David Givens will have to find another way to score against his former team.

A federal judge recently dismissed a personal injury lawsuit filed by the former NFL wide receiver against the Tennessee Titans football team. The judge said Givens will have to pursue further action through arbitration under the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement.

In a $25 million personal injury lawsuit filed in September 2009 against the Titans, Givens claims he was encouraged to play in games, even though it was known he had a knee condition that could not hold up against the jarring impacts of NFL play, according to the Tennessean.

U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell dismissed the suit by filing an order. Within the order, Judge Campbell wrote that Givens’ suit was not “sufficiently independent of the terms of the collective bargaining agreement” made between the football league and the players.

“The Supreme Court has held that because preempted claims must first be presented through the arbitration procedure established in the collective bargaining agreement, those claims be dismissed,” Campbell wrote.

The Titans have not released a statement about Givens’ suit since it was thrown out.

The suit claims Givens was not made aware of results of an examination on his knee made by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Tomas Byrd. According to the suit, Byrd’s exam found Givens might need surgery at some point on the knee due to a large defect within his knee joint, where the upper leg connects to the knee the Tennessean reported.

Byrd’s report continued to say the condition and treatment for it could have kept him out of the NFL for a whole season, according to the suit. Byrd examinated Givens before he signed a 5 year contract with the football team in March 2006.

Givens’ sports injury occurred in November 2006 during a home game against the Baltimore Ravens. The suit claims the lesion in his knee had crumbled, and he has not played in an NFL game since then.

The suit further states that Givens did not know about his knee condition until February 2009, when he finally reviewed the medical file.

Givens’ attorney Dan Warlick told the Tennessean that the decision by Campbell was not a surprise. Warlick said Campbell’s ruling does not question the actual validity of the suit.

“When we filed, it was one of the issues we had to overcome, whether we could get it into federal court without the arbitration,” Warlick said. “We just thought federal court would be a better place to try.”

A Texas man who filed a personal injury lawsuit after he was severely hurt in an accident at petroleum magnate BP’s Texas City oil refinery won a $1.72 million verdict in a recent court ruling.

Ernesto Tamez and his wife Maria filed the industrial accident lawsuit against Maxim Crane Works, an industrial company based in Pennsylvania. The lawsuit was filed about four years after Tamez was injured at the refinery. A jury at a Galveston County, Texas courthouse ruled Maxim was fully liable for the accident, according to release from Arnold & Itkin law office.

According to court documents, Tamez was working at the refinery on January 18, 2006 when he was struck by an oil burner. The burner was hoisted in the air by a crane operated by a Maxim worker. Tamez reportedly sustained crushing injuries to his neck, back, shoulder and ribs, which required extensive surgery to repair.

Tamez was awarded $300,000 in lost wages, $550,000 in medical expenses and $170,000 for his wife in the decision.

“It has taken four years to get to this point, but our hope is that this verdict will help our client and his family move on with their life,” Cory Itkin, who served as one of Tamez’s injury attorneys, said in the release.

Last December, a federal jury awarded $100 million in damages to 10 workers who were exposed to toxic fumes at the Texas City refinery.

The ruling was the first in about 100 similar suits against the company from workers and residents in the area who claim BP has not taken enough measures to reduce the release of harmful fumes from the refinery.

The Texas City refinery has a history of other safety violations, including an explosion at the facility in March 2005. According to CBS, 15 workers were killed and least 170 were injured in the accident at the site, which occupies a two square miles.

BP was fined a record $87.4 million in November 2009 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for falling short of needed efforts to safely rebuild the plant after the explosion, The Wall Street Journal reported.

On March 23, 2005, contractors working at the plant had restarted a unit that was shut down for repairs. The unit was filled with gasoline but it overflowed and then filled up an emergency backup unit. The end result of the two overflows was a geyser-like spurt of gasoline into the air, followed by the explosion, CBS reported in 2005.

A personal injury lawsuit was filed in early January against a Camden, PA.-based chocolate plant after a worker was killed last summer when he fell into a vat used to melt chocolate.

Vincent Smith II, 29, was working at the Lyons and Sons chocolate plant on July 8, according to CBS. Officials said at the time that Smith was standing on a nine-foot-tall platform while loading solid pieces of raw cocoa into a melting vat when he fell into the container.

