The BP wrongful death lawsuit states that while his mother worked, the infant was cared for at his aunt’s house, which is a mile from the refinery. The emissions allegedly began when the hydrogen compressor in the unit went offline. The plaintiff claims that after the chemical release began the child began to have a runny nose, a bad cough, and mucus in his eyes. The victim’s mother states that she took him to three area hospitals and physicians at each facility were unable to find the cause of his illness.

Wrongful death is a legal term for a death that has been caused by the fault of another person. Damages can be recovered in wrongful death lawsuits that include expense associated with the death, lost benefits, pain, suffering, or mental anguish suffered by the survivors, and loss of companionship. Punitive damages are also occasionally available. In addition to the wrongful death lawsuit described above, a personal injury class action lawsuit has already been filed against BP over the alleged chemical leak on behalf of thousands of oil refinery workers and residents who lived near the facility.

Read more about the BP wrongful death lawsuit by clicking the link.

In Chicago, we unfortunately hear news weekly of car accidents where personal injuries or wrongful deaths result. Just this weekend, police were questioning a female driver involved in a Chicago car accident that killed a 39-year old Chicago man. Another fatal crash occurred in the south suburb of Frankfort over the weekend. A man was killed Thursday night when the Kawasaki motorcycle he was driving slid under a truck. A preliminary autopsy showed that the Illinois man died of multiple personal injuries in the accident. Illinois state police said that the injury victim failed to stop at the intersection and yield the right of way to the truck driven by another man.

Visit the Chicago Tribune online to learn more about the CDC car accident cost study.

The other wrongful death lawsuits are set for trial in March 2012 in federal court. According to recent documents, the crew’s failure to monitor airspeed, which slowed enough to trigger the stall warning, contributed to the airplane accident. Other contributing factors were found to be unnecessary conversation between the pilots and the Captain’s failure to manage the flight.

Wrongful death is a legal term that means that the victim’s death has been caused by the fault of another individual. In addition to situations like the airplane accident described above, deaths caused by drunk driving, a defective or dangerous product, failing to diagnose a fatal disease, or the construction of an unsound structure of a building may be considered as “wrongful deaths.” Wrongful death lawyers generally filed wrongful death lawsuits on behalf of family members or beneficiaries of the decedent. In some situations, these wrongful death claims are filed in order to obtain monetary damages to cover the earnings the deceased person would have provided.

For more information on the wrongful death lawsuit settlements, read the article at Business Week.

The Chicago personal injury lawyers of Levin & Perconti are familiar with damages in injury lawsuits and want our readers to notice that the Tasered Illinois man is seeking punitive damages in the lawsuit. Punitive damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the personal injury lawsuit or other lawsuit. Although the purpose of the punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will in fact receive all or some portion of the punitive damage award. Punitive damages are awarded only in special cases, usually under tort law in cases like our injury attorneys do, where the defendant’s conduct was egregious.

More information about the civil rights lawsuit is available at the Lake County News-Sun.

FDA urged patients not to stop taking the drug, but warned patients to let their physicians know if the patients have risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The first indication of product liability risk for Stalevo came from a clinical trial called STRIDE-PD, according to LA Times. The average age of the patient was 60 years of age and the trial that exposed the risks lasted an average of 2.7 years. The study’s results found seven heart attacks and one death.

The results of the clinical trial were combined by the FDA with results from fourteen other trials totaling about 4800 patients. With the wider patient pool, the analysis showed twenty-seven adverse product reactions of heart attacks, strokes, or deaths for a statistically significant increased risk of 146%. When the data from the trial was not included, the increased risk was only 67% and it was not statistically significant. The FDA is continuing to look into the significance of the clinical trial results.

Click the link to the LA Times to read more about the FDA product liability warnings.

Unfortunately, access to the Illinois physician profiles came to a halt earlier this year when the state of Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation removed them from its website and locked them. As Chicago Tribune describes it, this is the latest chapter in a long political battle that has pitted Illinois patient advocates against the lobbyists who represent Illinois hospitals, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies.

