Phoenix Personal Injury Law Blog

On April 4, 2009, three babies were born to a California couple. The three triplets were healthy upon arrival, but one took a turn for the worse shortly after entering the world.

According to sources, the mother had the three babies via Caesarean section. In a routine move following surgery, the mother was told that she would be given morphine to help relieve some of her pain. She did not object. The problem, however, is that the medical professional at the hospital put the morphine in the wrong IV, a mistake that has led to the family suing the hospital for medical malpractice.

When the hospital attempted to give morphine to the mother after her surgery, she happened to be holding one of the newborn babies right at that moment. Reports claim that the mother's and her daughter's IVs got mixed up and the morphine was accidentally put into the infant's IV tube.

Last week, Matrixx Initiatives Inc. got one step closer to getting past the frenzy of personal injury and product liability lawsuits filed against the company. Matrixx, a drug manufacturing company in Phoenix, has made a large part of its profits from the sale of the once popular, over-the-counter Zicam products.

Zicam is a nasal spray used to ease cold systems, but some consumers who depended on the drug were surprised to find that the use of the nasal spray led to the loss of smell or taste. According to sources, Matrixx was facing more than 230 product liability lawsuits by the beginning of this month.

But last Thursday, Matrixx put a small dent in the amount of lawsuits filed against the company and agreed to settle several cases claiming economic injury.

In 2001, a University of Arizona student was riding his bike around 4 p.m. when he lost his life in a car crash. The victim, Matthew Preston, left behind a mourning mother who has aggressively pursued this wrongful death case in the Arizona court system. A court of appeals recently ruled against Melinda Preston by affirming a trial court's previous decision in the case of her son's death.

Melinda Preston and her attorney argued that the courts should have looked into the charge that the city of Tucson was negligent in caring for the roads on which the accident occurred, and the failure to improve the safety of bike paths in the city contributed to her son's fatal injury. They also insisted that the city failed to enforce the law that bikes are not allowed on sidewalks, negligent behavior which also led to the accident.

Bloomberg Businessweek recently shared a piece about medical malpractice and how honesty affects the amount and cost of medical malpractice suits filed.

Researchers from the University of Michigan Health System studied a program that medical professionals used to report and apologize for their on-the-job errors. The system consisted of medical professionals informing patients when they knew that they have made a medical error.

The identity of the responsible party or parties, how and why the error occurred and what would be done to prevent a similar error from occurring in the future were all details included in the reports. Of course, an apology was also offered to the patients and their families.

Many in the medical field would likely be frightened by such a program being introduced into their hospital. There is already a widespread paranoia that medical malpractice lawsuits are always creeping around the corner. So wouldn't consistently reporting errors result in even more legal disputes?

According to the University of Michigan Health System's study, the answer is no.

It is not uncommon for people to take an antidepressant at some point in their lives, whether it is a temporary or life-long necessity. Such medication can be the key to allowing people to live with sound mental health. But not all medications are created equal, and those taking the prescription drug Paxil should take notice.

According to sources, the manufacturer of Paxil, GlaxoSmithKline, has had more than 190 product liability and/or negligence suits filed against them. The majority of the cases were settled outside of court, including the most recent Paxil case filed by a mother in South Dakota.

And that is where the urgent warning comes in: think twice before combining motherhood and Paxil. The various lawsuits have resulted from parents who were not warned that Paxil increased the chance of dangerous birth defects in infants.

It has been a long-running story in Arizona, and now it has reached a turning point. On August 7, 2006, Adan Pineda-Doval was driving a Suburban full of illegal Mexican immigrants when it flipped over and the car accident killed 10 of the passengers.

He was evading Arizona Border Patrol agents who had identified the vehicle and were attempting to stop it. Pineda-Doval did not stop for the agents, who ultimately wound up stopping the packed vehicle by throwing down spikes on the road.

The spikes were reportedly laid down prematurely, which gave Pineda-Doval time to attempt to miss them by swerving. His maneuver sent the vehicle out of control and resulted in a fatal crash that sent the passengers, most not wearing seatbelts, out of the vehicle.

Out of the 20 passengers in Pineda-Doval's vehicle, 10 of them died, including a pregnant teenager.

You are on the road. The teen driver buzzing past you is on his cell phone, and you are likely rolling your eyes thinking, "Doesn't he know that is extremely dangerous?"

A recent study answers your question: Yes. Most teenagers do know about the risks of personal injury and death connected with distracted driving. Heated discussions about cell phone use while driving have overtaken the country in the past year, and 86 percent of the teens surveyed in the study have learned from the news that distracted driving leads to car accidents.

So why, according to the survey, does 86 percent of the 1,999 teens researched still engage in irresponsible behaviors behind the wheel, including texting while driving?

Arizona's Supreme Court ruled in a wrongful death case recently, and the decision is important to discuss in order to understand a critical rule of the court process.

Widow Kristen Johnson sued Arizona after her husband Mark Johnson died in what she argued was an avoidable car accident. She filed suit against the state because she claims the roadway on which the accident occurred was excessively unsafe for drivers, and the state's failure to improve the safety on the road resulted in the wrongful death of her husband.

To support their negligence case in court, Johnson and her attorneys presented the fact that Arizona officials set up signs after the car accident in order to better protect drivers on that dangerous stretch of road. They argued that those actions proved that the state knew they were responsible for Johnson's accident.

The Arizona court disagreed with Johnson and ruled that evidence as inadmissible.