Personal Injury and Social Security Disability Blog

Link of the Day - Halloween Entry At Wikipedia

It's Halloween, and what better way to learn everything you ever wanted to know about this great holiday than the Halloween entry at Wikipedia.

Link of the Day - Journal Of The American Bar Association

I've been a member of the American bar Association pretty much since I began practicing, and I recommend it to all lawyers, even though the emphasis of the organization is definitely not on personal injury clients and Social Security disability claimants.

The Web site of the Journal of the American Bar Association provides a wealth of information on many legal topics, including law office management.

Link of the Day - Driving Tips For Teenagers

Here are some tips for teenage drivers, courtesy of Safeco Insurance:

Driver's license

Most teenagers are excited and proud about getting their first driver's license. Make the most of this time by helping your teen along the way. A few helpful hints:

• Obtain the license handbook from your local Department of Motor Vehicles.
• Be sure your teen studies the handbook and takes practice tests. Ten hours of study is normally sufficient and if your teen passes two of the practice exams, he or she is very likely to pass the exam. You can also help your teen by quizzing him or her.

Prepare your teen for all kinds of driving situations.

Knowing your teen is prepared to handle unique situations will go a long way in giving you confidence and peace of mind that he or she is ready to drive. There's a variety of challenges and unexpected occurrences to prepare for—some within your control and some out of your control. Part of ensuring your teen's safety is being proactive with providing tips and advice on how to handle these kinds of situations before they happen.

If your teen needs to drive in bad weather

Driving in inclement weather is a leading cause of accidents.* Whether your teen is facing ice, snow, rain or fog, there are certain precautions he or she should take if he or she needs to drive at these times. Here are some tips you can pass along to your teen to reduce the risk of accidents:

Rain
• Reduce your speed.
• Turn on your lights and ensure that your field of vision is clear. If necessary, use the air conditioner or defroster to improve visibility.
• As always, make sure that you have the proper treads on your tires.

Fog
• Turn on your headlights to low beam, whether it's day or night.
• Stay to the right of the road and stay a safe distance behind the car ahead of you.
• If visibility is extremely low, pull off the road to the right and turn on your emergency hazard lights. Wait until visibility improves.

Snow and Ice
• Bridges and overpasses freeze before roads do because of the cold air that passes underneath them. So always slow down and avoid sudden changes in speed or direction when driving on bridges or overpasses.
• Use your brakes cautiously. If you have antilock brakes, apply firm and consistent pressure to the pedal in accordance with your car's manual. If you don't have antilock brakes, slowly pump the brakes to prevent your brakes from locking up.
• Maintain a steady, slow speed.
• If you are stuck in the snow, straighten the wheel and accelerate slowly. Don't spin the tires.
• Consider carrying sand or cinders to place under the wheels for traction. You should also keep a small shovel and a sleeping bag in the trunk for extremely cold conditions or travel
*Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). through remote areas.

If the car breaks down or runs out of gas It's extremely important to prepare your teen for the unfortunate event of his or her car breaking down or running out of gas. Especially since in many instances you won't be immediately available to help your teen. This is a key reason why Safeco offers 24/7 Roadside Assistance with Teensurance—to help get your teen to safety and give you the peace of mind that your teen will not be stranded.

Here's some helpful advice to share with your young driver:

1. Get the car off the road as quickly as possible only when it's safe to do so. If you didn't get the car off the road before it stalled, it's important to move it so it won't become a potential safety hazard to other motorists.
2. To push your car off the road, put on your hazard lights and shift your car into neutra l. Once your car is in a safe location and stopped, be sure to place the car back into par k and set the emergency brake.
3. Keep your hazard lights on. This will help your vehicle be more visible to motorists. Keeping your hazard lights on will also signal to law enforcement that you either plan to return to your car quickly or that you need help.
4. If you have a cell phone, stay in the car and call for roadside assistance. (Teensurance comes with roadside assistance that covers your teen in most any vehicle he or she drives so make sure the number is programmed into his or her cell phone or that the wallet card is accessible.)

Note: Keep in mind that each situation your teen faces could be unique and might require different actions.

