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Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Employee Cell Chat Results in $5.2 Million Payment to Widow by Employer
While employers’ are shielded to limited and scheduled statutory benefits under workers’ compensation for injures arising out of and in the course of their employment, injured third parties may pursue a civil action against the employer for the employees negligence. An employee who was distracted by cell phone use caused a motor vehicle accident that resulted in the death of a widowed mother of four children. Her estate filed a civil claim against the employer alleging that employee was negligent for using the cell phone while driving.
In a recent article in TRIAL magazine, Robert L. Sacks Jr., discusses the liability caused by text messaging and other distractions while driving. “Drivers with one hand on the wheel and one hand on the phone are a common sight, at least in states where it’s still legal to talk and drive. But the cell phone is only one of many potential high-tech distractions. It’s now possible to talk, text-message, take pictures, check the global positioning system (GPS), adjust the satellite radio, scroll through the pages of your MP3 player, send e-mail, and try to drive—all at the same time.”44 TRIAL 2 (February 2008).
Sacks cites the work of psychologists at the University of Utah that it is 50% more dangerous to drive while text messaging than while talking on a cell phone. This increase a serious danger to motorists.
This enhanced risk can result in serious economic liability to employers who permit or direct their employees to become distracted while driving in the course of their employment. Employers maybe wise to immediately issue rules prohibiting such activity.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Employee Penalized For Not Following Safety Rules
This ruling may have widespread application in many situations including distracted driving claims, where an employee sustains an accident while using a cell phone in violation of an employer's cell phone policy. The employer woud still remain responsible for the reduced award and, of course, subject to a 3rd part law suit by a potential 3rd party.
The reduction rule actually places fault back into the workers' compensation system which both violates the intent of the Act . Such a policy does not compensate for the reduced values (awards) anticipated and prescribed under the workers' compensation act. While the the logic seems to rational, the application further emasculates the intent of workers' compensation. It would be far more logical to put the cart before the horse, and work to prevent the unsafe work condition in the first place. Shifting responsibility to the injured worker is not consistent with the act's intent.
Thompson v. ICI American Holding, 2011 WL 3444008 (Mo.App. W.D.) Decided, August 9, 2011
For over 3 decades the Law Offices of Jon L. Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.
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Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Chart of the Day: Hands-Free Talking Is as Bad as Talking on a Handset. Maybe Even Worse.
Michael O'Hare points us this morning to a study of cell phone usage in cars that confirms the obvious: it's dangerous. More dangerous than driving drunk, in fact. What's more, as the chart on the right shows, hands-free talking doesn't help. In fact, for certain To understand the reason, consider driving while (i) listening to the radio as I was (ii) conversing with an adult passenger (iii) transporting a four-year-old (iv) sharing the front seat with a largish dog. The radio is not a person, and you subconsciously know that you may miss something if you attend to something in the road ahead, but also that you won’t insult it if you “listen away”, and it won’t suffer, much less indicate unease. The adult passenger can see out the windshield and also catch very subtle changes in your tone of voice or body language. If you stop talking to attend to the car braking up ahead, the passenger knows why instantly, and accommodates, and because you know this, you aren’t anxious about interrupting the conversation. The dog and the child, in contrast, are completely unaware of what’s coming up on the road or what you need to pay attention to; the former is happy to jump in your lap if it seems like a good idea at any moment, and the child demands attention on her own schedule and at... |
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Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Cell Phone Hearing Use Results in $1.2 Million in Compensation Benefits
For over 3 decades the Law Offices of Jon L. Gelman1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered work related accident and injuries.
