Dallas Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Blog

A Phillipsburg man was awarded nearly $6 million for injuries suffered when a large tree limb dropped onto their car in 2006.

Kenneth Matlock is permanently disabled and can no longer work as a truck driver, his career for more than 20 years.

On July 4, 2006 Matlock, his wife and three children were travelling on Route 29 when the limb from an oak tree, fell onto their car. Matlock and his wife suffered broken necks and he lost the use of his right hand after the limb fell from a height of about 20 feet. Kenneth Matlock, now 43, lost control of the SUV, which continued north 220 feet until hitting a guard rail on the opposite side of the road.

Continue reading "Jury Awards Man $6 M When a Tree Falls on his Car" »

A Florida jury ordered cigarette maker Philip Morris USA to pay $300 million in damages to a 61-year-old ex-smoker named Cindy Naugle who is wheelchair-bound by emphysema.

The Broward Circuit Court jury assessed $56.6 million in past and future medical expenses against the company, part of Altria Group Inc, as well as $244 million in punitive damages.

The verdict is the largest of the so-called Engle progeny cases that have been tried so far, both sides said.

Philip Morris will seek further review of the verdict because of "numerous erroneous rulings by the trial judge," Philip Morris spokesman Murray Garnick said in a statement.

Continue reading "Philip Morris Ordered to Pay $300 M to Smoker" »

A nearly $3 million arbitration award was won by a former KBR employee who said she was raped in Iraq.

Tracy K. Barker, wife of a U.S. Army sergeant and the mother of five, was awarded $2.93 million in private arbitration proceedings in Houston.

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A Richmond jury awarded a librarian at the Library of Virginia $8 M in damages, the amount sought by her lawyers after the woman was struck by a GRTC Transit System bus and severely injured.

Meikiu Lo, now 34, suffered spinal and shoulder damage and multiple hip and pelvis fractures that resulted in chronic pain after a GRTC bus making a right turn struck her as she crossed the street beside the library.

She had waited on the sidewalk and was two-thirds of the way across the street when the bus, struck her, according to her attorney.

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Two Pfizer Inc. units’ hormone- replacement therapy drugs caused an Illinois woman’s breast cancer, making them liable for at least $6.3 million in damages, a Philadelphia jury ruled.

Jurors found that the combination of Wyeth’s Prempro and Pharmacia & Upjohn’s Provera menopause drugs was a substantial contributing factor in Donna Kendall’s breast cancer. Kendall, 66, had a double mastectomy in 2002 after taking the hormone-replacement drugs for 11 years.

The panel will hear evidence Nov. 23 on whether Wyeth and Upjohn should pay punitive damages over their handling of the drugs. Wyeth has lost six of nine jury verdicts, including the last four in a row, over the drugs since 2006. This is Upjohn’s third loss at the jury stage. A trial judge threw out one verdict and another is on appeal.

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The Iowa Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings and said a minister who crashed his car trying to avoid a trampoline that had blown into the road during a storm can sue its owners.

Thompson and his wife filed a lawsuit against the owners of the trampoline, Kaczinski and Lockwood, saying they were responsible for the 2006 crash near Earlham in Madison County because they had not secured the disassembled trampoline.

Court records show Kaczinski and Lockwood had taken the trampoline apart during the summer of 2006 and placed its parts in their yard about 38 feet from a gravel road nearby. A few weeks later, on Sept. 17, 2006, Thompson, who is a minister, was driving down the road from the church when he swerved to avoid the trampoline top, which has blown into the road during a storm the night before.

Continue reading "Iowa Supreme Court Orders Trial in Trampoline Case" »

Federal regulators are demanding changes to labels on devices that deliver pain killers directly to joints after surgery, in response to numerous reports of irreversible cartilage damage.

The Food and Drug Administration said from 2006 to 2008 it received 35 reports of severe cartilage damage in patients who were given pain pumps after joint surgery. Nearly all the reports involved patients who had shoulder surgery; more than half needed additional surgery, including joint replacement.

Companies making pain pumps include I-Flow Corp. and Stryker Corp. Makers of the anesthetics used in pain pumps, such as APP Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Hospira Inc., will also have to update their labels. The firms have 30 days to propose language that includes a warning about the potential for cartilage destruction, according to the FDA.

Continue reading "FDA Orders Change to Pain Pump Warning Labels." »

A federal judge has denied a request by Cintas Corp. for summary judgment in a 2007 wrongful death lawsuit in Tulsa, a ruling that paves the way for a jury to hear the case against the nation's largest uniform supplier next year.

U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan wrote in a 31-page opinion that there is ''conflicting evidence'' whether Cintas managers knew workers in company laundries were breaking safety rules to save time, but did nothing to stop them.

Eagan wrote that videotape evidence taken from the Tulsa plant ''shows employees routinely disregarding Cintas' safety procedures.''

Amalia Diaz Torres is suing Cincinnati-based Cintas, claiming the company's plant managers knew about -- and even encouraged -- the dangerous working practices that led to the death of her husband, Eleazar Torres-Gomez, in 2007.

Continue reading "Trial to Proceed in Cintas Wrongful Death Lawsuit" »

Six months after the California Supreme Court lowered standing requirements for consumer class actions, a state trial judge has certified a class of consumers who purchased contact lens solution linked to an infection that can cause blindness.

Orange County, Calif., Superior Court Judge David C. Velasquez ruled on Nov. 12 against Abbott Medical Optics Inc., formerly Advanced Medical Optics Inc.

Plaintiffs attorney Mark Robinson, credited the certification order to the California Supreme Court's May 18 decision in In re Tobacco II Cases. That ruling resolved a legal dispute over Proposition 64, a 2004 ballot initiative designed to curb consumer cases filed under California's unfair competition law by requiring that plaintiffs show actual injury. In that case, in which Robinson represented tobacco smokers, the California Supreme Court said that class actions alleging consumer fraud can go forward even if not all the class members have suffered injuries caused by deceptive advertising.

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Two men who became seriously ill after working at a Hicksville magazine distributor located atop a former nuclear fuel plant have been awarded $12 million in a federal negligence lawsuit against Verizon Communications Inc.

Gerard DePascale, and Liam Neville, each were awarded $5 million, and DePascale's wife, Joanne, $2 million, after their lawyers successfully argued the men were sickened by toxins that remained at the site years after operations ceased in 1967.

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An Albemarle County, Va jury awarded $5.25 million to the parents and sibling of a 16-year-old county girl who was killed in a car accident in 2008.

The jury found that Don B. Swisher Trucking Corp., McCann Delivery Service and Kenneth Barbour were negligent when Barbour hit Sydney Aichs’ 1999 Chevrolet Cavalier with a tractor-trailer while running a red light on May 9, 2008.

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Maximiliano Calcaño is 2 and was born with no arms. Maximiliano's mother, Anajai Calcaño, lives in a small house with no indoor plumbing in a rural village in northern Dominican Republic, not far from where coal ash generated by Virginia-based AES Corp. wound up at the edge of the sea.

More than 50,000 tons of coal ash laden with heavy metals was left at a port abutting local homes for years while the company, politicians, prosecutors, environmental activists and bureaucrats argued -- and residents got sick.

Continue reading "Dominican Republic blames U.S.Power Company for Birth Defects" »