Traumatic brain injury can be deadly. It certainly alters a person’s life.

This on-the-job injury case involved a railroad worker. John Doe (whose name has been changed to protect the victim) had worked for the Kansas City Southern Railway Company for a number of years when he was involved in an accident.
The fateful event happened in 2009 when Doe, a section foreman, and his crew were removing broken rail of a section of track. Suddenly, the boom of the crane struck the ball of the rail still loaded in the rack of a railway section truck. The impact rolled it over the forks on the rack and the rail dropped like a stone to the ground. On its way down, Doe was hit and sustained severe back, neck and head injuries.

From that day forward, Doe suffered unbelievable physical pain and suffering, lost wages, mental anguish, loss of current and future earnings, diminished earning capacity and enormous medical bills that he was unable to pay. Doe hopes that his case will be successful, and that he will be able to recover enough money to take care of himself for the future.
Cases like this are tricky and may also involve worker’s compensation. In some states, a worker is not able to sue his employer because he is being paid workers’ compensation. Since this varies state by state, it is something that needs to be checked with an Austin personal injury lawyer if an accident like this takes place in Texas.

Workers’ compensation is always an issue when workers are injured on the job, but each case is different, so never assume you do not have a case or that you cannot get compensation. The details of the case need to be discussed in depth with an experienced Austin personal injury lawyer. As things currently stand, Texas private employers may choose whether or not they will offer workers’ compensation insurance to their employees. Typically, the employer is mandated to tell the worker if they have coverage or not.

Workers’ compensation pays the medical bills and covers a portion of a worker’s lost wages if they are injured on the job or are affected by a work-related illness and the employer has coverage under the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act, Title 5, Subtitle A, Labor Code. It can also cover for vocational rehabilitation and retraining when an injury prevents a worker from going back to their normal job, and they need to learn a new position to be able to work with a longer-term injury or disability.

Brooks Schuelke is an Austin personal injury attorney with Perlmutter & Schuelke LLP. Contact an Austin injury lawyer at Civtrial.com or (512) 476-4944.

A dozen former National Football League players have filed a personal injury suit against the NFL and others for allegedly overusing the painkiller Toradol.  The lawsuit alleges that teams and trainers were regularly dispensing the medication, which made it difficult to know when players had sustained serious injuries, including concussions.  The emphasis is on concussions and the long-term effects of concussions on the league’s players.  The specific allegations are that the players have residual concussion symptoms, including anxiety, depression, memory loss, severe headaches, sleeplessness, and dizziness.

This story serves as a reminder for several lessons.  First, it is again a reminder that in sports there are many injuries that aren’t just accidents.  While some injuries are unavoidable, teams owe duties to players to take reasonable precautions to make sure the players are safe.  That means not overly medicating them, not forcing them to practice in unreasonably hot or dangerous conditions, etc.

Additionally, the story is a reminder about the danger of concussions.  I feel like I’m on a one-man crusade on this blog, but car wreck and other injury victims need to be on the lookout for symptoms of concussions.  They are sometimes difficult to diagnose, but they can have long-term health consequences.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a sports-related incident or have suffered a concussion in an accident caused by the negligence of others, please give us a call, and we’ll do our best to help you out.

In 2009, USC running back Stafon Johnson was working out at USC facilities trying to get ready for the upcoming NFL draft, when a bar carrying 275 pounds fell on his neck, almost killing him.  Johnson subsequently filed suit against USC and the USC strength and conditioning coach.  And the personal injury suit settled this week.

Johnson’s lawsuit was one in an increasing number of suits filed as a result of sports injuries where schools, coaches, trainers and others expose athletes to unnecessary risks, in some cases almost guaranteeing serious injury.

 As I’ve discussed on this blog, a number of former NFL players have filed suit against the NFL and others for failing to warn of the dangers or to protect them from head injuries. 

