severe neurological impediment

Food allergies can result in serious and even deadly injuries if ignored. Recently, as a result of a recent settlement between the federal Department of Justice and Lesley University in Massachusetts, students with serious food allergies may now qualify for accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. By applying ADA to food allergies, the Department of Justice has turned food into an access issue… access to an education in this case. This decision will likely impact both higher education as well as the primary and secondary levels. The Lesley University case involved a student who had celiac disease, and because of that, required a gluten-free diet. This was not available as part of the mandatory meal plan that the University required the student to participate in. The Department of Justice responded to a complaint from the student, entered into a settlement with the university in which Lesley University agreed to make dietary accommodations for students with special dietary needs. The implications of this settlement are likely to be far reaching and require significant changes for all levels of education in order to avoid charges of discrimination against students with special dietary needs.

Foods which are mislabeled, restaurants which ignore customers’ requests for food information because of allergies and other vendors may negligently cause catastrophic, and completely avoidable, injuries to consumers by failing to take known allergic sensitivities into account.

If you or a loved one has suffered serious injuries as a result of food product mislabeling or misrepresentations, you may be able to take action. Please contact the attorneys of Lane Brown, LLC, or call us at 312-332-1400 to speak with us about your options. We can help. To learn more about Lane Brown, please visit our website at lanebrownlaw.com.

When asked if they would consider driving at or above the adult legal limit of .08 for blood alcohol, teens almost always say they would not.

But when asked if they would consider texting or talking on the cell phone while driving, many honestly say they would. Studies indicating that the risk of an accident is similar for talking on a cell phone and driving at the .08 limit are eye-opening for many teens.

If you or a loved one has suffered personal injuries as a result of the negligence of a drunk driver or a distracted driver, you may be able to take action. Please contact the attorneys of Lane Brown, LLC, or call us at 312-332-1400 to speak with us about your options. We can help. To learn more about Lane Brown, please visit our website at lanebrownlaw.com.

The AP (4/11, Kageyama) reports, “Toyota, Honda and Nissan are recalling more than 2 million vehicles globally for an identical problem with air bags on the passenger side whose inflator may burst, sending plastic pieces flying.” The AP notes that “the recall for air bags made by Japan’s Takata Corp. affects other automakers including non-Japanese manufacturers, and may be as many as 3 million vehicles, Takata spokesman Akiko Watanabe said Thursday.” The AP notes that “a worker forgot to turn on the switch for a system weeding out defective products and parts were improperly stored, which exposed them to humidity, according to Honda spokeswoman Akemi Ando.”
CNN Money (4/11, Riley, Wakatsuki) also reports that “Honda said it was aware of one crash in which a passenger front airbag casing had ruptured after being deployed with too much pressure” but is not aware of any injuries or deaths resulting from the defect. Meanwhile, “Toyota said it had reports of five airbag malfunctions, but no injuries.”

Accidents involving cars, trucks, and motorcycles can result in serious personal injuries to drivers, passengers and pedestrians. The Chicago law firm of Lane Brown, LLC practices in personal-injury lawsuits resulting from vehicle accidents. If you, your family or other loved one has been injured, please contact Lane Brown, LLC. We can help.

The National Law Journal (4/2, Bronstad) reports, “A lawsuit filed against Ford Motor Co. on behalf of consumers alleging economic damages tied to sudden acceleration comes months after Toyota Motor Corp. agreed to pay more than $1 billion in cash and repair costs to resolve similar claims.” The Journal continues, “The suit, filed on March 28, asserts that Ford, despite receiving hundreds of reports of electronics defects tied to sudden acceleration, failed to install brake override systems in some North American vehicles until 2010, even though it knew about problems as early as 2002. As a result, the cars manufactured during that interval put drivers in an ‘unreasonably dangerous’ situation, the suit says.”

If you or a loved one have suffered a severe injury, the law offices of Lane Brown, LLC can help you. Please contact us or call now (312) 332-1400 for an immediate consultation with an injury attorney in Chicago, Illinois.

If you suspect a manufacturing or design defect caused your auto accident and serious injury, we invite you to contact our office. A lawyer with experience in defective equipment claims will provide a free consultation and case review.

Kudos to the American Association for Justice (AAJ)! Today AAJ filed comments to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on proposed rulemaking governing the regulation of used cars and the installment of event data recorders in cars, respectively.

The proposed rules by the FTC regarding the sale of used motor vehicles raised consumer protection concerns and AAJ’s comments focused on the liability issues expressed during the Regulatory Review Notice comment period. AAJ specifically opposes the creation of a “safe harbor” for car dealers even if they demonstrate compliance with proposed disclosure requirements.

Comments to NHTSA responded to the agency’s proposal that all light vehicles be equipped with event data recorders (EDRs) or “black boxes” by September 2014. AAJ urged NHTSA to strengthen their regulatory framework by enhancing the availability of EDR data as well as ensuring data accuracy. Also, data recorder equipment malfunctions should not bar litigants from fully investigating their cases through formal discovery requests.

Your parent or other loved one is admitted to a hospital or nursing home because they are ill, or have been injured. They are there because they need assistance or care that they can’t get in their home. Unfortunately, many times patients in hospitals and nursing homes aren’t given the attention they need, and suffer injuries because of malpractice or negligence in their hospital or medical care.

Another common concern for hospitalized patients is posed by the risk of falls. Patients are often disoriented, weak or sedated. Common issues associated with nurses and hospitals are falls due to the lack of the use of rails or supervision during transfers. An elderly confused patient, or a patient narcotized with pain medicine or sedatives, requires full length side rails up so they can’t fall out of bed.

Rails can be important aids in the protection of patients who may be combative, uncooperative or unstable patient. The failure to use rails appropriately may be the basis for a negligence claim. If the nurses’ notes show they did not raise the side rails, or if witnesses establish that the rails were not raised, and the patient falls out of bed and injures himself, those injuries may have been the result of negligence on the part of the hospital and the nurses. Physicians may also be responsible if the doctor was aware that the patient needed the protections afforded by side rails, but failed to order that they be used.

Nurses have an independent duty to ensure the safety of their patients, so you should look to examine the conduct of all three potential causes for the injury: the nurse, the hospital and the doctor. Nurses are trained, and need to be able to determine for themselves whether or not their patients need side rails. If they do, they can and must follow good nursing practice and hospital policy and raise the rails themselves, even without a doctor’s order. In fact, the question of when to use side rails is or should be indicated in the hospital rules of almost every hospital, as set forth by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals (JCAH). If the hospital accepts elderly Medicare-insured patients, that hospital must be certified by the JCAH, and the JCAH states that with elderly, confused, or drugged patients, side rails must be used.

Were the Nurses Too Busy?

Sometimes, the nurses are just too busy to give their patients the care they need. Consider whether there was an emergency that required their attention to other patients. Maybe their unit was understaffed. Through the litigation process known as “discovery”, we can find this information, and obtain the “nursing orders” in effect for all the patients on that nursing unit (floor or ward) and their diagnoses. If the nursing unit was understaffed by a hospital looking to make higher profits from lower labor costs, it’s often easy to see why patients fail to receive the nursing and hospital care they need.