Dr Shezad Malik Law Firm has offices based in Fort Worth and Dallas and represents people who have suffered catastrophic and serious personal injuries including wrongful death, caused by the negligence or recklessness of others. We specialize in Personal Injury trial litigation and focus our energy and efforts on those we represent.
Sugar Land-based Imperial Sugar has reached a settlement with federal regulators seeking to fine the company for safety violations after a 2008 explosion at its Georgia refinery killed 14 workers near Savannah, GA.
The Feb. 7, 2008, explosion killed 14 workers and injured 36. Investigators determined that dangerous levels of sugar dust accumulated inside the plant and ignited like gunpowder. RUSS BYNUM , AP, Houston Chronicle 07/07/2010
Read Article: Houston Chronicle
The 2005 BP plant disaster in Texas City has taken on new relevance, because the investigations that were done in its aftermath reveal so much about the company that is responsible for what’s happening now in the Gulf. Government probes, court filings and BP’s own confidential investigations paint a picture of a company that ignored repeated warnings about the plant’s deteriorating condition and instead remained focused on minimizing costs and maximizing profits.
According to a safety audit BP conducted just before the 2005 blast, many of the plant’s more than 2,000 employees arrived at work each day with an “exceptional degree of fear of catastrophic incidents.” What BP has — or hasn’t done — to improve conditions at the Texas City plant since the explosion is also laid out in the documents. Ryan Knutson, ProPublica’s Lisa Schwartz, Nicholas Kusnetz and Sheelagh McNeill contributed to this report., ProPublica 07/06/2010
Read Article: ProPublica
Natural gas utilities might have to dig up neighborhoods across Texas to replace hundreds of thousands of steel service lines to prevent explosions.
The Texas Railroad Commissioner will propose that utilities replace the lines, which bring natural gas from pipelines under neighborhood streets to homes.
Texas has at least 525,000 steel lines, maybe a million. Regulators targeted the service lines after several deadly home explosions. The problem is that the old service lines are made of rigid steel, which can shift and corrode. ELIZABETH SOUDER , The Dallas Morning News 07/06/2010
Read Article: The Dallas Morning News
Utility provider PG&E has agreed to pay $5 million to the mother of a 20-year-old woman who was killed in a car accident involving one of the company drivers.
Mary Bernstein and a friend were killed in the wreck in 2006 when John Mayfield, a diabetic, blacked out a the wheel after forgetting to test his blood sugar. Under the terms of the agreement, PG&E agreed to record the resolution as a judgment, rather than a confidential settlement.
Mary’s mother Lisa has also said she will petition California legislators to pass regulations that require companies to more closely monitor their fleet drivers. Tracey Kaplan, San Jose Mercury News 07/06/2010
Read Article: San Jose Mercury News
We were recently featured on Dallas CBS Channel 11 evening news.
Please click here to read the interview and watch the video link.
Our client suffered massive brain damage following the use of Yaz.
On the front page of its Business Day section, the New York Times (7/7, B1, Greenhouse) reports, “Wal-Mart Stores has spent a year and more than a million dollars in legal fees battling a $7,000 fine that federal safety officials assessed after shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart employee to death at a store on Long Island on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008.”
The company’s “all-out battle against the relatively minor penalty has mystified and even angered some federal officials,” but Wal-Mart “says that regulators are trying to enforce a vague standard of protection when there was no previous OSHA or retail industry guidance on how to prevent what it views as an ‘unforeseeable incident.’
Read the full story here at the New York Times.
A Maryland jury awarded $2.025 million to the family of an inmate who was hit by a truck and killed while he was picking up trash on work detail in 2007.
According to the lawsuit, Rodney Jennings was crushed by a speeding dump truck that was exiting the highway he was working on.
The lawsuit also alleges that jail officials mistakenly believed that a vehicle had been in place to block the exit ramp from traffic, keeping the inmates safe. Ruben Castaneda, The Washington Post 06/25/2010
Read Article: The Washington Post
The Minneapolis Star Tribune (6/23, Levy) reports on a case before the Minnesota Court of Appeals in which Burlington Northern Santa Fe is appealing “a record $21.6 million” verdict awarded “to the families of four young people killed in a 2003 train-car accident in Anoka,” MN.
BNSF attorney Sam Hanson said that Washington County Judge Ellen Maas’ “failure ‘to eliminate Minnesota state common law and replace it with federal regulations’ when instructing the jury at the start of the trial ‘entitled’ BNSF to a new trial, based on federal preemption.”
ABC World News (6/28, story 7, 2:20, Sawyer) reported, “Two major studies have found the medicine called Avandia [rosiglitazone] could create a significant new risk of heart attack and other serious problems.”
The Washington Post (6/29, Stein) reports that one study, “involving more than 35,500 people, found that Avandia significantly raises the chances of a heart attack.” A separate study “of more than 227,500 Medicare patients — the largest such study to date — found that the drug boosts the risk for strokes, heart failure, and death.”
Los Angeles Times (6/29, Roan) reports that the first study “found Avandia raised the risk of heart attacks by 28% to 39% as compared with other diabetes medications. The study was published online in the Archives of Internal Medicine.”
Bloomberg News (6/29, Cortez) quotes Steven Nissen, MD, lead author of the study, as saying, “I think we’ve got more than enough evidence to say this drug should not be used.”
USA Today (6/29, Marcus) reports that in the second study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “scientists from the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration evaluated data from 227,571 Medicare beneficiaries taking either Avandia or Actos [pioglitazone hydrochloride].” The investigators found “no differences in the risk for heart attack between the two drugs, but the study found that compared with Actos, Avandia was associated with a 25% increased risk of heart failure, a 27% increased risk of stroke and a 14% increased risk of death.”
Lawmakers call for Avandia to be pulled from market. The Hill (6/28, Pecquet) “Healthwatch” blog reported that “Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) on Monday called for the diabetes drug Avandia to be pulled from the market in the wake of two new medical studies.” In a joint statement, Sen. Grassley said, “The serious issues delineated in these two new, independent reports put additional onus on advisory committee members when they meet in July.”
Bloomberg News (6/29, Peterson, Cortez) reports that “Grassley and Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, in February released a report that said Glaxo knew Avandia may cause heart damage several years before” a “study documented the risk.”
A lawsuit has been filed against the University of Cincinnati police and the University Hospital in the Taser death of a psychiatric patient.
Kelly Brinson was tased by police officers while under restraints at the hospital, the lawsuit claims, sending him into cardiac arrest and killing him three days later.
Brinson suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, delusions and other mental disorders. The lawsuit accuses police of using extreme force and hospital officials of negligence in caring for Brinson. Eileen Kelle, The Cincinnati Enquirer 06/28/2010
Read Article: The Cincinnati Enquirer
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