In Texas, those suits take another predictable form — heat stroke.  While many schools do a good job of protecting their athletes, some coaches insist on pressing the limits and schedule summer or pre-season football workouts in the heat of the day.  Predictably, that kind of conduct can cause serious heat stroke illnesses or even death.  These types of injuries don’t have to happen.  University of North Carolina professor Frederick Mueller, who studies these types of injuries, is quick to point out that all of these heat stroke deaths are preventable with proper precautions, and thus, any death is inexcusable.

These types of injuries aren’t limited to football.  They can occur in any sport where proper precautions or oversite aren’t offered. 

Just remember that the next time you see a sports-related injury, it might be more than an “accident” — it might be a predictable injury caused by someone failing to do their job.

A study released today found that the number of US pedestrians killed or badly injured while wearing headphones has almost tripled in the last six years.  Not surprisingly, most of the victims are teens or young adults.

More than half of the deaths involved pedestrians being run down by trains, and many involved incidents where the train or vehicle driver were sounding a horn trying to warn the pedestrian of the potential problem.

A constant issue I hear from personal injury clients is that doctors often do a poor job communicating with patients about the patients’ injuries and their course of care.

But with the internet, there are a number of ways for clients to learn about their injuries and treatment themselves.  It is the internet, so some of the information is horrible, but much of it is quite good.

One source that I have found helpful is Up To Date (www.uptodate.com). 

Up To Date is an online medical encyclopedia.  It is written and edited by doctors, updated frequently, and footnoted very well so you can follow up on studies.  It is designed to be used by medical professionals — hospitals, clinics, doctors, etc.  It is set up so that it provides basic information about conditions and then answers many of the most popular clinical questions about conditions.  When you look at the website, you’ll see that it receives good reviews from doctors and medical facilities from all over the world. 

But it also markets to patients.  Up To Date currently has a subscription option where you can have unlimited access to the website for 7 days for $19.95 or 30 days of unlimited access for $44.95.

If you have a condition that you want to learn more about, you might consider paying these fees so that you really understand your condition and your future.

Some accidents happen in odd ways and end in tragedy. This reported case devastated a young man’s family.

The 26-year-old man killed in this accident was out riding his bicycle on a nice day. He was an experienced rider, but that did not help him on that fateful day. The man had nowhere else to go but under a fuel tanker to try and avoid an accident. He would have made it, had the tanker not run over him.

How did something like that happen? The man was riding his bike south in the northbound lanes on a busy avenue. Alongside him was an 18-wheeler from a local fuel company, also traveling south, just about parallel to the bike rider. The trucker suddenly turned into the man’s path as he went to enter a parking lot.

There was nothing the biker could do but try and stop. He did not succeed, and his bike slammed into the tanker, sliding under the truck. A wrongful death? Yes and the young man’s family filed a lawsuit asking for compensation for medical and funeral expenses, pain, suffering and the loss of companionship of their son.

Was there negligence involved in this case? Yes, the trucker turned into the man’s path without taking due care to check his mirrors. After all, he had just been riding side by side with the cyclist minutes before he was killed. Was there something going on in the truck’s cab? There may have been, and only an investigation will tell. The trucker may have been texting, talking on a cell phone or leaning over to pick up papers on the floor of the cab.

What is painfully clear is that the family left behind is beside themselves with grief. Their son just went for a bike ride. They did not expect that they would never see him alive again. Filing a wrongful death lawsuit is one way to bring closure and move forward with their lives. Often people think wrongful death lawsuits are about revenge. They are not. They are more often than not about a family wanting to make sure a similar incident does not happen to someone else.

The family’s pain and shock often translates into concern for the welfare of others, not their own financial gain. In many cases such as this, though, there is often insurance money on the table, and the trucking company would be insured. Working in partnership with an experienced Austin personal injury lawyer would assist the family in facing the challenges to come as their case makes its way through the courts.

