Washington Injury Law Blog

A report from the AP today details how managers of the peanut butter plant at the center of the recent peanut butter recall, which has poisoned over 500 with salmonella, knew its peanut butter was contaminated with salmonella and shipped the stuff anyway. Company tests revealed salmonella present in products made by the company at least 12 times, but the company never cleaned the production lines. They just continued to ship the product out. As a Kirkland personal injury attorney I’m outraged and fuming mad.
 
These greedy corporate executives valued money over human lives. They ought to be locked up for the 8 people that died as a result of their gross negligence/intentional poisoning. You may even be able to make a case for premeditated murder. These corporate scumbags knew their food was contaminated with salmonella, knew it was dangerous and could kill people, and still shipped it without uttering one word of warning. Un-freakin’-believable! I hope the Georgia attorney general charges them with murder or at the very least manslaughter.
 
This is a great example of why this country needs and depends on trial lawyers, which I’m proud to be, to keep reckless corporations in check. The U.S. government has taken a largely hands off approach to regulating the safety of products produced by companies, be it food or some other product. The duty of holding corporations accountable for the heinous injuries they cause by producing tainted and defected products falls to the consumer and the trial lawyers they hire to help them. The next time some politician calls for tort reform and blames trial attorneys for all the ills of society remember this outbreak of salmonella that injured over 500 and killed 8 all because of corporate lust for money.
 
Every product produce by Peanut Corp. of America out of Blakely, Georgia has been recalled. Over 400 products used this company’s peanut butter.
 
Max Meyers, Esq.

A shocking and disturbing clinical study came out yesterday indicating kids that play football from the Pop Warner level all the way to the NFL risk developing a degenerative brain diseased caused primarily by repeated concussions. Boston University School of Medicine researchers were shocked to find early signs of the concussion related brain disease (Traumatic Encephalopathy aka CTE) in the brain of an 18 year-old football player following his death from an unrelated cause. The doctors warn that the study is another powerful sign that players, coaches and sports medical staff members need treat concussions with great respect. There a crisis surrounding repeated head trauma in contact sports that really needs to be seriously addressed.

In recent years the time players sits out following a concussion has increased and the treatment of concussions has become dramatically better. However, there’s still a long way to go. I am a Football official at Pop Warner level through varsity High School. I’ve been the first person over to a kid who’s down following a big hit, and you can see it in the player’s eyes and facial expression that his head took a big hit and he may have a concussion. The last think I or you want is for our kids to begin down the road toward brain disease from playing a sport.

The study of concussions in contact sports has been fairly slow. Helmet technology has improved but does not fully prevent concussions. If you are a parent of a young football player I would definitely be very concerned following any concussion your child suffers. And you should be doubly concerned if your child starts suffering multiple concussions from particpating in contact sports.

The BU researchers predicted that had the 18 year-old lived he would have developed early-onset dementia that would have advanced unabated until his death. Researchers say they cannot estimate CTE’s prevalence among football players, though some athletes appear to be more susceptible than others, indicating there may be a genetic link. Because the research remains in its early stages, it has not yet been determined how many blows to the head or how severe the hits must be to cause CTE.

If you play football or have a loved one who does play and you suffer a concussion, please pay special attention to your health and get all the information you can about recovering from a concussion before you step back on the field.

Be safe!

Max Meyers, Esq.

Source story:

Seattle PI – Football players head trauma has ’shocking’ impact 

If you’ve been living under a rock the past few weeks you may not have heard about the HUGE salmonella outbreak in peanut butter products across the country. 500 people have fallen ill, 280 of them have been children, and 8 people have died as a result of the salmonella illness. This is one of, if not, the worst food poisoning outbreaks in recent history.

The outbreak has been traced to a single peanut butter plant in Georgia that has been shut down now, but was operated by Peanut Corporation of America. The salmonella outbreak has forced the recall of over 180 products, which include crackers, cookies and treats made by Starbucks, General Mills, Kellog’s and other companies.

Common symptoms of salmonella poisoning include – diarrhea, vomiting and fever. It usually clears up without treatment, but can cause death in the very young or patients with other serious illnesses. For your families safety I would recommend avoiding peanut butter products and checking out the list of recalled products on the FDA website.

Additional information about the peanut butter recall can also be found on the FDA website.

Max Meyers, Esq.

Thousands of people have surgery every month in Washington. Medical errors can occur during those surgeries that are preventable. Things like operating on the wrong body part, leaving sponges in the patient’s body, or even doing the wrong procedure on a patient happen all too frequently.

A recent study has shown that doctors who followed a 19-item checklist of steps before surgery cut the death rate from surgery by almost 50%. Wow! Why hasn’t this been done before? Dr. Atul Gawande a Harvard surgeon published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing the decreased death rate and that complications from surgery are also reduced by 1/3 when the 19-item checklist was used.

U.S. hospitals are required to take some precautions, but not the 19-item checklist used in the study which is far more detailed than most hospitals currently use.  Hopefully, all hospitals will adopt this concept soon, it seems like a no brainer to me.

If you’re having surgery in the near future ask your surgeon if the 19-item checklist recommended by the World Health Organization will be used. If not, ask why not and if it can be used. It will significantly reduced your risk or complications or death during and following your surgery.

After all approximately 100,000 people die each year from preventable medical errors. It just makes sense to do all you can to make sure you don’t end up as one of those statistics.

Max Meyers, Esq.

The seat everyone avoids turns out is the safest seat in the car. The uncomfortable backseat hump otherwise known as the back middle seat has been shown by University of Buffalo researchers to be 16% safer than any other seats in a car. Who knew? Overall, riding in the back is 59% to 86% safer than riding in the front, and riding on the hump is 25% safer than riding in rear window seats. Wow!!

Those of you with kids, this just reinforces the idea that children should ride in the backseat. Especially in cars with front passenger airbags. Airbags can be very dangerous for small people, be it children or small adults. Do you know what your car manual recommends for front seat passenger in regards to the airbag. Newer cars often have a sensor in the front passenger seat that turns off the airbag if the passenger is not a certain weight. Older cars may not have this sensor, so you might want check this before you have small children ride in the front seat.

 Safe travels,

 Max Meyers, Esq.