A Virginia federal appeals court reinstated a personal injury lawsuit filed against McDonald’s after a man burnt his lips on a chicken sandwich.

The suit, originally filed five years ago, was thrown out in 2008 before a jury could come to a decision on whether McDonald’s was liable for 62-year-old Frank Sutton’s injuries. The lawsuit claimed Sutton’s fried chicken sandwich had popped with scalding grease from the deep fryer when he bit in, burning his mouth and lips, according to the Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton had thrown the case out during the jury trial, saying at the time that there was no actual proof McDonald’s had committed any wrongdoing.

“There’s just no evidence here of any kind of negligence,” Hilton said after he ordered the case to be dismissed. “He ordered a hot piece of chicken and he got a hot piece of chicken. It was hotter than he anticipated, and that was unfortunate.”

The Federal Appeals Court in Richmond, Va. reinstated the case based on evidence Judge Hilton had barred from the original jury trial, according to AP. Sutton’s defense reportedly had evidence that an employee working at the McDonald’s within the Daniel Boone truck stop in Duffield, Va. made a possible admission that the chicken was not cooked correctly.

According to Sutton’s lawyer, one of the employees saw Sutton’s burns and said something similar to, “This is what happens to the sandwiches when they aren’t drained completely.” The appeals court ruled that the jury should be allowed to hear that evidence, AP reported.

During the 2008 trial, Sutton testified that he and a few family members stopped at the Duffield truck stop around 1:30 a.m. and ordered food. Sutton’s friend Bill Giffon was at the McDonald’s at the time, and testified that “grease flew all over his mouth” when he bit into the sandwich, causing personal injury.

Sutton told the court that his lips were bleeding and blistered the following morning, and his wife testified that it was difficult to kiss her husband after he was burned. Sutton told the AP that he can still see scars from the damage.

“It’s a permanent situation with me at this point,” Sutton said. “My opinion is it was nothing but negligence on the part of the McDonald’s people.”

Sutton said he decide to sue only after McDonald’s declined to pay his medical bills, as well as $22,000 in lost wages for a job he lost while healing from the burns.

A spokeswoman from McDonald’s declined to say how often the food company is sued for burns that possibly happened because of their food’s temperature.

A personal injury lawsuit has been filed against a Wisconsin country sheriff after a former deputy was convicted of shooting his then-girlfriend and a 12-year-old girl in 2008.

The suit, filed Feb. 5, claims that Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. and two of his higher ranking staff members conspired to keep the deputy on staff after the shooting.

The suit goes on to allege that Clarke acted negligently by letting the former deputy carry a department weapon after knowing about past domestic violence cases in which he was involved, according to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Former Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Deputy Thomas D. Hutchins, 41, is now serving a 20-year sentence after he pleaded no contest to two counts of intentional first-degree reckless injury and one count of endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon.

On Dec. 15, 2008, Hutchins became upset with his former girlfriend after she disciplined their child, and he struck her face while they were arguing, the Journal Sentinel reported. The woman told Hutchins to leave and started to call 911 when he remained in the house.

Hutchins pulled the phone out of the wall and aimed his department-issued handgun at her before saying, “You take my job, I’ll take your life,” according to the Journal Sentinel. Hutchins said the woman struck him in the head with a candlestick and he shot his gun to protect himself.

A mug shot of Hutchins taken after the arrest shows a bloody wound on his forehead and bandages around his entire head.

Hutchins then fired his gun twice, hitting the woman in the face.

She ran out from the house to a neighbor’s home and was let in, but Hutchins continued firing through the walls. Bullets hit a 12-year-old girl three times in her thigh and grazed her right hand, the Journal Sentinel reported.

During Hutchins’ criminal trial, the family whose house Hutchins shot his gun into said they found bullet shells in their Christmas presents a few weeks after the incident.

The suit seeks damages for the woman and girl who were shot, and also several children who were present for Hutchins’ eruption. The suit said witnesses to the incident “have and will likely continue to suffer repeated and severe bouts of mental anguish and psychological repercussions.”

The suit was logged as “Jane Doe vs. defendant” without any addresses listed for the woman and children.

Personal injury Attorney Robert Stack, who is representing the plaintiffs, told the Journal Sentinel that the plaintiffs are “rather nervous, rather scared.” Stack also said he was not aware if anyone had been threatened.

A jury ruled last week that a central California-area skydiving center was not responsible for spinal cord injuries as a result of an accident during a jump about three years ago.

In a 10-2 decision, jurors at the San Joaquin Valley Courthouse ruled that the Parachute Center owner and pilot Bill Dause did not act in a manner considered reckless beyond normal skydiving actions when 33-year-old Christian Barton was injured during a jump, the Record newspaper reported.

During summer of 2006, Barton jumped out of Dause’s twin engine plane at about 3,000 feet above sea level. Right after leaving the plane, Barton struck the plane’s tail before continuing to fall. Barton’s emergency chute opened and he landed hard in a nearby vineyard, the Record reported.

The fall left Barton with severe injuries to his spinal cord leaving him unable to walk at first. He later regained partial ability to walk. Pictures taken of Barton show him using a cane to walk into the San Joaquin Valley Courthouse

The verdict against the $8 million injury lawsuit Barton filed against Dause and the Parachute Center came after two weeks of trial dates. During the trial, Dause’s attorney Kurt Siebert alleged that Barton jumped inappropriately out of the airplane, which caused him to roll in the direction of the tail.

Dause’s response to the personal injury lawsuit filing in 2008 said that Barton “literally jumped out” of the plane instead of using “the proper roll out technique.”

