Jacksonville Personal Injury Lawyer - Wrongful Death

11-Year-Old Dies After Pellet Gun Blast To Chest

Eddie Farah — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:56:31 GMT

Mitchell "D.J." Maxwell, 11, of Waycross, Georgia, was at a sleep over Friday night with two other boys at the football coach’s home when he was shot in the chest with a .177-caliber pellet gun. He died in the hospital about an hour later.

Our deepest condolences go out to the Maxwell family at this time. So many think that what is essentially a toy can do no harm. Unfortunately we have all found out otherwise.

The boys were reportedly playing a PlayStation 3 video game when one of the boys picked up the loaded pellet gun and pretended to shoot it. Then the next boy, a12-year-old, took over the rifle and pointed it Maxwell, shooting him point blank range in the chest.

Police report that the boys first tried to stop the bleeding themselves before calling the two adults watching television in the next room. No doubt that delayed treatment. Then when the adults called 911 they simply said the boy was unresponsive but he's breathing."

The 911 operator asked if the boy had asthma. A cousin confirmed he did.

An autopsy will be performed Monday in Savannah at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The young boy’s mother says she can’t believe her son is gone.

Mitchell Maxwell Sr., D.J.'s father, said he's dealing with pain and frustration, still trying to come to grips with what happened to his son, an honor roll student at Ware Magnet School where he played on the youth football team.

So many questions need to be asked. Did Ware County 911 respond properly? Without all of the information was the ambulance as quick as it needed to be? What was the resonse time?

Did paramedics perform CPR? Did their actions actually hurt the child’s chance of survival?

A .1777 is capable of producing velocities in excess of 900 ft/sec. and is generally used to kill small game or pests on a farm. This is not a toy and should be treated with the same care as a firearm. No doubt the supervision of these children will be a key to the investigation.

Again, our condolences go out to the family for their loss.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

Missing Children and The Technology That May Find Them

Eddie Farah — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:28:46 GMT

According to federal statistics, there are about 115 child abductions by strangers every year in this country.

Unfortunately this week we had another in the Jacksonville area. The community of Orange Park is in shock following the abduction of 7-year-old Somer Thompson who was walking home from school. By Wednesday, two days after her abduction, her body was found discarded in a Georgia landfill.

Somer and her family are in our prayers. Nothing could be worse.

The first 24 hours after a child goes missing are crucial for finding her and entrepreneurs have been frantically working to come up with devices that allow us to track our children, similar to a way we track vehicles.

Many people think that microchips, put under the skin, help you find a child. But when put into our pets, they allow shelters to run a scanner and obtain information on the owner. They are not tracking devices.

The VeriChip Company makes VeriKid, used in Mexico where they put scanners in public places kidnapped children may be. VeriChip was primarily developed to hold a patient’s medical information and it does not contain a transmitter and is not satellite-enabled.

Wherify GPS Personal Locator combines GPS and digital wireless technologies to pinpoint a wearers position within a few feet. Parents can view satellite or street map or call an 800 number. Cost is $800 and $30 a month to monitor. Parents lock the bracelet onto the child’s wrist, which could be removed by a perpetrator.

Amber/AlertGPS is a small gadget that tells parents where their child is at all times. It features a button you child can push when they are in trouble sending out an SOS signal to five preselected people on their mobile phones and email addresses. The little square is placed in their pocket or backpack. It can also be used for speeding teenagers.

Again it's not cheap. At a cost of $379 with tracking plans ranging from $10 to $60 a month, it’s a little too costly for most parents.

GPS T80G Tracking Watch calls itself the world’s smallest watch. It contains a built-in GPS and looks like something a child would watch. It too comes with preset areas and sends out an SOS when the child leaves the area.

Lok8u is a real watch that tells time. If the watch is forcible removed from the child’s wrist an alert with location information is immediately sent to the parent’s cell phone. Parents can set up safe zones for the child. The cost is $200 with a $10 monthly monitoring fee.

There have always been bad people in the world and the community is on alert hoping and praying that this perpetrator is found soon. More than 1,000 tips have been called into investigators, but the identity of the bad guy is still a mystery.

Too bad he doesn't have a GPS device.

Maybe someday reliable and affordable technology can help us find missing children quickly. But today many parents are just relying on keeping them a little closer.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

Mother And Child Drown in Jacksonville Pool

Eddie Farah — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:07:47 GMT

There are many questions surrounding the drowning death of a young mother and her baby in an Arlington community pool on Wednesday.