Now, the only information available to the public is whether the Illinois regulatory agency has previously disciplined the physician. One state legislator explained that we had a useful and powerful tool to protect patients and now it is gone; Representative Mary Flowers added that we should mandate that the state of Illinois provide this critical consumer health information. Patients’ rights advocates and Illinois medical malpractice attorneys explained that similar websites have proved popular in other states where they receive more than 800,000 hits a year. But, any effort in Illinois needs to face tough competition from the Illinois State Medical Society, which lobbies on behalf of doctors and has helped defeat similar medical malpractice protection bills.

To read more about the Illinois medical malpractice website and its removal, visit the Chicago Tribune.

The Southtown Star has reported that officials in those villages have recently barred driving and using a cell phone without a hands-free device within their borders. Like Chicago, Midlothian and Park Forest are “hands free” communities. Its an effort centered on avoiding Illinois car accidents that officials said are more likely to happen while drivers are using their cell phones. Enforcement of the hands-free laws in Midlothian and Park Forest are just the beginning. Pulling over drivers for using cell phones is now considered a primary offense. In other words, you do not have to be committing some other traffic offense to be pulled over for using a hand-held device.

Recent statistics have shown that talking on a cell phone causes nearly 25% of all Illinois car accidents. Four out of every five accidents are attributed to distracted drivers whereas one out of every three accidents are attributed to drunk drivers. In 2002, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis calculated that 2,600 people die every year as a result of using cell phones while driving and another 330,000 receive personal injuries. Drivers talking on cell phones were 18% slower to react to brake lights.

To read more about the south suburban texting bans, read the article at the Southtown Star.

Additionally, the US CPSC and LG Electronics have reannounced the Goldstar and Comfort-Aire dehumidifier recall, which affects about 98,000 dehumidifiers. The power connector for the dehumidifer’s compressor can short circuit and pose serious fire and burn hazards to consumers. Another fire hazard product recall involved the Bosch Thermotechnology Boiler Survey Kit. The recall affects about 1500 service kit for gas-fired boilers. The use of a silver-covered gas pipe adapter included in the service kit can lead to gas leakage, which can pose a fire or explosion hazard to consumers. Miami Breaker, Inc. has also voluntarily recalled products due to fire hazard. Their product recall involves about 43,600 counterfeit “Square D” circuit breakers, which can fail to trip when they are overloaded.

To read more about recent product recalls, please visit the CPSC website.

Further, on Sunday night, a speeding vehicle struck and killed a teen bicyclist in Dolton, Illinois. The Dolton driver that caused the Illinois wrongful death has continued to elude police and was eluding police when he was speeding and struck the teenager.

Another individual received serious personal injuries after a south side motor vehicle accident on Monday. The injuries occurred after the motorcycle accident victim crashed his motorcycle on outbound interstate 57 at 127th Street in Illinois. Around the same time in another South Side suburban neighborhood, Country Club Hills, a Mexican restaurant was hit by a car and received extensive property damage.

Additionally, an Orland Park man who was involved in a motor vehicle accident a year ago died over the weekend from his personal injuries. He was involved in a motorcycle accident last August on I-355 at Interstate 88; an autopsy revealed that the motorcycle victim died of cerebral injuries.

More information about the serious Illinois motor vehicle accidents is available at The Southtown Star.

The driver has not been arrested; alcohol was not a factor in the crash. A different off-roader commented that he did not think the racer did anything stupid, he just hit it too hard. One eyewitness said that she could tell that several people were trapped under the vehicle. She personally saw one woman with a major head wound bleeding and another individual crushed beneath the car. The investigators on scene were searching the vehicle for mechanical defects and to attempt recreating the collision scene.

A video of the off-roader race accident scene where 8 people were killed and ten people were injured is available at Chicago Tribune.

In related news, a recent ruling issued decided that the former employee of a construction company that built homes made with the defective Chinese drywall cannot claim money awarded to homeowners affected by the product, even though his own house is affected. The deciding judge ruled that even though the claimant lost his job with the construction company, he could not join the class action product liability lawsuit because it excluded the construction company employees. An attorney who represents homeowners in the class action lawsuit said that homeowners specifically remember the contested claimant telling them that the odors they noticed as they walked through their homes before closing were just a “new home smell.”

