Mississippi Injury Lawyers Blog

Memorial Day weekend was a deadly time on the highways around the state of Mississippi. According to Mississippi Highway Patrol, there were 129 accidents over the three-day weekend including three fatalities. The numbers represent an increase from the 101 accidents and zero deaths that occurred last Memorial Day.

A spokesperson for the department says that over the same period, state troopers issued 7,380 traffic citations, including 177 arrests for driving under the influence. The especially aggressive traffic enforcement campaign was the result of federal grant money, which allowed the Highway Patrol to place an additional 250 officers on the road over the holiday period. The numbers this year were plenty high enough, but were eclipsed by last year. According to troopers, more than 8,300 citations were issued last year and 246 DUI arrests were made.

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Surprising news recently made national headlines as a new study found that drunk driving is no longer the leading cause of death among teenage drivers. For years drinking and driving has been the biggest case of death among young teens, but now researchers say that has given way to the scourge of texting while driving.

A study conducted by doctors at the New York Cohen Children's Medical Center found that for the first time ever, more teens last year died from texting than from drinking and driving. In fact, according the study, there were substantially more deaths associated with texting, a full nine percent more than alcohol-related crashes.

According to researchers, the average teen will send 790 text messages each month. Unfortunately, a large number of those messages are sent and received while the teen should be occupied driving a car. Another survey found that 44 percent of all teen drivers admitted to texting behind the while. The teens reported texting and driving at least once in the previous month.

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A terrible five-car accident occurred last Friday afternoon in Pascagoula, Mississippi and left one woman dead and several others injured and seeking treatment at a local hospital. According to police, the multi-vehicle accident happened just after 3 p.m. and occurred on the city's main thoroughfare.

Pascagoula Police say that the wreck happened along U.S. 90 at Chicot Street though the cause remains a mystery. Police say they are working with investigators and interviewing witnesses to try and reconstruct the accident scene and find out exactly what led to the dangerous chain reaction.

The wreck resulted in Lavelll Saulters, 89, being ejected from the passenger seat of one of the vehicles in the collision. Saulters was taken to nearby Singing River Hospital for treatment, but was pronounced dead upon her arrival. Police say three others were taken to the local hospital and sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

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Tragedy struck late last month when a member of the Mississippi Valley State football team died in a one-car accident in Itta Bena, MS. Three other players were also injured in the wreck which happened late one Thursday night.

The driver, Kevin Monzon, was a place-kicker for the Mississippi Valley football team. According to police, the 19-year-old died at the scene of the Lefore County accident. Marcus Thompson, a junior at Mississippi Valley, was airlifted to University Medical Center in Jackson, MS for treatment of critical injuries. Two other football players, Rogers James and Joseph Hadnett, were taken to nearby Greenwood-Leflore Hospital for treatment of less severe injuries.

Police have not yet revealed the cause of the deadly accident, though the cause is much less important than the tragic result. Losing a loved one is always hard, but especially when the victims are so young. Mississippi recently won the terrible distinction of being named the deadliest state in the nation in terms of car accident fatalities. NBC News reported that Mississippi averaged 784 fatal car accidents each year between 2007 and 2009. This breaks down to an average auto fatality rate of 26.7 out of 100,000 people, the highest in the U.S.

Continue reading "Fatal Accident Leaves One Mississippi College Football Player Dead And Three Others Injured" »

A group of Texas A&M students are currently recovering from critical injuries they suffered after a car accident last weekend. A group of three students, all members of the university's waterski team, were driving to a tournament in North Carolina when their car ran off the road near Jackson, Mississippi.

The vehicle, a Toyota 4-Runner, was driven by Scott McCormick who suffered relatively minor injuries in the accident. Mississippi Highway patrol says that sometime early in the morning last Friday, Scott was heading east on Interstate 20 just outside Jackson when the Toyota SUV drifted out of its lane and off the road.

The terrible accident injured the two males in the front seat, but left their sleeping female teammate, Amanda Hoffman, in a coma. At the time of the accident Hoffman was lying down in the back seat sleeping and was not wearing a seatbelt. The severity of the accident caused her to be thrown from the car, dramatically increasing the extent of her injuries.

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Police say a man from Yazoo County, MS died after a deadly morning motorcycle accident. Local authorities say the man, David Harris, died after his motorcycle was hit by the inattentive driver of an SUV.

The crash took place just after 8 in the morning when investigators say Harris and his daughter were riding a motorcycle near the intersection of Jerry Clower Boulevard and Old Benton Road in Yazoo City. Police say Harris was heading north when an SUV pulled directly in front of his motorcycle to make a turn. Investigators say they believe the driver of the SUV did not see the motorcycle prior to the accident.

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A terrible accident in Natchez, Mississippi left a 91-year-old man dead late last month. Authorities say that the accident happened on a Saturday night on U.S. 84.

Mississippi Highway Patrol has revealed that John Buckles was driving west on U.S. 84, in the farthest right lane, when his car was struck from behind by Cameron Collier. The accident took place just after 7 p.m. near the Adams County Correctional Center.

Police say Collier's 2004 Chevrolet truck hit Buckles' 1991 Chevy pickup. The force of the collision was strong enough to knock Buckles' truck off the road, causing the man's vehicle to roll down the hill next to the road until it came to a stop, upside down.

Continue reading "Alcohol Factor In Deadly Mississippi Car Accident" »

Two men from Natchez, MS died late last month in a two-car accident that occurred at the intersection of U.S. 61 South and Douglas Road. Police say the accident left Walter Havard and Timothy Collier dead after a 2008 Ford driven by John White collided with the 2000 Chevy driven by Havard.

