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The holidays are a wonderful time of year for gathering with family and friends. The holidays are also, regrettably, a time of increased incidences of people drinking and driving. If you or a loved one is injured by a drunk driver, it is important to understand what the law allows you to do, and what steps you should take.

Recent accidents in Calcasieu and Washington parishes highlight the risks, and potentially tragic consequences, of driving while intoxicated. When someone is injured in Louisiana as a result of another’s drunk driving, that person is entitled to recover for the damages caused by the drunk driver. Article 2315 of the Louisiana Civil Code generally provides a right to sue for damages, and Article 2315.4 specifically adds a right to seek exemplary damages in cases where the injured person proves that the driver acted with “wanton or reckless disregard for the rights and safety of others.”

You may be unfamiliar with the term “exemplary damages,” but may recognize them as “punitive” damages. Injured persons rarely recover exemplary damages in auto accident actions, except in cases involving drunk drivers. To succeed in receiving exemplary damages, you must show that the driver, in deciding to get behind the wheel in an impaired state, acted with conscious indifference to the consequences of his or her actions. This means that he or she knew or should have known that getting behind the wheel would likely lead to harm, but proceeded to drive anyway.

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The family of an Ascension Parish woman tragically killed along Interstate 10 successfully settled a civil suit against the restaurant that served alcohol to a man who they claimed caused the fatal accident by driving drunk. The family’s suit alleged that the restaurant served the man more than a gallon of beer, even after the man became “obviously intoxicated,” according to a Southeast Texas Record report. Because the crash occurred just outside Louisiana, in Texas, the family was permitted to seek compensation from the restaurant, in addition to the driver.

Amber Roussel and her husband were traveling from their home near Gonzales along westbound I-10 on July 30, 2012. As the couple drove, Caleb Harley and Derek McBride were drag racing along eastbound I-10. McBride lost control of his truck and crashed. The crash separated the brush guard from his truck, which launched into the windshield of the Roussel car, killing the wife.

The family’s action, which sought $32 million in damages, sued both McBride and Hooters Restaurant, where McBride and Harley had been drinking prior to the crash. According to the family, the restaurant served McBride 144 ounces of beer, along with two shots of liquor. Even a 220-pound man, who waited 30 minutes before driving after consuming that quantity of alcohol, would have a blood alcohol level of .250, according to Bloodalcoholcalculator.org. .250 is more than three times the legal limit in each of Texas and Louisiana.

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Greater New Orleans provides a wealth of amazing tourist attractions. The area also boasts several outstanding institutions of higher learning, including Tulane University, Loyola University and Xavier University. The area’s attractions offer artistic, cultural and historical enrichment, but they also present, like any other location, the risk of injury. Whether you’re a student from out of state, or a visiting tourist or business convention attendee, knowing the proper steps to take if you’re injured here is essential to minimizing your stress and maximizing the protection of your rights.

Certainly, one of the most popular destinations for tourists and college students is Canal Street and the French Quarter. Recent events, though, have shown the potential for harm in this area. This past summer, a woman sued over injuries she suffered as a result of stepping into an uncovered water meter hole on Canal Street. A man also filed a negligence suit against a French Quarter bar in January as a result of a severe beating he received in the bar’s parking lot.

While neither the woman not the man may have been students or tourists, their injuries nevertheless spotlight the potential misfortunes that can befall students or tourists visiting New Orleans. Regrettably, injured students and tourists do not know how to handle this situation. Even if they recognize their injuries right away, they may not know where to turn. Others might not discover their injuries until they have returned home, and may feel at a loss regarding how to find an attorney now that they have left the state.

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Experiencing the kind of pain or illness that is bad enough to lead you to the emergency room is bad enough. When the medical providers whose assistance you seek fail to run the necessary tests to determine an accurate diagnosis, and you require invasive, emergency surgery two months later, that is certainly far worse. But that is exactly what happened to a woman when she visited a Jefferson Parish hospital recently, according to a medical lawsuit she filed in state court in Gretna.

Delores Penman-Sisson’s medical odyssey started with a bout of extreme nausea, vomiting and lower abdominal pain. She traveled to the East Jefferson General Hospital’s emergency room for assistance. While there, the staff allegedly administered several pregnancy tests that involved analyzing a sample of urine. However, because the woman had an ovarian cyst, she could not provide an adequate urine sample to yield a conclusive test. In addition to urine-based pregnancy tests, another type of pregnancy test analyzed the woman’s blood.

Two months later, medical professionals determined that the woman actually was pregnant. She had an ectopic pregnancy. In a normal pregnancy, a fertilized egg attaches itself to the lining of the mother’s uterus. In an ectopic pregnancy, the fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the uterus. The most common type of ectopic pregnancy occurs in the fallopian tubes (known as a “tubal pregnancy,”) but ectopic pregnancies may also occur in the abdominal cavity, ovary or cervix.

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A St. Bernard Parish man almost certainly had no idea the peril that awaited him when he decided to use a common device to clear his sinuses. In the wake of the man’s death from a rare, brain-eating amoeba, the makers of the medical device and the home water heater the man used have settled a wrongful death claim initiated by the man’s parents, the Washington Post reports.

In 2011, Jeffrey Cusimano decided to use a “neti pot” to clear his sinuses. Neti pots work by thinning mucus and flushing it from the user’s sinus passages. After using the device, a parasitic amoeba entered the man’s system and he developed meningioencephalitis. The amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, enters the body through the nose. Cusimano died on June 7, 2011.