Tiffany Sue Cecconi, 18, and her 18-month-old daughter, Kaylani, were found just after noon in a subdivision pool. The pool area is usually locked. Tiffany was said to be an accomplished swimmer. An unidentified 18-year-old man was found at the scene and hospitalized. He had reportedly ingested a great deal of chlorinated pool water. Investigators will be anxious to talk to him to determine if there was any foul play.

Our condolences and hearts go out to the family of this beautiful young mother and her child. What a tragedy unfolded to lose two such special people.

Neighbors wonder if a lightning strike might have hit the pool as area thunderstorms were occurring. We also understand that the pool was occasionally locked and wonder if there might have been undisclosed dangers around or in the pool area. Also neighbors report that kids break through the locked gates often and swim unsupervised as the pool doesn’t have a lifeguard.

Florida law says the property owner is responsible for any injuries you receive while on his/her property more than 90% of the time. Whether you were an “invitee,” a “licensee” or even a “trespasser,” the property owner generally will have some (if not all) responsibility for any injury you receive while on the property.

Florida has the highest unintentional drowning deaths in the nation for children between the ages of one to four and the third for other ages in the nation. In 2006, there were 72 drowning deaths of children under the age of four and Duval County is among the counties with the highest number of drowning deaths, according to the state department of health.

All of the pieces will be put together here eventually, but in the meantime all we do know is that there were two tragic losses Wednesday. Again, our condolences to the family and friends of Tiffany and Kaylani. #

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

Parental Waivers - Should They Be Enforcable?

Eddie Farah — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:11:53 GMT

Take a visit to Disney World and parents may be asked to sign pre-injury waivers so their children can participate in boat rentals, horseback riding or any other potentially dangerous activity. SeaWorld uses them too in its Discovery Cove before you swim with the dolphins.

Parental waivers have been standard fare for awhile and are favored heavily by Florida’s tourism industry – a big industry in Florida.

But a recent state Supreme Court ruling determined that parents do not have the right to release businesses from accountability when their children participate in sports, deciding the waivers are basically invalid.

The Florida legislature, with the help of Big Tourism, is trying to remedy that.

Supported by Disney World and SeaWorld Orlando, a controversial bill is making its way through the legislature. It ensures parents can sign pre-injury waivers on behalf of their children so they can participate in sports and they are enforcable.

The move is opposed by trial lawyers for one. The reason is a good one. What if a business is negligent? Don’t you want to be able to make them accountable? Frequently a lawsuit is the only way to do that.

Let’s say a rock wall company has a harness that slips. Or a boat rental company has a vessel that is sure to sink. Do you really want to sign away all of your rights to the American judicial system?

Business owners say plaintiffs can claim any negligence in any injury and that will cost them money to defend themselves. Already Gatorland has had to raise the age limit on its “Trainer for a Day” program from 12 to 18.

Call me crazy, but maybe raising the age of a gator wrestling sport isn’t such a bad idea.

The president of Gatorland agreed during a meeting that if there is gross negligence such as not adequately taping the mouth of a gator shut, that the business should be held accountable.

At last word, the Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed a vote on the measure while they wrestle with the finer points of the cost of responsibility and accountability and whether that may be worth the lives of young people. #

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

Jacksonville Link To Killer of Adam Walsh

Eddie Farah — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:47:26 GMT

27 years is a long time to look for closure, not that it can ever come when your child is murdered.

Today the Hollywood, Florida police chief announced that the 1981 murder of Adam Walsh had been solved.

Adam was never seen alive after his mother lost him in a mall Sears store. Reportedly the 6-year-old had gone to look at the video arcade just as a 17-year old guard told all of the kids to leave.

Adam’s head was found in a Florida canal two weeks later. His body was never found.

His father, John Walsh went on to become the host of the Fox show, “Americas Most Wanted,” and an advocate for children’s rights and for curtailing the rights of perpetrators, especially pedophiles.

The man named today, Ottis Toole, was a long-time suspect and no surprise.

Ottis Toole came from the Springfield section of downtown Jacksonville. Born in 1947 to poverty, Toole’s father abandoned the family when he was six. Toole claimed to have been sexually abused at an early age, and sent out in dresses by his mother. His grandmother practiced voodoo reportedly. Toole suffered from learning disorders, was illiterate, and suffered from epilepsy.

Toole claims he started murdering when he was 14 years old. Police didn’t know what to believe. Back there was no DNA evidence to make a match, even for the blood found in the trunk of his car after Adam was kidnapped.