The product liability attorneys at Levin & Perconti have been drafting blogs about the tainted Chinese drywall for quite some time now. Stories involved insurers dropping homeowners with Chinese drywall, CPSC pressing China for drywall damage compensation, and other issues related to the home repairs. Some experts have opined that the odors, personal injuries, and corrosions blamed on the Chinese drywall may actually be caused by the failure to remove sulfur and contaminants from synthetic gypsum.

Click on the News-Press.com link to read more about the Chinese drywall lawsuits.

Seroquel is an antipsychotic drug used in the treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, insomnia, and anxiety disorders. Annual sales of Seroquel are approximately $4.7 billion worldwide and $2.9 billion in the U.S. The most common side effect of the drug is sedation and other side effects include tachycardia, abnormal liver tests, dizziness, upset stomach, substantial weight gain, a stuffy nose, akathisia, and increased paranoia. The rare, but life-threatening, neuroleptic malignant syndrome may also result from use of the drug.

In October 2009, AstraZeneca reported reaching a $520 million agreement to settle two federal investigations and two whistle-blower lawsuits over the sale and marketing of Seroquel. One of the investigations related to certain physicians who participated in clinical trials and the other involved off-label promotion of the drug. Aggressive marketing resulted in Seroquel being increasingly used for children and elderly people for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Physicians are permitted to prescribe any approved drug for off-label uses.

Read more about the product liability settlement by visiting the Wall Street Journal.

According to a Chicago Tribune report, vehicles can be stopped on the tracks at Nagle and many other dangerous Chicago railroad crossings on a daily basis, which is seriously dangerous. Drivers routinely take those risks and despite knowledge of the consistent law breaking, most of the hundreds of tickets issued to drivers at the Chicago railroad crossing for failing to yield to trains or for stopping on the tracks were issued by Union Pacific police, not Chicago police officers. Planned changes to increase safety are planned for between August 23 and September 3 and include new signs, better pavement markings, and new concrete crossing panels. City of Chicago traffic engineers are also evaluating whether changes in the timing of signals would keep the rail crossing clear of vehicles when the traffic lights change from green to red.

More information about the fixes for the dangerous Chicago railroad crossing is available at the Chicago Tribune.

Environmental lawyers familiar with such toxic tort cases opine that BP is likely to negotiate a lower penalty. Nonetheless, the fines could still hurt the company’s ability to pay for the cleanup costs. Under the Clean Water Act, oil owners are liable for fines of $1,100 per barrel spilled even if it did nothing wrong. The penalty jumps to $4,300 per barrel if BP was grossly negligent, which would include making conscious decisions that increased the likelihood of an incident while engaged in a risky business, such as deepwater drilling. BP Chairman expressed doubt about the fines being that high, stating that BP and the government have a mutual interest in a lower number because, according to BP Chairman, the government does not want to push BP into insolvency.

The civil fines, discussed above, which fall under United States environmental laws are distinct from costs that BP currently faces to clean up the spill. Additionally, they are separate from costs that BP faces for compensating the personal injury victims of the disaster.

Click on the Business Week link to read more about the liability fines facing BP.

The 373,000 recalled Avalons, dating from between 2000 and 2004, have improperly cast steering lock bars. These steering lock bars have been a factor in three accidents reported to the Toyota company. The problem occurs like this: a minute crack can develop on the surface, which in turn, can break the bar and lock the steering wheel, increasing the risk of an automobile accident. As opposed to the several hundred thousand Avalons, a smaller number of Lexus model vehicles from 2003 through 2007 have a different steering shaft problem. Luckily, no personal injuries have been reported related to the Lexus issue. Additionally, Toyota says it will recall 80,000 Land Cruisers for another problem involving faulty steering shafts. Toyota plans to replace the steering column bracket on the recalled vehicles, a product procedure that takes nearly two hours to complete. Toyota has announced that it would notify owners by first class mail beginning in late this month to take their vehicles to a dealer to have the work done at no charge.

More information on the Toyota recall is available at Los Angeles Times.