Never hesitate to contact an Austin personal injury lawyer if you find yourself involved in a situation like this. You need to know your legal rights, what constitutes a wrongful death, how compensation is awarded, and what to expect while you are waiting for a judgment.

Brooks Schuelke is an Austin personal injury attorney with Perlmutter & Schuelke LLP. Contact an Austin injury lawyer at Civtrial.com or (512) 476-4944.

Today’s Austin American Statesman had the inspiring story of Ruby Dee Phillipa.  Ms. Phillipa was a former restaurant owner turned rockabilly musician who suffered a head injury in a 2008 scooter crash.

As part of her therapy, her doctors told her that she should find tasks that helped her brain relearn how to access common words and phrases.  For Ms. Phillipa, that meant writing down the recipes that she had been using for so long.  What she didn’t know was that those tasks would ultimately lead to a cookbook, Ruby’s Juke Joint Americana Cookbook.  (You can buy the book at Rubysjukejoint.com, Amazon.com , or at BookPeople in Austin.)

I think her path has important lessons for all head injury victims about the work necessary to make a recovery.  Too often, I see victims of head injuries who have been told by doctors or others that they’ll “get better with time.”  Sometimes, that’s correct.  But in many instances, getting better requires hard work and rehab.  Sometimes it’s work you can do on your own — like writing familiar recipes.  And sometimes it’s formal cognitive therapy — work that you have to do with the aid of a trained assistant. 

If you’re not getting better after waiting it out, you need to go back to your doctor and tell them that, and ask for help.  Ask them to provide pro-active things you can do, whether informally or through formal cognitive rehab.  In many instances, waiting it out isn’t a solution, and you shouldn’t just live with your condition.  You need to be working wth your doctor as a team to make sure you’re improving as much as you can.

Despite the desire to reduce the number of 18-wheeler accidents on the highways, it does not seem to be happening.

Unfortunately, even with the latest push to improve big rig safety, there are still far too many devastating accidents taking lives, and often taking them in a grisly fashion. The difficulty is that many passenger vehicles do not seem to understand or appreciate that driving a huge commercial truck is not like driving a smaller car. They are far more difficult to maneuver, do not stop quickly, and cannot see you in certain blind spots.

Most commercial trucks easily weigh more than 80,000 pounds. On the other hand, passenger vehicles may weigh about 3,000 pounds. It does not take too much imagination to realize that 80,000 pounds slamming into 3,000 pounds means a disaster, often one in which someone loses their life. Their enormous weight is why it takes them longer to stop. The forward momentum of that much weigh just keeps going until the brakes kick in.

Another factor that most do not think about is that many truckers are hauling hazardous cargo such as flammable material, making how they drive much more of a safety issue. A truck loaded with gas or other highly flammable materials stands a good chance of exploding if it is involved in an accident. This may mean death in a fire or severe burns and respiratory issues.

But these wrecks are not accidents. Most are caused by decisions made months or years earlier by trucking companies trying to maximize profits. The pressure of an employer breathing down their necks is often another reason why truckers get into accidents. The truth is that many truckers drive for too long, are tired, distracted and not fully alert and aware. So they may drift off behind the wheel.

Truckers are often expected to do their deliveries as fast as they can to make the company money, skip proper maintenance checks to make their trips quicker and falsify log books to show they had the requisite number of sleep breaks, when they did not. Similarly, trucking companies often shirk their responsibility to properly train their drivers or to hire experienced drivers in efforts to save costs. These conditions virtually guarantee an accident waiting to happen.

Even with the latest move in the trucking industry to ban cell phone usage, and calling and texting while on the road, accidents caused by these very actions are still happening. Some truckers, feeling like nothing will happen to them, are still driving while distracted. This is a recipe for an accident.

Trucking accidents may become even more of a problem for residents of Austin and other Central Texas towns. The federal government recently began allowing trucks from Mexico to travel deep into the United States. Many of these trucks, which might pose an even bigger risk than domestic trucks, will be traveling through our area along I-35.