Former Jacksonville homicide detective, Jesse “Buddy” Terry says he, along with Walsh, never doubted that Toole killed the boy. Toole had confessed to Terry about the beheading in 1983, even showing Terry where he killed the boy.

“He told us he killed a little boy down South and it made headlines,” Terry told the Florida Times Union in a phone interview.

But Hollywood police thought that Terry coerced the confession and provided confidential information to Toole about the case so he could write a book and gain movie rights to Toole’s life story.

Terry told the Florida Times-Union, he feels with the closing of this case, his reputation has finally been salvaged.

“It’s about time,” Terry, 71, said of the case’s resolution. “We had no book deal or anything else.”

Toole died in prison more than a decade ago, allegedly giving his niece a deathbed confession to the crime. He had confessed to more than 100 murders, many with serial killer Henry Lee Lucas whom he met in a Jacksonville soup kitchen.

“I have no doubt, I’ve never had any doubt,” Walsh always said.

Ironically, the child protection laws that Adam Walsh’s death sparked might have helped intervene in the life of this deranged, mentally incompetent and sexually abused child who became the killer Toole.

As many of the laws now encourage, step in and help a child you see in trouble. You might be averting the creation of a serial killer and save many lives down the line. #

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

Florida Slips in Health Ranking

Eddie Farah — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 11:57:00 GMT

Florida used to rank 41^st in states in terms of health, now that number has dropped.

Florida was No. 45 in the latest America’s Health Ranking. That represents a partnership between United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention. Statistics in Florida come from the Department of Health.

The drop is at least partially attributable to the higher rates of uninsured people in Florida, and high incidences of infectious disease. On the flip side for positively affecting health is a low rate of air pollution and obesity. Also the number of folks who smoke has dropped by 8 percent.

Particularly upsetting is the number of children in Florida who live in poverty- that increased by 23 percent. And if you are black, you are twice as likely to have a low birth rate baby, than if you are a non-Hispanic white.

States were ranked by 22 health measures from infant mortality, to heart disease deaths, immunizations, violent crime, among other criteria. Unfortunately access to health care also falls along racial lines with 43.8 percent of Hispanics lacking health insurance compared to almost 18 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

While the healthiest state was Vermont followed by Hawaii, the states ranking lowest in the survey are all in the south - Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana.

The purpose of the report is to stimulate action by individual communities and public health professionals to improve the health of the population of the US. #

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

First Of Thousands Of Florida Smoker Lawsuits Since Engle Underway

Eddie Farah — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:50:21 GMT

Stuart Hess of Cooper City, Florida died of lung cancer at the age of 55 in 1997.

His widow, Elaine, says Stuart tried to quit smoking. He tried Nicorette gum and hypnosis. He tried to quit cold turkey. Nothing worked.

Whether or not Hess was actually addicted to cigarettes will be the key to the case that his widow is bringing against Benson & Hedges (owned by Philip Morris), the cigarettes Hess preferred to smoke. The tobacco company says he was not addicted and could have stopped smoking at any time, according to the Miami Herald.

The case was scheduled to begin this week in the Broward County Courthouse. Lawyers for Hess must first prove he was addicted to cigarettes and that they caused his lung cancer. If they succeed in doing that, the jury can listen to key findings already established against the tobacco industry in the class-action Engle case. Farah and Farah helped thousands of Florida smokers sign up to followup where Engle left off.

Named for a Miami Beach pediatrician, Howard Engel, who was among the first to tackle Big Tobacco, his case established that a) Tobacco companies were negligent; b) Their products are defective and unreasonably dangerous; c) Cigarettes are addictive; d) Cigarette companies conspired to conceal health and addiction information with the intention of consumer reliance on the misinformation; and e) Cigarette companies were liable for breach of express warranty.

The suit also established that cigarette smoke caused 16 different diseases including lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and others.

Proving negligence established by the Engle case will not have to be addressed in the individual trials. But litigants will also be judged on how much individual responsibility they had for smoking in the first place.

There is no doubt that Big Tobacco companies will try to discredit the smokers who are now forced to file individual cases. Tobacco companies will try to prove that these individuals, many of them deceased a) that they weren't truly addicted and b) they were responsible for their own death.

Expect it to get uglier here before the families who are living without their loved ones see any remedy through the courts. The Hess case will be watched by many, including our law firm.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

Bullies On The Internet

Eddie Farah — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:11:00 GMT

The father of a son who committed suicide on the Internet this week is “appalled” by the audience that watched his son die and is calling for regulations to oversee the Internet.