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Friday, October 10, 2014
Truck firm, driver sued over crash that killed 4 softball players
Two lawsuits have been filed in Tarrant County against Quickway Transportation and its driver, Russell Wayne Staley of Saginaw, following a Sept. 26 crash that killed four college softball teammates. The parents of Brooke Deckard filed their suit in district court Monday. Deckard, 20, of Blue Ridge; Jaiden Pelton, 19, of Telephone; Meagan Richardson, 19, of Wylie; and Katelynn Woodlee, 18, of Dodd City were killed in the wreck. Staley’s northbound truck crossed the grass median of Interstate 35 about 47 miles into Oklahoma and slammed into the southbound bus that was returning the team to North Central Texas College in Gainesville after a game. Another lawsuit was filed Friday on behalf of Rachel Hitt, 19, of Scurry. She was one of two players, both from Kaufman County, who required several days of hospital treatment. Each suit seeks a jury trial and more than $1 million in damages. The suits accuse 53-year-old Staley of distracted driving and say that Quickway was negligent in letting him drive. Investigations into the crash are expected to take several weeks. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol is conducting a criminal investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting a safety investigation that could lead to possible road improvements at the site near Davis, Okla. Investigators have said the truck left the roadway at highway speed, 70 mph, and crossed about 950 feet of median without braking or swerving. However, some deceleration may have occurred, and no... |
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Saturday, August 2, 2014
Trucker charged with vehicular homicide after alleged cellphone use led to fatal crash in Carlstadt
In what authorities say is one of the first cases of its kind, a tractor-trailer driver who caused a fatal accident in Carlstadt two months ago has been charged with vehicular homicide and lying to police about using a cellphone at the time, authorities said Friday.
Henry Flores, 55, was making phone calls and operating the touch screen on his smartphone when his 1996 Kenworth truck slammed into the back of a vehicle slowing down for traffic in the southbound lanes on the New Jersey Turnpike just before 5 p.m. on June 9, authorities said. They said the crash led to a chain collision involving several vehicles.
Motorist Jeffrey Humphrey, 43, of Harrison — a musician and an audio engineer who had two daughters — was killed in the crash, and several others were injured, authorities said.
State Police said that Flores was arrested Thursday at his residence in Union City. However, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said Flores has been living in Netcong.
A little less than three months before the accident, Flores was ticketed on March 22 for driving while using a cellphone in Union City, according to state Motor Vehicle Commission records. His record shows a total of 19 driving violations, five in New Jersey, including operating while suspended, speeding, careless driving, and unsafe operation of a motor vehicle.
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Thursday, July 18, 2013
How far do you have to go to accommodate a lifting restriction?
Renee Majors worked at the General Electric (GE) Bloomington, IN, plant. In 2000, she suffered a work-related injury to her right shoulder that left her limited to lifting no more than 20 pounds and precluded her from work above shoulder level with her right arm.
The restrictions were temporary at first, but they were later determined to be permanent.
In 2009, Majors was the senior eligible bidder for a temporary purchased material auditor position under the collective bargaining agreement with GE. An essential function of the position was “intermittent movement of heavy objects.”
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Textual Despondency
This condition reportedly has been a "world wide health concern" since around 2011 when conditions associated with excessive cell phone usage for texting and other mobile communications activities other than a phone call were starting to be identified. A couple of weeks ago I was in San Francisco for the California Workers' Compensation Institute's annual meeting. San Francisco must be the leading city where this "condition" could be studied. I was astounded at how many people walk around that town with their necks bent towards the ground, small devices in hand, paying zero attention to where they are, where they're going, or anyone or anything around them. The number of people with zero spatial orientation or situational awareness as a result of profound hand-held device distraction was amazing to me. Even in the elevator of the hotel where normally cellular signals aren't strong, if existent at all, a couple of gentlemen occupied the car as I got on heading to upper floors; they both were completely immersed in their devices. They did not look up, acknowledge my presence in any way or even acknowledge each other. We got to the seventh floor and, without even a short little glance above the screen in his hand held one fellow starts toward the open doors and says, I presume to the other guy in the elevator, "see you at dinner." The other guy, likewise, did not take his stare off the screen of his hand held device, thumb busy scrambling... |