While the chocolate’s temperature was believed to be about 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the chocolate was not responsible for his death. Smith was struck in the head by an agitator, a large paddle-shaped object used to move the chocolate while it melts, and suffered fatal injuries because of the blow, according to CBS.

Attorney Thomas Kline, who is representing Smith’s relatives, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that several security measures were missing near the vat. He said no guardrails were placed around the vat, the floors nearby where slick with melted chocolate, no equipment was nearby for workers to try to get him out of the vat, and no emergency shut off was installed on the platform, according to the Inquirer.

The suit was announced just after the plant and the company Smith was working for were fined about $39,000 for an array of safety violations. Smith’s employer, Cocoa Services, was also named in the family’s lawsuit, as well as other contractors who designed and constructed the plant.

“This was a sure death,” Kline told the Inquirer. “When he fell in, he stood no chance of survival.”

Inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration placed the recent fines on the plant for failure to meet the security measures described by Kline.

Right after Smith’s death, the plant was shut down and fined about $1,150 for operating without a mercantile license. Inspectors also found problems with plumbing and electrical systems in the plant. Officials representing the plant had said before the inspection that those areas were fixed, according to the Inquirer.

“This worker was unknowingly invited into a death trap,” Kline said to the Inquirer. “They ignored any rule of occupational safety or common sense.”

Officials from Lyons and Cocoa services declined to comment to the Pennyslvania newspaper.

“My brother was a very careful guy,” Smith’s brother Carl Smith told ABC shortly after the accident. “Come to find out they say it could have been carelessness on his part? That’s not his character at all.”

A Massachusetts school teacher was recently awarded worker’s compensation benefits after she was injured while chaperoning students on a school ski trip.

Karen Sikorski, a math teacher at Peabody High School in Peabody, Mass., injured her shoulder in 2004 during a trip to Mount Ascutney in Vermont with the school’s ski club.

Sikorski was reportedly skiing when she fell. The injury later required surgery as well as physical therapy for her to recover, according to the Boston Globe.

Sikorski’s claim asked to regain sick days spent on her recovery and any medical expenses not covered by the co-payment offered through her health insurance policy, through the city.

The city of Peabody government initially rejected her claim for personal injury compensation because the teachers are not required to participate with the school ski trips and other voluntary events, according to claims.

But in mid December, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of Sikorski. Alan Pierce, who served as Sikorski’s attorney for the injury case, told the Associated Press that while teachers volunteer to chaperone events such as the ski trip, she was still performing her duties as a teacher.

“The students could not ski unless there was a chaperone going down the trail with them,” Pierce said.”She engaged in the duties of a teacher, albeit on the ski slopes. She wasn’t teaching math, but she was maintaining order, re-enforcing rules and watching out for the well-being of adolescents.”

While the case itself did not involve “big money,” Pierce told the Boston Globe that the state Supreme Court’s ruling “needed to establish that when teachers are performing chaperoning duties [they] do not lose the protection.”

Pierce said Sikorski may recover about 10 of the 16 sick days she used for physical therapy and a small payment if her injuries turn out to be permanent, according to the Globe.

The city of Peabody tried to argue that a 1985 Massachusetts law excluded injuries from being covered by worker’s compensation if such an injury happened while an employee was voluntarily participating in an activity.

However, the SJC ruled that participation in the ski trip was a result of Sikorski working for the city in some form, and therefore Sikorski was awarded the compensation.

Judge Judith A. Cowin wrote in an opinion regarding the case that, “the ski club’s trips benefited the city by furthering the school’s educational mission.”

Judge Cowin also pointed out that the city encourages teachers to participate in events such as the ski trip.

On June 9th at a Slim Jim plant in North Carolina, tragedy ensued. The building collapsed - injuring nearly 40 workers who were inside, and killing three employees.

According to an InjuryBoard.com report, the autopsies on the three deceased workers came back showing that the bodies had been crushed to death.

The three deaths and the other 40 personal injuries sustained as a result of the building collapse all qualify as work-related injuries and will likely be filed as worker’s compensation lawsuits.

Federal investigations of the accident have shown that natural gas may have been responsible for the collapse of the building. The gas allegedly leaked into the building when water-heater installers were working on the building. The gas should have been vented outside, but instead caused an explosion inside the factory.

No litigation has been decited on yet, but injury lawyers may work on the case. To read the full story, visit InjuryBoard.com.