A 17-year old girl and her family have filed a personal injury lawsuit against a private, liberal arts university near San Antonio and three men, including at least two current students, for an alleged incident that happened in 2005. The plaintiffs in this Texas personal injury case allege that three men lured the girl to a college residence at Schreiner University with the intention of drugging and sexually assaulting her. The unnamed girl was 15 years old at the time of the alleged incident, which was filed with the Kerrville Police Department. The police case is currently suspended.

The girl and her family are charging the men with conspiracy and Schreiner University with premises liability and gross negligence. Specifically, the family claims that Schreiner University was aware of the risks and failed to assure the girl’s safety. According to the story in the Kerrville Daily Times, Schreiner University has not yet been served with any legal documents in the case, and its director of university relations would not comment further on the case.

An Atlantic City man was awarded what’s believed to be the biggest personal injury settlement for slip and fall injuries in the southern New Jersey area last week. Thomas Malick was given $5.75 million for the herniated disc injury that he suffered in 2003 after slipping on a patch of oil while installing a remote alarm starter in a car at the Seaview Lincoln-Mercury  car dealership. Malick sued both the car dealership—now called Holman—and ACR Mobile Detailing, which was working on the dealership’s garage at the time of his personal injury.

The attorneys for the car dealership and detail shop argued that Malick made the injury up because he did not report it immediately. Malick’s New Jersey personal injury attorney said his client waited about six days. After two hours of deliberation, the jury found the car dealership 99 percent negligent and the detailing company 1 percent negligent. Malick’s Atlantic City personal injury attorney also added that Seaview’s insurance carrier will pay the entire settlement amount, according to a confidential agreement.

Actress Keira Knightley has filed a lawsuit for libel against the publisher of the British tabloid Daily Mail. Knightley claims in her personal injury lawsuit that the tabloid “dishonestly sought to mislead the public" about whether she had anorexia and also linked her alleged condition to the death of a teenage girl caused by an eating disorder. Knightley expressed her sympathies for the family of the girl.

The Keira Knightley libel lawsuit also states that the Daily Mail showed pictures of the thin actress in a bikini without her permission. Knightley and her personal injury attorneys deny that the actress is anorexic but did admit that her family has a history of anorexia. This lawsuit against Associated Newspapers is expected to go to trial in London’s High Court sometime this year or early next year. The 21-year-old Knightley has appeared in popular movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End,” “Love Actually” and “Bend It Like Beckham.”  

An interesting story in today’s Bowling Green’s The Daily News details the dangers of a potential train accident carrying chemicals through this fourth populous city in Kentucky. Earlier this month, a CSX freight train derailed and crashed in Brooks, which is about 30 miles south of Louisville. According to the story, around 500 people were evacuated from the rural area around the crash site, and 11 people were hospitalized with injuries. If this train had not crashed, it would have went eventually passed through Bowling Green, raising this story about what a similar train derailment could mean to this city.

The Daily News story reports that a similar Bowling Green train accident involving hazardous chemical exposure would require the evacuation of 100 times as many as residents as compared to Brooks. That’s roughly 50,000 people who could be affected by a Bowling Green train accident! In event of such an occurrence, emergency crews would evacuate the surrounding area. Considering lag time, this process could take anywhere from 1-4 hours; revealing the importance of Bowling Green families living near rail lines to have emergency plans and supply kits on hand in case of a train accident.

The very grease which made McDonald’s Big Macs, golden fries and Chicken McNuggets such hot commodities has the popular fast food chain feeling the heat in Illinois.  A personal injury case involving a former McDonald’s employee who burnt her hand in a deep fryer of hot grease after slipping and falling on a wet floor is beginning hearings. Julie Ann Wynard is seeking a minimum $30,000 in damages from McDonald’s Corporation and Frymaster, L.L.C. following a 2001 accident at a Carol Stream McDonald’s.

Wynard was cleaning out a deep fryer when she allegedly slipped and fell on a slippery floor, which caused her hand to be thrust into a fryer of hot oil and sustain burns. In her Illinois personal injury lawsuit, Wynard alleges that McDonald’s failed to develop adequate rules for cleaning their deep fryers, housed unreasonably dangerous fryers, designed unreasonably slippery floors, and failed to warn her of such hazards. She also alleges that Frymaster carelessly designed the fryer in question and did not warn of the dangers of contacting heated grease. Will McDonald’s get out of this hot water? The Injury Blog will keep you updated on any developments.