During the trial, Barton’s attorney Michael Goldstein claimed Dause did not sufficiently warn Barton about the potential risk that of striking the plane’s tail while falling. Goldstein also argued that Dause did not keep the plane level enough in accordance with skydiving industry standards, according to the Record.

Near the time of the accident, Dause was quoted by the Lodi News-Sentinel saying that Barton was an experienced jumper who had jumped over 200 times before the accident.

Kyle Moutray served as jury foreman during the trial, and described the deliberations between jurors as “very relaxed” and included “a lot of really good discussion.”

While the jury eventually ruled in favor of Dause, it was not a quick decision, Moutray told the Record after the trial concluded.

The first vote was 8-4 in favor of Dause, while the next one went 6-6. The jury then came to a 7-5 vote still in Dause’s favor before finally settling on 10-2 in favor of the pilot.

“Both parties have some responsibility in the entire incident,” Moutray said. “I wish we could’ve done something for Christian.”

The Ocala Star-Banner has a nice profile of Tammy Kimball and her personal injury lawsuit.

According to the paper "Kimball was involved in a horrible car accident that left her with permanent scars, chronic arthritis and the inability to complete such routine tasks as running, gardening or climbing the stairs while holding her 4-month-old grandson."

The jury awarded Kimball $2.7 million, but she said the figure didn’t matter.

"These people validated everything I went through. It’s not about the money … if there was no money involved, I could still get on with my life, because somebody said I got hurt, I suffered."

The story has some other nice quotes, from Kimball’s attorney and other local personal injury attorneys, that provide nice insight into the process of awarding of determining the appropriate payout to a victim.

From the article:

Randy Briggs, an Ocala accident victim attorney for the past 25 years, said only in extremely rare cases do judges decide to reduce the amount awarded by juries.

"Juries almost always get it right," he said. "They take their responsibilities extremely seriously. It’s the highest calling they’ll have in their lifetime in participating in our form of government where they participate in a decision that’s going to have a profound impact on other people."

You can read the full story at Ocala.com.

An attorney helped Tammy Kimball find vindication. Speak with an attorney about your personal injury today.

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.

In a very unusual personal injury lawsuit, 8 year old Teddy Harrison claims his parents failed to buckle his car seat properly before he was thrown from his parents SUV in a car accident.  He was only 3 when he suffered a brain injury and became permanently disabled as a result of the automobile accident that happened in 2001.

Now Teddy is suing his parents with help from his grandmother.  The odd thing is that his parents hope Teddy wins the Minnesota personal injury case because it would force their auto insurance company to pay Teddy $100,000. 

The Minnesota Supreme Court listened to arguments for both sides of the Minnesota personal injury case on Thursday.  The Minnesota Trial Attorneys Association, a network of mostly personal injury attorneys, filed a brief to support Teddy’s position.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to change a court ruling made by the Illinois Supreme Court last year in a class action personal injury case against Philip Morris USA.  

The original personal injury lawsuit involved smokers alleging that Philip Morris knew its "light" and "low tar" cigarettes were not really less harmful than regular cigarettes.  In March 2003 an Illinois judge ruled in favor of the smokers and awarded $10.1 billion as a personal injury award. 

The Illinois Supreme Court  overturned the personal injury settlement last year stating that Philip Morris could not be held liable under state law since the Federal Trade Commission allowed the cigarette companies to falsely characterize the cigarettes.

The Delaware Supreme Court denied an appeal by Beebe Medical Center and its insurance carrier for the compensatory damages in the wrongful death case brought by Julie Bailey’s family.  Julie Bailey, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, was released from the Beebe Medical Center in 2003 to the nearby Lewes Convalescent Home and walked directly into a food freezer at the home.  She became trapped and suffered frostbite which led to her death. 

The Delaware personal injury suit originally brought by Ms. Bailey’s family went to court in 2005 to argue for both punitive and compensatory damages.  The medical center took responsibility for the negligence and agreed to $5 million in punitive damages.  Beebe then appealed the compensatory damages to the Supreme court arguing that evidence related to the punitive damages should not have been included in the court’s consideration for the compensatory damages.  The court upheld the $13 million verdict for the compensatory damages and is the largest ever Delaware personal injury settlement for this type of case.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday from Phillip Morris and lawyers for Jesse Williams’ widow, Mayola Williams who was awarded $79.5 million in punitive damages against the tobacco company. The jury originally found Phillip Morris guilty of fraud and negligence for Mr. William’s lung cancer.
At the Supreme Court hearing, Ted Boutros argued for the tobacco company, challenging the punitive damages as arbitrary and not allowed by the constitution. He also stated that this award is not fair to future plaintiffs suing Philip Morris.
The lawyer for the Williams family, Bob Peck argues that no other plaintiffs have pursued suits against Phillip Morris since the verdict in 1999 and that a punitive award is intended to deter similar acts of misconduct not necessarily provide satisfaction to the individual plaintiff.
The Supreme Court is expected to make its ruling sometime in July of 2007.

Personal injury cases often hinge on the reaction of juries to the parties, and there’s been much controversy about the fact that judges can and often do alter awards entered by juries. While some experts–primarily those in the insurance industry and the personal injury defense bar–have claimed that jurors are unqualified to make determinations in large, complex cases, even they were probably be surprised by the data presented by Professor Nancy King of Vanderbilt University: many jurors fall asleep during trial.
King studied juror misconduct across the twenty-year period from 1796 through 1996, and discovered that sleeping jurors hardly disrupted the trial process these days. According to King, 69% of judges surveyed had encountered at least one sleeping juror during the past three years, and most did not grant mistrials. However, in 85% of the cases, the sleeping juror was dismissed from the case.