Dealing with the effects of peer pressure

Let's be honest. P eer pressure is a powerful motivator to teens, causing them to do things they wouldn't normally do. But with Teensurance, parents have the opportunity to set limits and boundaries around speed, safe driving areas and times—and be notified in real-time if those limits have been exceeded. 

Sometimes, these mistakes are unintentional. Other times, peer pressure can cause teens to push beyond their limits. Thankfully, you'll know and will be able to have a conversation with your teenager about what happened and how to avoid these situations in the future. Maybe more importantly, it gives your teen a valid reason why he or she can't participate in risky behavior. In the end, what matters most is providing your teenager with the freedom to drive responsibly. Teensurance can assist you in providing this freedom without compromising your teen's safety or your peace of mind.

If there's an accident

Unfortunately, accidents happen. So it's important that your teen knows exactly what to do if there is one. To make sure your teen understands the proper process to follow in an accident, give him or her the card on the back of this brochure. It includes essential information such as:

1. Stop. If you leave the site of an accident you could be charged with a "hit and run"— regardless of whether or not you think it's your fault.
2. Exchange information with all parties involved in the accident, including: names and driver's license numbers, vehicle identification numbers, name and contact information of the car owners, plus insurance company names, addresses and policy numbers. If possible, take pictures of the accident scene.
3. If you hit a parked car and its driver is not around, you may not leave the scene of the accident until you have left a note in a conspicuous place that includes your name, address, explanation of the accident, and the name and address of your car's owner. If you don't, you could be charged with a "hit and run."

Link of the Day - Top Ten Tips In Case Of Property Loss

My friend, California lawyer Jonathan Stein, was raised near San Diego, in an area hard-hit by the fires. He has offered free legal advice to any people having problems with their insurance companies regarding fire losses. He has also posted a Top Ten Tips list for those who have lost their homes or other property to the fires. While the list is for California residents, most of them apply equally to homeowners in any state. Read these tips before you have a loss:

1. Document your structure loss. Take pictures or video of the damaged area. If you know what was there, talk on the video camera. If you are taking still pictures, then write down what was damaged. Example: "The outside of the house had siding, painted 5 years ago, brown."
2. Document your personal property loss. Take pictures or video of any damaged/destroyed personal property. Put the details on the tape or write it down. Example: "Nintendo Wii, purchased Jan. 2007 for $400 at Target."
3. Call your insurance company. They are going to be inundated with claims. Be patient, but expect a fairly quick response because the insurance companies are sending tons of adjusters into the area. Give them whatever details you have.
4. Walk through your damage with the adjuster. Do not let him/her do it himself or herself. You need to walk through the damage and tell them what was damaged, as descriptively as possible.
5. Ask for an estimate within 24 hours. If you have structure damage, make sure you call a contractor. WARNING: Call a licensed contractor ONLY. If you are solicited by a contractor, ask for the license number and look it up at the Contractor's State License Board website.
6. Compare your estimate with the insurance company's estimate. Remember, their estimate is not gospel. You are entitled to have any licensed contractor complete the repairs. If the estimates are different, tell the adjuster to work out the differences with the contractor. And yes, prices will be higher, but that is the insurance company's problem, not yours.
7. For personal property, start replacing your items and KEEP YOUR receipts. If you have a replacement cost policy, they owe you the cost to replace the damaged items with similar items. If you have an actual cash value policy, then you get the depreciated amount. (Do not let them write down everything that was damaged and take a set depreciation amount. Each item has to be depreciated individually.)
8. If you have to move into a hotel, keep your receipts. The insurance company owes you for the lodging plus an increase in food expenses and any other expenses incurred as a result of the loss. (Hint: When they ask you to estimate your pre-loss food expenses, do not overestimate this. It will hurt you at time of reimbursement.)
9. Do not let the adjuster bully you around. Do not let the adjuster tell you that your loss is not covered. If they deny your claim, make them put it in writing. If they tell you something that you do not understand, ask for it in writing.
10. Do not sign anything unless and until you fully understand it. Make sure you know what you are signing. And if you do not, get help from someone.

Link of the Day - A Twist On The Peanut Butter Recall Story

Kim S. Nash is an award-winning reporter who writes about how the people at big organizations move information to fix critical strategy problems. She's written a very interesting article for CIO.com regarding the ConAgra peanut butter recall, among other recent recalls.