Abraham Biggs, 19, of Pembroke Pines, Florida, took an overdose of medication for bipolar disorder. While he was lying on the bed looking like he was sleeping, he was actually dying while an unknown number of online viewers egged on the teen.

Abraham Biggs Sr. says the Web site operators and those who watched did nothing.

"I think they are all equally wrong," he said. "It's a person's life that we're talking about. And as a human being, you don't watch someone in trouble and sit back and just watch."

The college student died in his father’s bed Wednesday after he told the Internet community that he planned to take his own life.

Some who watched him take a fatal overdose thought Abraham was kidding because he had threatened suicide on the site before. Some made snide comments. Eventually some people did notify police and Abraham was found by police 12 hours later after his address was tracked down by the Web site.

Biggs, who has said he was at work during the episode, said he had not known about his son's online presence. He believes the attempt to die was a cry for help from a young person opening up his life willingly to an uncaring virtual audience.

"I think after this incident and probably other incidents that have occurred in the past, they all point to some kind of regulation is necessary," Biggs said. "I think it is wrong to have this happen for hours without any action being taken from the people in charge. Where were they all the time?"

The younger Biggs posted a link from the Web site to Justin.tv, which allows users to broadcast live with their webcams.

Expect to see precedent setting laws evolve from the harm that the internet can impose as people anonymously add to the hurt of others. #

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

5-Year-Old's Asthma Death At School Results In Wrongful Death Suit

Eddie Farah — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:49:40 GMT

The tragic death of a five-year-old boy who suffered an asthma attack at the beginning of school last year has resulted in a wrongful death lawsuit.

Trenton Stokes died in August 2007. It was his fourth day of kindergarten at Orange Park Elementary School in Clay County, Florida.

His mother, Rita Stokes, had met with school officials to talk about her son’s condition including the principal, her son’s teacher, the school nurse, and PE coach. She knew how unpredictable the attacks could be and told those in charge how to recognize them AND to always have the teacher in charge carry Trenton's medication.

Unfortunately, when Trenton had an attack on the playground August 24^th, his teacher didn’t have the medication with her. The boy asked for it, collapsed and died.

Even prepared with information from Ms. Stokes, the school apparently failed to take seriously its responsibility over this little boy. The school board disagrees. A spokeswoman for Clay County Schools says the school acted responsibly but the child just did not make it.

We at Farah and Farah are so sorry for this tragic passing. No doubt the facts will be sorted out at trail.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

Pharmacy Errors Addressed In New Florida Law

Eddie Farah — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:47:29 GMT

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has just signed Senate Bill 1360 into law. The Pharmacy Technician Act is a significant piece of legislation that should keep us all safer from the medication errors made by pharmacy technicians.

SB1360 should bring some justice to the Hippely family. Back in the summer of 2002, Beth Hippely of Lakeland, Florida was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. She was taking chemotherapy and the blood thinner, Warfarin, also known as Coumadin.

The pharmacy tech at Walgreens gave her a refill order at ten times the dose for Warfarin. Three weeks on the medication and Beth suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. She went into a coma after suffering brain damage and then was put on life support. But because she could not take medication for cancer, her cancer returned. She died in January 2007.

A lawsuit in Polk County on behalf of the family against Walgreens for negligence and wrongful death resulted in a $25.8 million award for damages.

The new Pharmacy Technician Act should help prevent these kinds of pharmaceutical errors by inexperienced and unsupervised technicians.

It requires pharmacy technicians to register with the Florida Board of Pharmacy and to work directly under the supervision of a pharmacist. The tech must be at least 17 years old and they are required to complete 20 hours of continuing education in pharmaceutical procedures prior to a biennial renewal of their registration.

It will be against Florida law for anyone who is not registered as a pharmacy technician to perform that job.

With medication errors commonplace, the Pharmacy Technician Act is long overdue.

Data from the Florida Board of Pharmacy indicates about 600 complaints a year against pharmacies and just as many against individual pharmacists. Big pharmacy chains cut their costs to increase profitability and that includes the cost of labor. Pharmacy techs are a cheaper way to staff a pharmacy and keep profits up.

But it’s about more than profits. Beth Hippely lost her life from a preventable mistake.

Unfortunately, the new law will be phased in over the next few years. In the meantime, keep reading your prescription directions and make sure the amount and instructions reflect what you were told by your physician. #

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah