Archive for November, 2009

Auto accidents and personal injuries in Tennessee often come after hard braking, screeching of tires, and then the inevitable impact. Braking, and braking hard can avoid an impact but when a vehicle has worn tires, the stopping distance can increase as much as 25%.  As Tennessee auto accident attorneys, we see this happen more often than you might think.

Braking hard under those circumstances may not be enough. The amount of tread that is available will determine how effective your tires will be. The general rule?

Use a quarter to measure tire tread depth. If you can place George Washington’s head into the tread, and the top of his head is still visible – you don’t have enough tread. Unfortunately, many drivers who are not responsible skip on things like replacing their tires when the tread becomes thin. When that happens, auto accidents and personal injury can follow. For more information about tires and braking, click here.

If you or anyone you know has been killed or suffered a personal injury or auto accident in Tennessee, please contact Nashville injury attorney Phillip Miller and the Tennessee personal injury attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates at (615) 356-2000, or contact our office online here.

One last thing: If you are hurt and have any questions at all, contact our office at (615) 356-2000. Don’t delay. Cases involving personal injury or death in Tennessee must be acted on quickly. Time is running. Call for an appointment, if it’s bad enough that you need to read this far into a website blog, it’s bad enough to get an attorney involved.

Yaz and Yasmin claims and lawsuits in Tennessee and across the U.S, have resulted from this drugs use for birth control. Yaz and Yasmin were marketed by Bayer as a safe contraceptive with minimal side effects. In 2008 they were over 17% of the contraceptive market. and over $1 billion in sales.

Studies from the British Medical Journal suggest that women who take these drugs are more than twice as likely to have complications as women who use other contraceptives.We now know that for some women the side effects of taking this medication can include stroke, heart attack, deep vein thrombosis, gall bladder problems, and blood clots.

As a result, over 100 lawsuits have been filed against Bayer (the manufacturer of Yaz and Yasmin) across the United States. For more information about this litigation, click here. If you think you may have a Yaz or Yasmin claim, your time may be running out to make a claim. Contact a lawyer immediately.

If you or anyone you know has been killed or suffered a personal injury in Tennessee, please contact Nashville injury attorney Phillip Miller and the Tennessee personal injury attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates at (615) 356-2000, or contact our office online here.

One last thing: If you are hurt and have any questions at all, contact our office at (615) 356-2000. Don’t delay. Cases involving personal injury or death in Tennessee must be acted on quickly. Time is running. Call for an appointment, if it’s bad enough that you need to read this far into a website blog, it’s bad enough to get an attorney involved.

It’s not just auto accidents (or motorcycle accidents or truck accidents) that cause personal injury to people using the roads in Tennessee. A recent study produced by Transportation America quantifies the epidemic of pedestrian fatalities and personal injuries that are occurring in Tennessee and across the U.S.

Over the last 15 years more than 76,000 people have been killed when doing nothing more than walking in the neighborhood where they live. While it is common for many pedestrian accidents to be blamed on the pedestrian/victim, it is more accurate to point out that most streets are not designed for pedestrians, people in wheelchairs, or people on bicycles – even though people who are “a foot” will clearly have to use streets just like automobiles and trucks.

An AARP poll of people over 50 years old found that half of the people felt they couldn’t safely cross the main road closest to where they live.  (For information about the safety of roads in your own neighborhood, click here.) The compiled data for Nashville indicates that the rate of pedestrian death puts us #28 on the list of cities in the United States. Approximately 6 pedestrians will be killed every year in Nashville, just for walking. For more information about this study, click here.

If you or anyone you know has been injured or killed in a Nashville pedestrian accident, please contact Nashville injury attorney Phillip Miller and the Nashville personal injury attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates at (615) 356-2000, or contact our office online here.

One last thing: If you are hurt and have any questions at all, contact our office at (615) 356-2000. Don’t delay. Cases involving personal injury or death in Tennessee must be acted on quickly. Time is running. Call for an appointment, if it’s bad enough that you need to read this far into a website blog, it’s bad enough to get an attorney involved.