The twist is that the story is written from the viewpoint of a corporation's information technology department. The story is not so much about the recall itself, but about how companies can retrace their steps after the discovery of a defective product, and know exactly what products to recall. ConAgra didn't have the proper technology to figure that out, and had to make revisions to the recall order.

I recommend reading the article in full. Here are some short excerpts:

One of ConAgra’s oldest and best-known brands, Peter Pan brought in $109 million in sales last year, says Information Resources, which tracks retail spending. ConAgra also supplies some of Wal-Mart’s Great Value house brand and sells peanut butter toppings to companies like Carvel and Sonic, bringing total peanut butter sales to $147 million last year. But when an outbreak of a rare salmonella strain was traced to ConAgra peanut butter, the company would have to try to get it all back.

The Peter Pan recall eventually involved 326 million pounds of its own and Wal-Mart’s peanut butter, plus 99,953 cases of toppings. So far, ConAgra has spent more than $78 million dealing with an estimated $1 billion worth of potentially infected product. Its peanut butter sales were down 63 percent in fiscal 2007, the company says.

Why Recalls Depend on the Supply Chain

Peanut butter isn’t ConAgra’s only recall trouble, either. The company has had to call back hundreds of pounds of ground beef in the past few years, and this month ConAgra’s Banquet pot pies were recalled when at least 211 people in the U.S. got salmonella poisoning, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links to the pot pies. That recall is ongoing.

But it’s not just ConAgra. Recalls are blooming like flowers in spring: Dole’s e.coli bagged salads; Metz Fresh’s salmonella spinach; REI’s faulty children’s bikes; Mattel’s lead-painted and choking-hazard toys, just to name a few. Federal records show at least 628 recalls so far this year, and another 941 in 2006. (For more, check our History of Famous Recalls.) Globalization accounts for some of this surge. Many U.S. companies depend on overseas production, where quality controls are difficult to monitor. And it’s not just hard goods like toys from China. Food, too, arrives by container ship from other countries, and sometimes it’s contaminated. So far this year, for example, more than 8,660 cartons of cantaloupe from Costa Rica have been recalled for salmonella risks, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) records.

As soon as the decision is made to recall a product, companies should release consistent, correct information to minimize brand damage, says Joe Barkai, a practice director at Manufacturing Insights, a consulting firm that is a sister company to CIO’s publisher. “But,” he says, “now [traceability] is mainly a manual procedure. Companies don’t have it automated.”

And that’s a problem. ConAgra, for example, had to revise its recall twice as it learned more about how much infected product it could have manufactured and where it might have gone, according to FDA records. The original Valentine’s Day 2007 announcement recalled peanut butter made after May 2006. In early March, ConAgra expanded the scope to December 2005 and added toppings made in its Humboldt, Tenn., plant using peanut butter from its Sylvester, Ga., plant, where the original contamination had occurred. A week later, ConAgra pushed the date back to October 2004—22 months before the first reported illness.

Link of the Day - Friday Fun

This one is for my wife, the cat-lover. If you like funny cat pictures with sometimes hilarious and ungrammatical captions, check out icanhascheezburger.

Link of the Day - Watch Oral Arguments Before The Texas Supreme Court

St. Mary's Law School makes it easy for anyone to watch oral arguments presented to the Texas Supreme Court. Just go to the site and search for the case you want to hear.

Link of the Day - Government Mandates Better Side-Impact Protection

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last month announced new rules that require improved safety protection in new passenger vehicles by September 2012. Specifically, the rules mandate better head protection, and that will probably be provided by manufacture through the use of side and window curtain air bags. Side-impact crashes killed 9,200 people in 2005, the most recent figures available.

Automakers agreed in 2003 to install side air bags in all new passenger vehicles by September 2009, and the safety equipment is becoming more widely available.

Dave McCurdy, the head of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and others, said they shared NHTSA’s goal of “enhancing head protection” in side crashes.

Safety groups have pointed to the benefits of side air bags. A study last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that driver deaths were reduced by 52 percent in sport utility vehicles equipped with head-protecting side air bags, while the same air bags reduced driver deaths by 37 percent in passenger cars.

