Personal injuries don’t just happen on icy patches of sidewalk. Every year, thousands of people across the world are seriously injured and even killed by the wild creatures of the animal kingdom. Animal attacks may be more common than you think.

Check out these stats on personal injury in the wild and see which animal attacks are the most dangerous. Also, learn about domestic dog attacks, dangerous aquatic animals and what to do when you encounter a grizzly bear.

Personal injury statistics

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According to a New York Times article, a Stamford, Conn. woman was attacked by a 200 lb chimpanzee called Travis. The beloved animal was shot down by the Stamford Police after the attack.

Travis lived with his owner, Sandra Herold, and was well known around town starring in several commercials.

Earlier in the day, Travis was being uncooperative and refused to go back inside the home. Herold gave the chimp tea laced with Xanax to calm him down. She claimed she did this only due to his extreme agitation and this was not a common occurrence.

Herold then called her friend Charla Nash over for help.

When Nash arrived at the Herold household, she received a less than warm welcome. As she stepped out of her vehicle, Travis ran at her full force and began to pounce on her. Nash suffered severe injuries to her hands and face.

Herold ran inside the house to call 911 and grabbed a butcher knife. She then ran back outside to the aid of her friend and stabbed her chimpanzee repeatedly to stop the attack.

After Travis attacked Nash, he roamed around Herold’s property; then focused his attention on the responding police officers. The policemen retreated to their vehicles.

When Travis attempted to open the doors, an unnamed police officer shot the chimp to protect himself as the animal had him cornered.

Herold had raised Travis since he was a baby chimp and she claimed he was a well trained chimpanzee. He was toilet trained, ate at the table, dressed himself, logged onto the computer and watched television.

But this was not the first time authorities chased Travis around. Back in 2003, the chimpanzee ran loose around the downtown area. It took police over two hours to get the animal subdued.

According to the New York Times, authorities claimed the chimpanzee may have had Lyme disease which is a tick born bacterial infection. In rare cases the disease can cause psychosis, severe anxiety, and delusional behavior.

Nash was taken to the hospital for her injuries and was in critical condition. According to an MSNBC article, Nash was permanently blinded from the attack and is still being treated at a clinic in Ohio for her injuries.

Nash’s family recently filed an injury lawsuit against Herold for $50 million. They claimed they might pursue lawsuits against the state of Connecticut and the city of Stamford for allowing the Herolds to keep the chimpanzee in the home.

The family also claimed both city and state ignored the warning signs of the potential dangers of keeping a chimpanzee in a domesticated area.

Herold and two other officers suffered minor injuries from the chimpanzee the day of the attack.

Employers have been warned to take their employee’s stress seriously or risk the potential of costly personal injury claims.

Ginny Hallam, the head of employment at a large law firm, has warned that stress in the workplace is projected to increase as businesses brace for the hit of the spiraling economy. Hallam suggests employers offer counseling services for its staff if they are facing with too much stress.

But in a recent case, a judge ruled that providing counseling services for stressed-out employees without additional support was an inadequate defense to a personal injury claim.

If you feel like conditions at work are unbearable, unfair or illegal, you have the right to file a personal injury claim. Talk to a personal injury lawyer today.

Barney, the White House Scottish terrier, bit Reuters reporter Jon Decker who was doing on story on the dog when he reached down to pet the pint-sized pooch.

The bite wasn’t that dramatic; however, it did draw blood. Decker had to receive medical attention and antibiotics from the White house physician.

So, if he wanted, could Decker sue for damages?

Personal injury laws vary state by state, so we go to Washington, D.C.’s law on the matter, which presumes negligence of the dog’s handler. In this case, that would be a White House staffer.

The fact that Barney’s bitten before—(in fact, he’s not allowed on the lawn when tour groups come out because he’s been known to bite visitors)—and he wasn’t muzzled makes the case look even better for Decker.

If he decides to sue for the dog bite injury, he should probably contact a personal injury lawyer because under Washington D.C. law, if the person who was bitten was even 1 percent responsible for the injury, he/she can’t collect for personal injury.

It’s been fifteen years, and I’m still miffed.

It’s not the distortion of the case that dominated the news media that bothers me so much.  It’s not even the highly paid insurance lobbyists who worked so hard to paint that inaccurate picture.

It’s that they got away with it.

Every once in a while, I’m reminded of that, and it comes as a surprise every time.  This week, I was reminded when a colleague mentioned the McDonald’s coffee case in conjunction with the recent case of the man who filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit because the cleaners lost his pants.  Others joined in.  Others joined in.  Here’s what I discovered they DIDN’T KNOW about the McDonald’s coffee case:

