Witnesses gave conflicting accounts as to cause and blame. If you or a loved one incur injuries in an accident, consult a lawyer immediately.

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Her husband, Charles Chapman, a passenger, incurred major injuries and was brought to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital by California paramedics. Anderson was brought to the same hospital but sustained only minor injuries.

The accident remains under investigation to determine the cause of the Honda’s sudden acceleration.

If you or a loved one are victims of a car accident, call a lawyer now to determine your rights.

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Stanley was driving a 39 year old passenger, Manju Stanley. She ended up in Kaiser Medical Center in Santa Rosa. Pacificador was also taken to a local Sonoma County Hospital. The nature of their injuries were not disclosed. Traffic was delayed for an hour, and it is not certain whether Pacificador will be charged.

If you or a loved one have been in an accident and suffered injuries, you may have a case. Call an attorney now.

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If convicted, he could face up to seven years prison time.

Police received a 911 call regarding an assault at the San Rafael Transit Center Sunday morning, according to San Rafael Police.

Witnesses claimed that the suspect was going to disembark fromthe Route 70 bus from San Francisco, when he abruptly turned and hit another passenger with a hammer. The head of the hammer flew off upon impact.

The bus driver intervened and the suspect then fled the bus and pounded the windows from the outside, and shattered it.

Officer Timothy Horvath descended upon the scene and arrested the man. The 39-year-old victim was taken to Marin General Hosspital and treated for head wounds and released. The victim did not know his assailant. There were no other injuries.

If you or your loved one are victims on public transportation, you have legal recourse. Call an attorney now.

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Although relatively unknown among the lay public, degloving injuries are common and occur in a number of situations in which someone else is legally responsible (“liable”) for your injuries. For example, pedestrians who are crossing the street when hit and dragged a distance by a careless (“negligent”) driver often suffer degloving injuries. Dog bite victims can suffer a degloving injury when the dog’s teeth and jaws clamp down on the victim’s arm or leg and rip off the skin or bite off the victim’s scalp. Degloving injuries can occur in traffic accidents, especially when sheet metal breaks off and digs into the driver or passenger, or an occupant is thrown out of the window of a vehicle.

Motorcyclists and bicyclists who are struck by a vehicle and have to lay their bike down can suffer degloving injuries from the contact with the road. Amusement park rides and escalators can cause degloving injuries to young children and other patrons whose hands get trapped between the ride or escalator and the stationary rail due to the opening between the ride or stairs and the rail being too wide. Airplane accidents and helicopter crashes cause some of the worst instances of degloving injuries.

There are three types of degloving injuries: (1) complete degloving in which the skin is actually removed from the limb (“anatomical” degloving); (2) concealed degloving in which the underlying attachment of the skin is torn away (“avulsed”) from the soft tissue, but there is no disruption in the skin itself; and (3) a combination of the anatomical and concealed types of degloving injuries.

Degloving injuries are most commonly seen in the four limbs, that is, the arms and legs. The scalp is also a common site of degloving injuries. Sometimes a person’s face is partly or entirely degloved, such as in a dog-mauling or sliding face first along the roadway, such as a pedestrian or bicyclist who has been struck. Face deglovements require intensive surgical and reconstruction intervention (plastic surgery) over a substantial period of time to repair. However, with the recent success of several face transplants, there is reason to be optimistic that surgeons may soon be able to transplant a cadaver’s face onto a person whose face has been degloved as a matter of course.

Degloving injuries are also due to contact with extremely hot water. For example, when a person’s arm is held in hot or boiling water, or he or she is sprayed with extremely hot water in an accident, he or she will suffer deglove injuries, as the skin that is submerged or sprayed sloughs off to expose inner layers of tissue.

Our Law Firm has experience in diligently representing clients who have been in accidents resulting in degloving injuries. We understand the physical, financial, emotional, and psychological toll a degloving injury can take on the injured victim and his or her family. If you have suffered degloving injuries due to another person’s negligence, call now for a free legal consultation:  415.738.7672

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Suppose you’re in a car stopped for a red light when the vehicle behind you fails to see the light is red and plows into the back of your car at a high rate of speed. Because you are not wearing your seatbelt, you are thrown violently around in the car and suffer critical injuries. Had you been wearing your seatbelt, your injuries would have been relatively minor. Can the driver who hit you bring up the fact that you should have been wearing your seatbelt as the law requires and that he or she should therefore only be responsible (“liable”) for those injuries you would have suffered had you been wearing your seatbelt?

Yes. If the case goes to trial, the jury may be informed of the existence of the law (a “statute”) and may use that knowledge to assist it in determining the reasonableness of driving without a seatbelt. The jury may be given an instruction by the judge upon the criminal statute even when the statute itself does not establish a presumption of negligence under the doctrine of “negligence per se,” that is, it is not automatically wrongful conduct but rather just another factor to be considered by the jury to help it determine whether the injured party acted unreasonably under the circumstances in failing to use a seatbelt.

The bill that ultimately became section 27315 of the Vehicle Code stated that the usage of seat belts offered the “simplest, quickest, and least expensive method of reducing traffic accident casualties” in California. The bill stated that, although seatbelts had been proven effective in virtually all types of traffic collisions, only 17 percent of vehicle occupants voluntarily used them. If the law were enforced, according to the bill, the mandatory seat belt usage law would increase seatbelt usage to 60 percent, thereby considerably reducing accident casualties.