While ATV vehicles are meant for recreational use, their dangers should not be underestimated. Earlier this month, a 30-year-old man was killed in an Illinois ATV accident with a tractor-trailer in Alexander County. Kevin A. Poppen was pronounced dead at the scene after he failed to stop his ATV at a stop sign and struck the right front tire of the passing tractor trailer, according to a story in today’s Southeast Missourian.

In detailing the need for safety when driving all-terrain vehicles, today’s Southeast Missourian story also cites some interesting statistics on ATV accidents:

• The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission attributes nearly 6,500 deaths over the last 23 years to ATV accidents. More than 2,000 of those deaths involved children under the age of 16. A child as young as six years old may legally operate an ATV vehicle under adult supervision. 

• Missouri was ranked 13^th in the United States with 46 ATV deaths from 2002 through 2004. Kentucky led with 106 ATV deaths in that time period. There were 210 reported Missouri ATV accidents in 2005 with 172 injuries and 18 fatalities, according to the state’s Highway Patrol.

Avoid personal injuries from ATV accidents by following all local statutes, driving diligently at appropriate speeds, wearing necessary safety gear including helmets, and supervising your children when on these vehicles.

A Louisville, Kentucky personal injury lawsuit will undergo a new trial after a judge learned that a juror became drunk during the initial trial. A verdict had already been reached in a personal injury case involving a woman claiming she sustained car accident injuries in a collision with a garbage truck when Judge Geoffrey Morris of Jefferson Count Circuit Court learned some less than intoxicating news. A female juror had been drinking vodka from her plastic water bottle throughout the trial!

The jury foreman told Morris that the juror was disruptive during deliberations and so drunk that she couldn’t participate in coming to a verdict. Morris dismissed the woman from jury duty and had her husband pick her up from the courthouse. She was not sanctioned or mentioned in Morris’ court order, which stated that the juror’s actions were so extraordinary that a new trial should be granted.

A Seattle couple has been awarded a combined $110,000 car accident settlement for the injuries they sustained during a 2002 crash with a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy. Michael Brooks was awarded $95,000 while his wife Maria settled separately for $15,000 in agreement that they drop their personal injury lawsuit seeking medical costs, pain and suffering, and other damages from the accident.

The couple was driving their Volvo near Gold Bar, Washington on July 1, 2002 when Sheriff’s Deputy Ed Covington responded to a nonemergency police call and made an abrupt turn across traffic from the eastbound lane into a private driveway in front of their vehicle. Covington did not turn on his emergency lights, and the Brooks never saw him before crashing into the department-owned Ford Expedition and spinning out. The Brooks successfully claimed that Covington failed to yield and was careless, and the Snohomish City Council unanimously agreed to the pay the settlement. Covington is still employed with the sheriff’s office.  

Falling into a gap between a train and a loading platform can lead to serious physical injuries and even death. A Newsday story reports how gap-related personal injury lawsuits have been filed against the Long Island Rail Road and its parent company for nearly 35 years, and little has been done to fix this common occurrence of train accidents.  

Specifically, Newsday examined 500 of thousands of personal injury lawsuits filed since 1970 against the railroad and its parent agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Examining courts in Suffolk, Nassau, Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn, the report found that slip and fall injuries and gap-related injuries were the most prevalent claims made with 65 and 63 lawsuits respectively. Falling into a gap has led to physical injuries like torn ligaments, fractured bones, dismemberment and paralysis in some of these cases, according to the story.

The LIRR has settled most of these train accidents before going to court. In some instances, victims have signed nondisclosure agreements. According to the story, the railroad paid nearly $700,000 to 15 of the gap victims. The company is now facing 16 pending gap-related lawsuits, including a $50-million suit by a woman who broke her neck when falling into a gap in October 2004. The railroad was also sued for $5 million in October by the family of a Minnesota teen who died after falling into a gap.

This report raises an important question: couldn’t all of this settlement money been used to initially solve the problem after the first such incident and prevent all of these gap-related train accidents from occurring? Why hasn’t the LIRR done more to fix the problem, especially with so many people commuting via train daily in the state of New York?

If you’ve been injured in a gap-related incident, speak to a New York personal injury attorney for immediate assistance.   

Eric Turkewitz at the New York Personal Injury Blog asks this question this week:  So why put arbitrary caps in place if common sense ones already exist?

Turkewitz’s answer to that question, along with his dose of real-life facts about verdicts in personal injury cases and how they’re capped without arbitrary statutory limits, is worth a look.