Auto accidents in Tennessee can be caused by what are often routine traffic manuvers. U-turns are done thousands of times every day, usually without incident, but they can also be the cause of auto accidents and personal injury. The problem is that they are very hazardous manuevers both to the driver executing the U turn and to any oncoming traffic.

The key for any driver is to keep a proper look out. This means that the U- turn does not begin until the driver is sure there is no oncoming traffic that will be affected by the U turn temporarily blocking a lane during the turn. Tennessee’s Rules of the Road specifically provide that drivers must keep a proper look out (see pages 62-65, Chapter 9, Tennessee Driver’s Manual). Following those rules keeps everyone safe from unnecessary auto accidents and personal injury.

If you or anyone you know has been injured or killed in a Tennessee  car accident, please contact Nashville injury attorney Phillip Miller and the Nashville  personal injury attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates at (615) 356-2000, or contact our office online here.

One last thing: If you are hurt and have any questions at all, contact our office at (615) 356-2000. Don’t delay. Cases involving personal injury or death in Tennessee must be acted on quickly. Time is running. Call for an appointment, if it’s bad enough that you need to read this far into a website blog, it’s bad enough to get an attorney involved.

Accutane is an acne medication, and has worked well for people who have acne. The problem with this drug is that is has side effects – it was withdrawn from the market in June 2009.

The latest side effect uncovered with accutane use is irritable bowel disease. Users of accutane (or its generic  isoretinonin ) are twice as likely to suffer from this disease. Irritable bowel disease affects the colon and can cause varying levels of discomfort, from mild to severe. To learn more about irritable bowel syndrome, click here. For more information on this story about Accutane, click here.

If you or anyone you know has suffered personal injury in Nashville or Tennessee, please contact Nashville injury attorney Phillip Miller and the Nashville (alternative Tennessee) personal injury attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates at (615) 356-2000, or contact our office online here.

One last thing: If you are hurt and have any questions at all, contact our office at (615) 356-2000. Don’t delay. Cases involving personal injury or death in Tennessee must be acted on quickly. Time is running. Call for an appointment, if it’s bad enough that you need to read this far into a website blog, it’s bad enough to get an attorney involved.

Off label use of prescription drugs is when a drug is used for something not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. How does this happen? Drug companies get a drug approved for use based on studies that are reviewed by the FDA. Once the drug is on the market, they use their salespeople to promote the drug for uses that were never reviewed by the FDA,  and often have never been studied. It’s not illegal for a doctor to prescribe a drug “off label”, and many doctors rely on big pharmaceutical companies to provide accurate, truthful information about other uses of their drugs. Whoops. Since May 2004, Pfizer, Bristo-Myers Squibb Co., Eli Lilly & Co. and four other drug companies have paid a total of $7 billion in fines and penalties for marketing medicines for unapproved uses – in some cases these unapproved uses have caused unnecessary sickness and deaths -but significant profits.  For more information about this practice and the incredible criminal fines paid by drug companies, click here.  Our office has successfully made claims for consumers in Tennessee and other states against drug companies for the Dalkon Shield, Breast Implants,  Fen-Phen, Vioxx, Rezulin, and Paxil.

Seatbelts make a difference in reducing personal injury in auto accidents. Although seatbelts have been required safety equipment in passenger cars since the 70’s, there is no such requirement for buses. Does it make sense that school buses in Tennessee or anywhere else should be operated without this kind of basic safety equipment? There have been arguments over the years that the rigid, closely spaced seating in school buses provides adequate protection and makes seatbelts unnecessary. School bus accidents are very serious events. Rigid closely placed seats do not protect students from lateral “t-bone” collisions (where they are knocked out of their seats) or from rear-end or rollover collisions. Rollover collisions are especially dangerous to school children who have nothing to keep them in their seats once the bus begins to roll. Finally, the Federal Department of Transportation is considering a requirement of seatbelts in buses, see their plan here.  The National Coalition for School Bus Safety has been adovcating for this for years. For more information from the National Coalition on School Bus Safety, click here. If seat belts reduce personal injury in auto accidents, don’t we want the same for our kids?