Mississippi Highway patrol has revealed that the accident happened while the Chevy was heading south on U.S. 61 in the middle of the afternoon. Havard failed to yield as he was preparing to turn off of U.S. 61 and turned directly into the path of the oncoming Ford driven by Collier.

Police say the Ford then collided with the passenger side of the Chevy, causing the truck to flip and roll off the road. Tragically, Havard, who was wearing his seatbelt at the time of the accident, died on his way to the local hospital. His passenger, Collier, died at the scene of the accident due to the force of the accident on the passenger compartment which absorbed the brunt of the impact.

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A terrifying incident in the air raised a host of worries about the dangers of distracted flying. For the first time ever, the National Transportation Safety Board revealed that a cellphone was found to be a cause of a commercial airplane crash. The determination has many afraid that a new can of worms has been opened, this time involving very large and very fast planes. Safety groups are calling for the FAA to intervene now before the problem gets worse and issue an important rule that would prohibit pilots from using personal electronic devices while in flight.

The incident of the texting pilot took place on August 26, 2011 in Missouri. A medical helicopter pilot was found to be distracted due to sending several hundreds text messages over the course of his shift that day. Immediately before the accident, records show the pilot sent and received nearly 20 text messages. While the text messages did not cause the accident in the same way that texting can cause a car crash, by taking your eyes off the road, it did lead to deadly distraction which was ultimately responsible for the crash.

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An interesting article in the New York Times discussed an important criticism of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that it was not doing its stated job of protecting workers. While the article was quick to say that many OSHA investigators care very much about worker safety, the problem is that the agency as a whole has given little attention to protecting employees from more insidious long-term harms.

The article specifically discussed the story of a woman who worked in a factory in North Carolina gluing furniture cushions. The woman was exposed to a dangerous chemical known as n-propyl bromide, which has been found to cause problems such as neurological damage and infertility, even in those workers who were exposed to relatively low levels of the substance. Despite the dangers of the chemical which have been widely reported, OSHA has done very little to prevent other workers from suffering harm.

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A 69-year-old man from Gretna, MS has filed suit claiming an especially horrific incident of medical malpractice. The disturbing story claims that the man awoke during an eye surgery to discover that his mouth had been taped shut by doctors.

The man, Hector L. Alonso, sued Tulane University Medical Center and two doctors that performed the surgery, Franklin Rawlings and Shehab A. Ebrahim. The court filings also claim that Alonso is now blind in his right eye after the botched surgery.

Papers describe the surgery as "torture." Alonso claims that after he awoke, he insisted that doctors stop his procedure. He claims that the surgeon then placed tape over his mouth to stifle his protests and that other medical staff in the room held him down and gagged him, apparently using enough force that one of his teeth was knocked out and later swallowed during the procedure.

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A major poultry processing plant in Mississippi was cited by the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration after the conclusion of a recent investigation into the death of a worker. The OSHA report says that that the Southern Hens Inc. plant was cited with 43 safety and health violations discovered in connection to the death of an employee in 2012.

OSHA says in a press release that it launched the investigation after a September 2012 accident where a plant worker slipped and fell into an unguarded screw conveyor while cleaning equipment. The accident happened at the company's Moselle, MS facility located in Jones County.

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Given recent reports about the safety problems at Mississippi poultry processing plants, a recent report issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center about the injuries suffered by workers in the nation's chicken plants comes at an important moment. The report, "Unsafe at These Speeds," discusses how workers, primarily at facilities in the southern U.S., are frequently forced to endure dreadful workplace conditions that result in injuries and illnesses. The report also discusses how new rules crafted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) could result in workers being placed in even greater harm.

The biggest problem identified in the report is the speed that workers must process each chicken that comes down the line. The pace of the average worker is unimaginably fast for most people and it puts employees at serious risk for a wide variety of injuries.

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The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held late last month that Mississippi's $1 million limit on noneconomic damages in personal injury and product liability cases is constitutional.

The case, Learmonth v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., revolved around an incident where a Mississippi woman was seriously injured after being hit by a Sears delivery truck. The jury in that case sided with Learmonth, awarding her $4 million in damages. Unfortunately, the jury never broke down the award, failing to itemize how much of the total was for economic versus noneconomic damages. When the case made its way to a U.S. district court, the judge interpreted the award as having awarded $2.2 million for noneconomic damages. Given the state's cap on such awards, Learmonth had her $2.2 million reduced down to $1 million.

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In the wake of a recent public relations nightmare, it's perhaps not surprising that some very disgruntled passengers have now filed suit against Carnival Cruise Lines. The first suit, by a passenger who said she was sickened by the truly horrifying conditions on board the ship, including being forced to wade through hallways covered in human feces, was filed in federal court in Miami. The suit claimed that Carnival failed to provide a seaworthy ship and that as a result of the company's failures, the woman suffered physical and emotional harm.

The second case was filed by a woman who claims she suffered dehydration and bruising from the overly aggressive food lines set up on the damaged vessel. The woman in this case says she needed IV fluids and was admitted to the emergency room after returning home last week.

Despite these two pending lawsuits, some are saying that furious passengers should carefully consider the matter before racing off to court. In fact, one legal expert said that unless a passenger suffered serious injuries or financial loss due to the cruise misadventure, most would be better off taking the money offered by Carnival.

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