No matter what caused a truck accident that you may have been involved in and no matter where it happened, make the first phone call for legal help to a seasoned Austin personal injury attorney. With their help, you will be able to recover the compensation you need to cope with your injuries. An Austin personal injury attorney’s job is to help protect your rights and help you through the courts to get justice.

Brooks Schuelke is an Austin personal injury attorney with Perlmutter & Schuelke LLP. Contact an Austin injury lawyer at Civtrial.com or (512) 476-4944.

Although Christmas tree fires aren’t as big a problem as they used to be, they’re still a huge issue.  Every year, Christmas tree fires cause over $16 million dollars in property damage.  And they’re also particularly deadly.  One out of every 18 Christmas tree fires results in a death, compared to one death for every 141 total reported home fires.  Christmas tree fires are serious business.

And  I can already hear you thinking it. “If they are so dangerous, why are you warning us about Christmas tree fires on December 23rd? We’re almost at Christmas. This would have been a better warning a month ago. Did you just procrastinate on sending the warning out?”

I’m doing it today, because the timing is important.  Over forty percent of the Christmas tree fires happen in the twelve day period starting today. 

Why?  Because this is the time when our trees are starting to dry out and become more flammable. 

While making sure you have safe lights and keeping trees away from heat sources and candles are important to preventing Christmas tree fires, the single most important factor in preventing the fire and limiting the damage is the keep the tree watered.

A well-watered tree is less likely to catch fire, and if it does, will burn less quickly.  Don’t believe me?  Watch this stunning video from the National Fire Prevention Association showing the differences between a well watered tree and a dry tree. 

Don’t let this happen to you.  Keep your tree watered and safe so a Christmas tree fire doesn’t ruin your Merry Christmas.

The last thing you would expect to happen is to have a wall fall on you while you were inside a building. That happened in this reported case.

Death comes in many forms, and this bizarre case is no exception. A 14-year-old student at a local high school was unexpectedly killed in an accident when a wall fell on him. He was doing pull-ups on the wall in his locker room that had initially been built in 1990.

Even though emergency response crews got to the scene fast, the young boy’s heart stopped before he could be taken to the hospital. He was later pronounced dead.

The accident report did not indicate what possible reasons there may have been for the interior wall to cave in on the boy. The boys in the room were not fooling around or doing anything else that would have caused a wall to fall. There was one other student in the locker room at the time of the cave-in and several others rushed into the room to start removing the heavy cement blocks from the boy’s body.

The police are going to be asking a lot of questions relating to this incident, not the least of which is whether or not the walls of the locker room were regularly inspected, if there had been any leaking or shifting of the building that may have affected the interior wall, and whether there was other work happening in the building that may have affected the wall.
If any of the answers to those questions comes back that the school was aware of other issues in the building that they should have known about and/or should have known would affect supporting walls on the interior, they may well be cited as an at-fault party for their negligence in maintaining the building’s safety. Another issue the investigation will also cover is whether or not the wall was designed and built correctly in the first place with the right kind of materials, and not slapped together with shoddy cement bricks that were not up to building code requirements.

Although it is an odd case, it is considered to be a wrongful death and as such, the boy’s family may wish to consult with legal counsel about what rights they have. Even though this is a difficult thing to consider, it is a wise move for the family, as it does, in some measure, assist with closure and may serve as a lesson to others to keep their buildings maintained with safety in mind.

If you have been in similar situation, or have been injured because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, take the first step in seeking justice by calling an Austin personal injury lawyer. Accidents like this may look like one thing on the surface, but on closer inspection be something else entirely. An Austin personal injury lawyer knows this and will listen as you recount the details of how you sustained the injuries.

Brooks Schuelke is an Austin personal injury attorney with Perlmutter & Schuelke LLP. Contact an Austin injury lawyer at Civtrial.com or (512) 476-4944.