Auto accidents from sudden acceleration is often thought to be the fault of the driver, but not always. Sudden acceleration in Toyotas and Lexus automobiles has been a problem for at least 8 years. Since 2001 more than 1,000 Toyota and Lexus owners have reported that their vehicles suddenly accelerated on their own. When this happened the cars went out of control, crashing into other cars, trees, walls, and even going off the road. Obviously if a child, animal, or another adult was around – the consequences would be much worse than vehicle damage, and the blame would have been placed on the driver! This is what anyone would consider a “product defect“.  To state the obvious – cars aren’t supposed to suddenly accelerate on their own, and when they do – bad things are likely to happen. Although complaints were filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Bush administration officials and appointees chose to dismiss the majority of complaints by owners without investigation. It’s clear now that there have probably been more than 2,000 instances of sudden acceleration since 2001, and a 2007 NHTSA survey found that 10% of Lexus owners complained of this problem, putting the number even higher.

Why would appointees from any political party in control of a governmental safety organization assume that consumers would report a problem if it didn’t exist? Or assume that the incident was always the fault of the driver? What kind of self-righteous, pea-brained industry hack would allow a dangerous defect like this to go uninvestigated for the better part of a decade? FEMA wasn’t the only department of the Federal Government that was put in the hands of wrong minded people.

For more information, click here.

Cardiovascular Systems, Inc. (CSI) has recalled all lots of the ViperSheath^TM due to reports about stretching or fracture of the sheath during heart catheterizations. In the event of a device fracture, broken segments of the device may require immediate surgery to be removed and/or to control bleeding. A failure also has the potential to perforate or dissect a vessel. The ViperSheath^TM is a developed and manufactured by Thomas Medical Products, Inc., and distributed by CSI.

The people who need this kind of surgery are obviously, not in the best of health. The procedure itself has risks. How does it happen that a device that is going to be used in delicate, dangerous surgery is not tested enough to identify such a defect? There is money to be made in doing heart catheterizations, and in providing devices like the ViperSheath that may make the procedure better. That’s fine with me and with most everyone I would guess, but putting something on the market that can break off inside one of your arteries and perforate the artery is not what anyone would call responsible design or manufacturing. Crazy stuff. We all deserve better.

To any of the patients who have had a problem as a result of this device, our sympathy. We hope the consequences to you are minimal. CSI says it has notified all customers by FedEx about the recall and says it is arranging for the return of all products…and if they don’t get them all? What happens then? What happens to those who had a perforation of an artery but were lucky enough to survive? They’re not talking about that. People in Tennessee or anywhere else who have had ViperSheath used in a procedure should talk to their doctor to determine if there was any problem with their procedure that was related. However, make sure the doctor knows you are not blaming him or her – this is a problem with the device that doctors didn’t know about.

The recall encompasses products distributed from March 25, 2009 to October 21, 2009

To read the entire recall, click here.

Each winter people are killed quickly and silently by carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide (often referred to with its chemical abbreviation CO) generally comes from a poorly vented heating device. It could be a kerosene heater, a gas heater, or even a hot water heater. Older people and those on limited income are often victims, as are those who are trying to save something on their electric bill. The problem is that people often assume that if there is a gas, that there will be some smell like there is with natural gas (which has a scent added to it for safety). They victims often just fall asleep and don’t wake up. Warnings by the manufacturer of the heating device may be non-existent or inadequate, or the venting may be inadequate. The best advice is to ventilate the heated space with fresh air -but when it’s cold that’s the last thing people think of doing. For a detailed fact sheet on carbon monoxide risks, click here.