Link of the Day - Who Do You Trust -- Your Doctor Or Your Pharmacist?

The Dallas Morning News recently had an article about an FDA proposal to create a new category of drugs -- "Behind the Counter" medications. These would be drugs that now require a prescription, but in the future would require only that you talk with you pharmacist before you can buy them. Is this a good idea? I have mixed feelings. It would save some hassle, but should we always trust the new night-shift pharmacist in a chain store to make the right decision about our medical needs? Here are excerpts from the article:

For years, consumers either showed up at the drugstore with a doctor's prescription or settled for less powerful medications sold over the counter.

Now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering creating a class of medicines dubbed "behind the counter." It would let consumers buy routine medicines that could include birth control pills, cholesterol drugs and migraine medicine without a prescription – as long as they discuss it with a pharmacist first.

Pharmacists and drug companies like the idea; doctors think it's dangerous. If approved, the new drug classification could go into effect as early as next year.

"We believe having certain drugs behind the counter but available only after a consultation with a pharmacist could significantly increase patient access," said Ilisa Bernstein, the FDA's director of pharmacy affairs.

But doctors are on alert. Dr. Anmol Mahal, a gastroenterologist and president of the California Medical Association, said the federal agency's proposal is ill-conceived and unsafe for consumers.

"Patients are not clinicians," he said. "Allowing people to self-diagnose and self-treat is not in their best interest."

Currently, only a handful of drugs are available behind the counter without a prescription. Best-known is the morning-after birth control pill that was banned for over-the-counter sale in the U.S. until last year. Women under the age of 18 still need a prescription for the drug.

Over-the-counter drugs typically sell for less than prescription medicines but often at much higher volumes, potentially making them more profitable for manufacturers in certain cases.

Much will depend on which behind-the-counter drugs that insurers decide to cover. Most insurance plans cover prescription drugs but not over-the-counter medicines. Insurers say they are researching the FDA's proposal.

John Tilley, who owns four pharmacies in Downey, Calif., and serves as the president of the National Community Pharmacists Association, sees the FDA's proposal as a "win-win" for patients.

Pharmacists are trained to consult about routine medical information, he said, and are often more accessible and spend far more time with customers than do their doctors. He said greater access to medications might help patients without health insurance who otherwise might not be getting care.

"It's not like people would be getting these medications from a vending machine," he said. "This would include an adequate level of care."

Critics of looser oversight of the nation's drug supply were less optimistic.

Dr. Mahal of the California Medical Association said he was concerned that patients would buy medication and then lack supervision to ensure their treatment was safe and effective.

Ms. Bernstein of the FDA said the agency had several questions about how such a proposal would work in practice – including how it could affect patient safety and whether it actually would improve access to medications.

"We're still in research mode," she said.

Link of the Day - Laser Monks

Did you ever think you could contribute to a worthwhile cause by buying printer cartridges? Just buy your office supplies from LaserMonks.com. Here's their story:

Our monastery is part of the 900-year-old Cistercian Order; our particular Abbey was founded over 75 years ago in the United States. Every monastery has a monk in charge of all the temporal needs and activities of the community. Among my duties as Steward of Temporal Affairs are developing and managing ways to support our life and charities.Contrary to popular understanding, monasteries are self-supporting. A part of our day is given to some sort of remunerative work, from which we support our modest living needs in the monastery, and then use the rest for charitable work. Our Abbey was at this time looking into various new income projects, which had ranged from growing Shitake mushrooms, raising Christmas trees, to building a golf course and conference center.An income project that was based on a necessary consumable item, like toner and ink cartridges, was exactly what the monastery needed - a solid, consistent, income that would not be affected by difficult economic times. Everyone has to have toner and ink to print, businesses especially. And everyone wants to save money. Add to this the fact that we use the money for good works and to support monks who dedicate their lives to serving God and neighbor, and you have the ultimate win-win situation.The manufacturers were elated with the possibilities. They immediately said we should market not only to schools, churches, and other non-profits, but especially to businesses. "Look, you're monks. You have an image and long tradition of being trustworthy and providing top quality products. You're offering a great product at a great price. Once people hear about you, it's an easy decision. Why would anyone pay more money, when they can have quality products for less, from monks who use the income to help others?"