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Monday, April 29, 2013
Intoxication, Work, And Workers' Compensation Don’t Mix
If the blood test shows the presence of alcohol or drugs, odds that the employee will be able to collect workers’ compensation are much lower.This is because of the intoxication defense: if an employer can prove that intoxication was the cause of the workers’ injury, then they employer is not required to provide workers’ comp for that injury. Now, there are some notable
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Meet the startups trying to stop pedestrian deaths
Distracted walking is a new safety concern. Today's post is shared from theverge.com As phones get more powerful and screens get bigger, it gets harder and harder to pull our attention away from them, even when it puts us at risk. One place where that unavoidably happens is in the intersections of city streets, where pedestrians, bikers, and drivers meet — sometimes violently. To try to tackle this problem, AT&T partnered with the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation, the NYC Department of Transportation, educational co-op General Assembly, and software competition site ChallengePost to create Connected Intersections, a four-month developer challenge with the goal of inspiring technologies that can make city streets safer for distracted humans buried in their phones and the people around them. "Traffic lights can only do so much." "Pedestrians and cars are kind of at an impasse right now, and it’s getting to a point where real action needs to be taken," Sarah Kaufman of the Rudin Center said at one of the challenge’s developer open houses back in July. "Every two hours a New Yorker is hurt or badly injured, and every 30 hours one is killed in a car crash. So it’s at a point where we have a big opportunity to start using smart technologies to put the power in the people’s hands. Why not put safety in people’s hands? Traffic lights can only do so much." Connected Intersections ended up collecting 45 ideas from teams in 13 different countries and 26 different states. Eight teams were awarded... |
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Friday, October 3, 2014
NTSB: Truck showed no signs of trying to avoid North Texas softball team's bus
Investigators in the Oklahoma crash that killed four women’s softball players from North Central Texas College said Sunday that the truck showed no signs of braking or maneuvering out of the way before it slammed into the team’s bus. National Transportation Safety Board investigators said Sunday that the truck drove through the median for 820 feet on a shallow angle before colliding with the bus. It did not brake or appear to take any action to avoid the crash. They found no apparent problems with the truck’s brakes. The 18-wheeler veered across the Interstate 35 median near Davis and crashed into the team’s bus late Friday. The team’s head coach Van Hedrick was driving 15 players back from a scrimmage against Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Okla., when they were hit by about 9 p.m. Friday, authorities said. Three women died at the scene, and one died at an area hospital. All were from Texas. The NTSB is assisting Oklahoma Highway Patrol in the investigation. They obtained search warrants for the truck and bus. The investigation will include toxicology reports of both drivers and could take months. Investigators will turn over the results to the local district attorney, who will decide whether to pursue criminal charges. The Highway Patrol identified those who died as Meagan Richardson, 19, of Wylie; Brooke Deckard, 20, of Blue Ridge in Collin County; Jaiden Pelton, 20, of Telephone in Fannin County; and Katelynn... |
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Saturday, July 30, 2011
Cell Phones and Cancer: The Static in the Debate
Microwave News reported:
Professor Franklin E. Mier, PhD, CID, Environmental and Occupational Health SciencesCUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, commented:
"Each newly published study should be characterized in the context of previous studies, evaluated as a group. IARC characterized the body of evidence previous to the study reported here as "limited." Those who wish to make their own evaluation should read the IARC monograph in detail. Personally, I don't think the body of evidence will ever advance beyond "limited" evidence. Also, resources and media attention will continue to be devoted to restudying this exposure (as opposed to other exposures of concern) because rich people use cell phones.
Dramatically conflicting studies are now surfacing. The signal is not yet clear and the static will have to resolve before the causal connection between cell phone use and cancer can be ruled out.