• The plaintiff ultimately received $640,000, not millions.  Yes, the jury originally awarded her millions of dollars–and did so intentionally, because the damages were punitive and they knew that McDonald’s, which raked in about $1.3 million a DAY in coffee sales alone, wouldn’t be fazed by anything less.  From that perspective, the initial award hardly seems excessive, but if you think it was excessive, guess what?  The SYSTEM WORKED and the verdict was reduced!
• The plaintiff sustained third degree burns over 16% of her body, including her genital area.  What exactly IS the appropriate compensation for undergoing skin grafts on your privates? 
• The plaintiff originally offered to settle with McDonald’s for $20,000–a number barely in excess of her original medical bills.  Had McDonald’s opted to simply pay the woman’s medical bills, no jury would ever have had the opportunity to award her millions of dollars.
• McDonald’s coffee was customarily served about 40 degrees hotter than coffee at other restaurants.  While most restaurants served coffee at between 135 and 140 degree Fahrenheit, McDonald’s served coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees–and admitted at trial that the company knew that a burn hazard existed for any food served at above 140 degrees and that coffee could not be consumed at that temperature.
• During the previous ten years, McDonald’s had received at least 700 other complaints about customers being burned by coffee.  These complaints included other cases in which customers had sustained third degree burns.
• The plaintiff was NOT driving.  While news reports at the time frequently asserted a sort of "it’s your own dumb fault" argument based on the idea that the plaintiff had been driving at the time of the spill, the evidence at trial established that she was a passenger in the vehicle AND that the vehicle was not moving at the time of the spill.

This list could go on, but the case is readily available for review for anyone who wants to understand the full details.  Sadly, that seems to be a very small pool of people, given that 15 years have passed and the momentary spin created by a very well-compensated team of public relations professionals and lobbyists working on behalf of the insurance industry still stands as "common knowledge".

The Injury Site blog appears to be very active, but in fact, nobody is really writing the Injury Site blog (injurysite dot com) at all. 

Instead, the entire contents of the Injury Site blog have been scraped from the Total Injury Blog. 

Total Injury has a staff of writers, designers, and developers, including several attorney writers and researchers.  The Injury Site apparently has no such thing, because this blogger has been unable to find a single post on the Injury Site blog that didn’t appear on the Total Injury blog first.  If you’re reading this post on the Injury Site blog, it’s a safe bet that no one at the Injury Site is even READING the blog—otherwise, they’d surely have prevented this post from appearing.

If you’re reading this post on Total Injury, thanks for visiting, and we apologize for the interruption.  We’ll have more timely personal injury news and commentary for you later today.

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.

Sustaining a brain injury is a serious manner, regardless of how it is caused. While football fans in Chicago, New Orleans, Indianapolis and Foxborough get ready for today’s NFL conference championship games and a potential shot at the Super Bowl, the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of former All-Pro saftey Andre Waters demonstrate this point. A standout player during his 12-years in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals, Waters committed suicide last November at the age of 44. A University of Pittsburgh forensic pathologist determined on Thursday that the brain damage Waters suffered on the football field ultimately led to his suicide.  

More specifically, Bennet Omalu determined that Waters’ brain tissue displayed early characteristics of Alzheimer’s Disease and was similar to that of an 85-year-old man. Omalu said that he believed the brain injuries were related to multiple concussions that Waters suffered during his career. In the years prior to his death, Waters had shown signs of depression which Omalu also believed to be related to his brain trauma. Omalu indicated that Waters would have been fully incapacited within 10 years if he had not committed suicide. An NFL spokesman said that the league is continuing to devote resources for independent research further exploring concussions and player safety.

A briefing paper by the Economic Policy Institute, relying heavily on data from the Congressional Budget Office, draws some interesting conclusions about the “costs” of litigation in the U.S.:
1. The reported “tort cost” is greatly exaggerated, because it takes into account the transfer of money from the injurer to the victim, which is not accurately classified as a cost to society;
2. The number of tort cases in the United States has declined over the past dozen years; and
3. There is no evidence that litigation influences the cost of health care. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that even a 30% drop in medical malpractice insurance premiums would only reduce the cost of health care by a fraction of one percent.
The full text of the report is available on the Economic Policy Institute’s website.

In the continual lobby to limit awards in personal injury cases, one of the most commonly–and dramatically–reported topics is huge punitive damage awards associated with comparatively minor injuries.
The point they’re missing, or at least hoping that you’ll miss, is that the disconnect between the appropriate level of damages and the plaintiff’s actual losses is the whole point. Punitive damages aren’t intended to compensate the victim–that’s what “compensatory” or “actual” damages are for. In fact, in some states a large portion of punitive damages is paid to the state, not to the plaintiff.
Punitive damages are intended to do just exactly what the name implies–punish the defendant so as to make it unprofitable to engage in the kind of dangerous behavior that caused the problem.
Corporations make decisions based in part on a risk analysis–in essence, a determination as to whether it will cost them more to take precautions, or to pay for the harm once the damage is done. Punitive damages discourage that kind of analysis and aim to prevent decisions that put people at risk in the interest of profits.
The recent Vioxx case in Texas provides an excellent illustration. The company delayed a change in the drug’s warning labels after it knew the drug could trigger heart attacks and strokes because its executives estimated that the delay would save the company $229 million.
The Texas jury wanted to make sure the company didn’t profit from that decision, and so returned a verdict that included $229 million in punitive damages. Unfortunately, Texas law caps punitive damages, and the award will be reduced to less than $2 million, leaving the company to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from its decision to go ahead and let some people die in the interests of higher profit margins.
That’s the kind of thinking that punitive damages are intended to discourage–and the kind that will become more and more routine as states cap punitive damage awards and remove the risk to corporations that knowingly put human safety at risk.