The man’s parents sued both the neti pot manufacturer, NeilMed Pharmaceuticals Inc., and the maker of his home water heater, Rheem Manufacturing Co., in federal court. The family alleged that both devices contributed to the fatal case of meningitis. The water heater was defective and unreasonably dangerous, the parents maintained, because it failed to heat the home’s water to a temperature high enough to kill the amoeba. The neti pot was also defective and unreasonable dangerous because its construction or material makeup allowed the amoeba build up and flourish, according to the complaint.

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An early morning wreck left a young man dead after crashing into the rear of a slow-moving logging truck. After investigators determined that the truck was improperly lit, the driver received a six-month prison sentence. Now, a jury has resolved the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the young driver’s family by awarding them $2.8 million in damages, according to mlive.com
22-year-old Christopher J. Groulx was on his way to work when his Pontiac car slammed into the back of a logging truck at around 6:20 a.m. He died at the scene. While most typical rear-end collisions involve a rear driver at fault, this was not a typical collision. Police investigators determined that the logging truck lacked the required lighting needed to make it sufficiently visible. The logging truck was also moving at an extremely slow rate of speed (around 15 mph.)

Based upon the improper lighting, prosecutors charged the truck driver with a moving violation causing death, and the driver served a six month jail sentence. Subsequently, Groulx’s family sued the driver and the trucking company for wrongful death. The family argued that, because of the improper lighting, Groulx could not see the truck. The attorney for the driver and the trucking company contended that the young driver was speeding or was inattentive either due to sleep deprivation (from having attended a music concert until 1 a.m. the previous evening) or a cell phone distraction. The family countered by asserting that the man’s cell phone was in his pocket at the time of the impact.

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Nursing homes are tasked with a great responsibility: the care and treatment of those who can least care for themselves, usually the disabled or the elderly. While most facilities undertake this task with the utmost care, some fall short of providing even a basic level of care. That is what two juries, one in Florida and one in West Virginia, concluded as they handed down massive damages awards against nursing homes whose negligent care hastened the deaths of a pair of patients.

In Charleston, West Virginia, Dorothy Douglas stayed at the Heartland of Charleston nursing home for three weeks in 2009. By the time Douglas’s son moved her to another nursing home, she had lost 15 pounds and was near death from dehydration. She passed away shortly thereafter.

Lawyers for Douglas’s son argued at trial that the facility prioritized maximizing patient numbers while minimizing the number of staff, which led to the negligent level of care that ultimately killed Dorothy. A Kanawha County jury agreed, and handed down a $91.5 million judgment. Of that amount, $80 million constituted punitive damages. Earlier this year, a Kanawha County judge rejected the nursing home’s request for a new trial.

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Patients are often fearful of many things when they enter a hospital for surgery. One thing they likely don’t think about, and shouldn’t need to, is having surgical implements or materials forgotten and left in their bodies after the procedure’s conclusion. One Louisiana man claims he recently suffered such a fate at the West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero. According to the patient, the hospital staff failed to account for all of the surgical sponges it used during his colon cancer surgery and left one behind, leading to fever, drainage, bloating and swelling.

Charles Anderson initially faced the stressful news, following a colonoscopy, that he had colon cancer. In the spring of 2010, Anderson underwent surgery to treat his cancer. Anderson’s problems worsened after the surgery. He began experiencing high fevers shortly after the procedure and later noticed heavy abdominal bloating and swelling in his right abdomen. That fall, doctors performed a body scan on Anderson, whereupon they discovered a surgical sponge inside his body. The forgotten sponge required Anderson to undergo another surgery to remove it.

The patient filed a medical malpractice suit against the hospital and his surgeon for his injuries. Anderson contended that the hospital and the surgeon failed to maintain a proper count of the surgical sponges used on (and removed from) his body, failed to have proper safety procedures in place, failed to ensure competence among the staff, and failed to monitor the post-operative infection he developed to a proper extent. Anderson is seeking an unspecified amount of damages for his pain and suffering, medical expenses, emotional distress, mental anguish, loss of earning capacity, impairment and disfigurement.

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The call for tougher laws regulating potentially vicious dogs is being made in Louisiana. The vicious attack of a Westwego, LA woman has thrown a new light on the discussion. Linda Henry, a former pitbull lover and owner, was mauled by 3 of her own pitbulls, losing both arms, an eyelid and part of her scalp in the attack. She is thankful she survived the attack but she has since, understandably, changed her tune on pitbull regulation.

City Council member Glenn Green is one of the public advocates on her side, hoping to pass a proposal that would levy strict regulations against pit bull owners. One of his aims is to impose a one hundred thousand dollar liability insurance policy on owners of the breed. Opponents of the proposal claim that focusing solely on pit bulls is not a solution to the problem and in fact unfairly singles out pit bull owners without addressing problems involving other breeds.
Louisiana is a “strict liability state,” which means the victim of a dog bite needs to prove the attack was something the owner of the dog could have reasonably prevented. Provided this can be done, the dog’s owner will be held responsible for damages and, in addition, may be fined for failure to properly follow current regulations governing the restraint of their pet.

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The Cardone legal team has discussed on this blog the risks of medical malpractice and the possible methods of recovery. The potential to be injured by a trained professional, however, is not limited to the medical field, we put our body’s safety in the hands of “trained” professionals on a daily basis and may need remedies if something goes wrong.

Back in 2010, a negligence lawsuit was filed in Orleans Parish District Court against a Louisiana personal trainer who was accused of causing the injuries of a New Orleans woman. The woman, Ms. Wallace, participated in a weight-training program under the supervision and guidance of the personal trainer.

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