- The Next Wave of Workers Compensation Claims: WHO Calls Cell Phones a Potential Cancer Risk (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- National Cell Phone Ban Proposed by Congress (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Employers Face Liability For Cell Phone Accidents (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Employers Face a Triple Legal Threat for Distracted Driving Claims (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Distracted Driving Increases Workers' Compensation Risks (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Experts: Cell phone cancer risk needs more study (cbsnews.com)
- San Francisco passes cell phone radiation law, but what's the risk? (cnn.com)
Friday, December 12, 2014
The long history of GM’s ignition switch cover up
Today's post is shared from motleyrice.com/ GM’s ignition switch defect has now been linked to 38 deaths to date. The ignition switch problem was so obvious that customers, journalists and even GM employees were reporting the problem a decade before GM finally admitted the issue and recalled the cars. Way back in 2005, one frightened customer wrote to both GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), stating that “This is a safety/recall issue if ever there was one . . . The problem is the ignition turn switch is poorly installed. Even with the slightest touch, the car will shut off while in motion. I don’t have to list for you the safety problems that may happen, besides an accident or death, a car turning off while doing a high speed must cause engine and other problems in the long haul . . . I firmly believe that this ignition switch needs to be recalled, reexamined and corrected.” Yet, GM did nothing. That same year, New York Times journalist Jeff Sabatini commented on an odd issue with his Chevrolet Cobalt. His wife was driving on the freeway when she accidentally bumped her knee on the steering column and the car “just went dead.” On looking into the issue, he found another writer with the same problem. Journalist Gary Heller of Pennsylvania’s The Daily Item had also experienced “unplanned engine shutdowns [that] happened four times during a hard-driving test week” in his Cobalt. The... |
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Thursday, February 16, 2012
Distracted Driving: Federal Guidelines Proposed For Automakers
See: U.S. Department of Transportation Proposes ‘Distraction’ Guidelines for Automakers
"Issued by the Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the guidelines would establish specific recommended criteria for electronic devices installed in vehicles at the time they are manufactured that require visual or manual operation by drivers. The announcement of the guidelines comes just days after President Obama’s FY 2013 budget request, which includes $330 million over six years for distracted driving programs that increase awareness of the issue and encourage stakeholders to take action. "
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Friday, July 31, 2009
Working While Texting: The New Workers Compensation Defense
New technology encroaching upon the workplace has been both a help and a hindrance. Recent studies add to the growing volumes of data reporting that the use of cell phones while driving provides a significant distraction and increases the risk of accidents at alarming rates.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Distracted Driving Increases Workers' Compensation Risks
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Lloyds Report Targets Potential Cell Phone Liability
The report reviews the medical causation issues involving a myriad of conditions ranging from brain cancer (acoustic neuromas and gliomas) to central nervous system effects, as well as reproduction and biological development consequences of EMF exposure over the long term. In reviewing historical litigation trends, the Lloyds report compares the legal consequences of asbestos exposure and the development of mesothelioma and analyzes the complicity and enormous liability that resulted from corporate concealment and conspiracy.
With over 4.3 billion mobile phones in use worldwide as of June 2009, this report increases the concern of employers who are already experiencing increased liability because of the use of cell phones while driving. A major initiative is underway by US Department of Transportation to curtail the use of cell phone by employee while driving because of the increase risk of motor vehicle accidents.
As workers’ compensation insurance carriers have already been challenged by significant losses as a result of occupational exposure to asbestos, the Lloyds report may encourage employers to restrict the use of a cell phone, except when used in a safe and protected manner.
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Thursday, April 29, 2010
Put It Down - Friday April 30th
The US Department of Transportation in conjunction with a campaign by Oprah Winfrey has declared Friday, April 30th a phone free day in motor vehicles.
To read more on distracted driving activity and workers’ compensation, click here.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Federal Cell Phone Rules Compliance Guide Published
As the Rules take effect is is anticipated that many states will adapt these changes. For those who use prohibited devices in the course of their employment and are involved in accidents may ultimately be denied workers' compensation benefits and employer liability will result. ZoomSafer has now published a compliance guide.
See: FMCSA Cell Phone Rules: A Compliance Guide for Truck and Bus Fleets
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Tuesday, May 24, 2011
IARC To Issue Report on Cell Phones
For over 3 decades the Law Offices of Jon L. Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.
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