Courts in civil automobile accidents have held that permitting the jury to be instructed on the criminal seatbelt statute helps to educate and convince the parties to the case, the jury, the spectators, and those who hear about the case on television or read about it in the newspaper of the value of seatbelts in preventing serious injuries. Those courts state that it emphasizes the value of seatbelts in preventing serious injuries by warning that a jury may reduce an injured party’s recovery for injuries that would have been avoided by using a seatbelt.

When a person is injured and was not wearing his or her seatbelt, the party at fault has the burden of proving what injuries the victim would have suffered if he or she had been wearing a seat belt as required by law.

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The majority of drownings occur on private property, in the homeowner’s backyard pool or pond. Other common sites for drowning deaths and injuries include the pool or Jacuzzi of an apartment complex, a fitness club, or a hotel or motel. Public pools are also frequently the site of drowning deaths or injuries. Parks that contain lakes or ponds are also the scene of such deaths and injuries. Swimming or playing in the ocean or a lake can lead to tragic consequences.

A private homeowner who has a backyard pool or pond can be held legally responsible (“liable”) for drowning deaths and injuries due to lack of proper supervision of swimmers, failure to comply with codes regarding barriers and fences around the pool, failing to have a working self-closing and self-latching gate to keep out uninvited guests, particularly children, and failure to have a drain lid that prevents a swimmer’s hands or feet from getting caught in it, and violation of other city, county, and state requirements designed to make a swimming pool safer.

Special rules apply to drowning deaths and injuries that occur in public pools or on other public property. As for public pools, California law requires lifeguards to be provided for “any public swimming pool that is of wholly artificial construction and for the use of which a direct fee is charged.” As regards other public swimming pools, such as naturally occurring or that is only partially of artificial construction, California law requires that lifeguard services be provided or signs be posted clearly indicating that lifeguards are not provided.

Sometimes a person joining a health club or other private entity is required to sign a “release of liability” that purports to prohibit lawsuits against the private entity for injuries or deaths in the private pool and jacuzzi resulting from the ordinary carelessness (“negligence”) of its employees. These releases are generally invalid in court, as a person generally cannot avoid legal responsibility (“liability”) for his or her future negligence.

Private landowners, hotels, motels, clubs and associations whose land borders a public lake or ocean generally cannot be held liable for failing to warn its guests or members of the dangers of swimming or playing in the public lake or ocean, even if the landowner knows that it is dangerous to do so. The reason for this rule is that the private landowner does not own or control the beach, and accordingly they are not responsible for injuries that take place in the ocean or public lake.

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This Muni accident took place near Second and King at around 9 p.m.  Brand was leaving an event and on his way home.  An investigation into this accident continues.  Our thoughts and prayers are with the Brand family.

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We all are aware of the annoyance of being stuck behind a driver using a cell phone. Driving in the left lane, all of a sudden we run into a person in front of us driving at 45 miles per hour and wonder, what is this person doing? We pass them only to discover that he/she is busy talking on a cell phone. No surprise here. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) over 1 million U.S. drivers are speaking on cell phones at any given time. In addition, a 2007 survey conducted by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. revealed that out of 1,200 drivers, 73% talk on cell phones while driving.

Although surprisingly enough there are no statistics of accidents caused by cell phone usage, its danger has warranted dozens of countries and several states to outlaw in-vehicle handheld usage. California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Utah, and Washington, DC have all enacted laws banning the use of handheld cell phones. This is a cautionary move, and a good one, because we have all experienced the near-collisions with drivers who are speaking on cell phones.

However, there is a controversy over whether DWW—or driving while yakking—is truly hazardous. Proponents of wireless cell phones say that speaking on a cell phone is as equal a distraction as talking to your kids in the back seat or eating and driving. They argue that laws prohibiting cell phones are punishing the technology not the behavior.

Studies contradict this group’s thesis. A 2005 study of Australian drivers revealed that cell phone users were four times as prone to getting into a car accident as non-users. A 1997 Canadian study also connected cell phone usage with likelihood of accident.

In light of these dangers, hands-free have been utilized by drivers. Inventions like the Bluetooth, which allows you to have the phone anywhere in the car and plays over your speakers, in-car communication systems, and head sets are now utilized in compliance with laws. However, even these devices do not reduce the dangers of cell phone usage. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, there is enough information to infer that even though hands-free phones remove the physical distraction of handling a cell phone, it does not eliminate the cognitive distraction. That is, you can be so emotionally involved in the telephone call that your brain will not be able to react quickly enough to hazardous conditions on the road. Your conversation exacts greater concentration which shifts your eyes and concentration from the road.

With increased cell phone usage by drivers on the job, the issue of employer and manufacturer liability also looms. Despite the fact that only a few high-profile cases have reached court, employers worry that they may be held liable for collisions initiated by their employees who are driving and carrying on business on their cell phones. Under what is called the doctrine of vicarious responsibility, employers may be held liable for the negligent acts of employees carried out while on the job. They may also be held accountable if they fail to institute a safety policy for cell phones.

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We hope you find the resources here educational.  Should you have questions anytime about your particular case, please feel free to contact one of our attorneys for a free legal consultation.  

Our San Francisco website provides information covering the Northern California areas including San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and the surrounding areas.

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