fox guard the henhouse.”

Palm Harbor, Fla. — So-called “health courts,” which would replace juries with health care professionals in medical malpractice cases, would leave malpractice victims dangerously unprotected, accotrding to Attorney Jeffrey Hensley.

The American Medical Association (AMA) adopted principles in July that favor the health courts, which would do away with peer-based juries and replace them with judges trained in medical standards.

Hensley said the notion of health courts dangerously tips the standard of justice in malpractice cases against victims who may be entitled to sizeable judgments when they are seriously harmed by poor medical care.

“There is a fox-guarding-the-henhouse quality to this idea of having medical people passing judgment in medical malpractice cases,” Hensley said. “People who have suffered very serious injuries or damages as a result of medical malpractice should have little confidence in courts which are run by the very same profession that caused their injuries.”

Instead, Hensley said, medical malpractice victims should have full access to a court system in which their peers consider evidence from both sides, and then determine possible damages that are based fairly on the extent of their injuries or damages.

“This is not simply a step away from reasonable medical malpractice law,” Hensley said. “This is a step away from the very foundations of American justice.”

So-called health courts were conceived during Brookings Institute conferences in 2002 and 2003. Besides the move to health courts, the principles adopted by the AMA urge quick resolution of claims, special training for judges, and reliance on qualified experts. The AMA also has stated its support for limits, or caps, on medical malpractice judgments.

A better way to limit malpractice judgments, Hensley said, would be to limit substandard medical treatment that results in injury or even death.

“If the AMA wants to limit the claims that get awarded in medical malpractice suits, a good place to start would be in its own backyard,” Hensley said. “People have a right to expect good, professional health care and, when they don’t receive it, they should have a right to reasonable financial claims.”

Hensley said it is important to remember that the duty of a medical professional is not to cure, or even to guarantee a good outcome from treatment. Rather, the duty is to provide good medical care according to accepted standards in the community, or, in the case of a specialist, accepted standards in that medical specialty.

“Medicine is not an exact science, and doctors are not required to be right every time they make a diagnosis,” Hensley said. “A misdiagnosis becomes malpractice, however, if the doctor fails to get a medical history, order the appropriate tests, or recognize observable symptoms of the illness.”

There’s a number of important steps to winning a disability claim. I posted the first step previously. Here’s the second step:

Secret #2: Give the insurance company notice of claim as early as possible. Late notice could result in a substantial loss of monthly benefits.

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Greetings, and welcome to my blog, a place where I can share some thoughts and information about the law (and other things I care about) with you.

I have a passion for justice that has grown over the past decade as I have worked to protect the rights of injured people. There can be a substantial difference between quick and easy settlements and just settlements, and that difference can have a great deal to do with the determination of the injured person’s attorney. Some may view that as a tough attitude; perhaps it is, but I see it as having a simple passion for justice — justice that injured people deserve. It’s not all about money — it’s also about being treated with dignity, and about having your rights protected and defended

My e-mail address is jwh@hensleylaw.com — I’d like to hear from you.

Are there really secret strategies for winning disability claims? Absolutely — there’s a whole range of steps that a person should take if they expect to prevail in their disability case, steps that not everybody knows about. I’ll be outlining those secrets here on my blog from time to time.

Here’s the first one:

Secret #1: Recognize the problem (disability) when it arises. You don’t have to be catastrophically injured or terminally ill to collect. Many policies provide money for partial disability. Look for such things as loss of productivity, loss of income or the inability to perform the material and substantial duties of your occupation.

Check back regularly, and I’ll post more.