Each year in the United States, approximately 228 people are killed in “backing crashes” – crashes in which a vehicle is traveling in reverse, often striking a pedestrian. Of those, about half are children under age 10. Another 17,000 are injured in such crashes.

Restricted rear visibility is a factor in the vast majority of these crashes. In many vehicles, particularly SUVs and pickups, vehicle design is increasingly resulting in large blind spots directly behind the car.

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law a measure passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress that requires car manufacturers to improve rear visibility in order to help prevent such accidents. But after nearly five years, new standards have yet to be issued to auto makers. Ray LaHood, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), has pushed back the deadline to issue new mandates four times, most recently in January, and safety advocates are growing frustrated.

The proposed rules would require expanding the driver’s rear field of view in all new passenger vehicles in the U.S. In the case of many car models, this would mean that rearview video cameras and in-dash video screens would be standard equipment.

In a letter to Congress in February 2012, after the third delay in rule implementation, LaHood said the DOT needed to conduct more “research and data analysis” to “ensure that the final rule is appropriate and the underlying analysis is robust.”

But some suggest that the real sticking point is money. Lawmakers are likely reluctant to place any additional regulatory burden on an auto industry hobbled by a stagnant economy.

According to NHTSA estimates, a mandate requiring rearview cameras on every passenger vehicle would add between $58 and $88 to the price of cars that already have in-dash video screens and $159 to $203 to the price of cars without them.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an auto industry lobbying group, says that the total cost to the car industry would be approximately $2 billion per year. In December 2011, the group made an alternative proposal to government officials: rearview cameras in vehicles with very large blind zones and wide-angle convex mirrors for the rest.

Automakers are increasingly integrating cameras and video screens into their models even without rules requiring them. Edmunds, an automotive research firm, rearview cameras were standard equipment on nearly half of all 2012 models and optional on another 27 percent. According to iSuppli, another research firm, 90 percent of 2012 models had in-dash video displays as standard or optional equipment.

Robert Joyce is a Tampa personal injury attorney at Joyce & Reyes Law Firm. To learn more about the Tampa personal injury lawyer, visit http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/ or call 1.888.771.1529.

The safety systems include collision detection, adaptive cruise control, lane drift detection, and electronic stability control. Each of these safety features is available already on some new vehicles, but some are found only on high-end models.

Electronic stability control controls braking and throttle on a per-wheel basis in the event of a loss of traction. It is currently required on all new passenger vehicles weighing less than 10,000 pounds.

Lane drift detection systems monitor the vehicle’s position within its lane, warning the driver if the car begins to wander without signaling.

Forward collision detection, automatic braking, and adaptive cruise control all interact to autonomously control the vehicle’s speed. All require embedded sensors to detect the location of obstacles in the car’s path. Adaptive cruise control selectively applies a portion of the car’s available throttle or brakes to maintain a safe following distance. Collision detection alerts the driver when the vehicle is on a collision course. Automatic braking systems apply up to 100 percent of the car’s braking power in order to avoid a collision.

The NTSB also recommended mandates for tire-pressure monitoring systems and, for commercial trucks, speed-limiting systems.

Automakers warned of the effects such mandates would have on the cost of new cars, but safety advocates pointed out that economies of scale would likely reduce the per-vehicle cost.

Call Joyce & Reyes at 1.888.771.1529 or visit more of http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/.

The Florida Institute for Neurologic Rehabilitation (FINR), home to brain-injured patients, is currently battling an order by state authorities to transfer some 50 patients to the care of other facilities. That directive was issued in the wake of a Bloomberg story documenting a history of allegations of abuse at the center in Wauchula, southeast of Tampa. Abuse or neglect is alleged in at least five patient deaths there since 1998.

The recently released reports document 15 investigations by the Florida Department of Children and Families in the past four years. Bloomberg petitioned a Leon County court to order the state to release the reports. In each case, investigators classified the allegations of abuse as “verified,” meaning a preponderance of evidence supported them.

Since 2005, a total of 526 complaints of neglect or abuse have been lodged against FINR, 37 of which were deemed verified, and 117 of which were deemed by investigators to be supported by credible evidence, but not a preponderance of evidence. In that same time period, NeuroRestorative, a company housing about half as many brain-injured patients in Florida as FINR, did not have a single verified allegation of abuse.

In one report, from August 2008, a state investigator confirmed 10 incidents of abusive treatment by FINR staff to three patients suffering from autism. In one of those incidents, an employee struck an autistic patient in the face, causing bleeding, while two other employees watched and did not intervene. The report alleges that staffers covered up the incident by blaming the injuries on another patient. The employee who struck the patient was later fired.

In another report, an employee allegedly punched a physically restrained patient in the head 10 times and dropped his knee on him. The patient was taken to the hospital with cuts and bruises. The staffer was charged with battery, pleaded no contest, and received a sentence of one year’s probation.

FINR is home to patients from around the nation and is one of the largest of its kind, and some patients pay as much as $300,000 for a year’s care. Its customers are often the recipients of large legal judgments or insurance payments.

In a statement to Bloomberg News, FINR owner and CEO Joe Brennick said the facility “has consistently acted in the best interest of its patients.” He added that “it is important to understand that FINR serves one of the most difficult populations of patients in the country, and that these patients often act out aggressively and are extremely difficult to manage.”

Robert Joyce is a Tampa brain injury attorney at Joyce & Reyes Law Firm. To learn more about the Tampa brain injury lawyer, visit http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/ or call 1.888.771.1529.

Just weeks earlier, FDA officials acknowledged receiving five fatality reports that mentioned Monster Energy, another energy drink.

According to a New York Times report, some 90 FDA filings since 2009 have mentioned 5-Hour Energy, including at least 30 involving serious injuries such as convulsions, heart attacks and, in one case, a spontaneous abortion.

Products mentioned in FDA reports are not necessarily responsible for the incidents reported, and may not relate to the incident in any way.

In a statement, Living Essentials, the distributor of 5-Hour Energy based in Farmington Hills, Mich., said the product is safe and that the company was “unaware of any deaths proven to be caused by the consumption of 5-Hour Energy.”

Monster Beverage of Corona, Calif., producer of Monster Energy, has also issued repeated statements saying its products are safe and were not the cause of health problems in FDA reports.

According to a recent Consumer Reports article, a two-ounce bottle of 5-Hour Energy, referred to as a “shot,” contains about 215 milligrams of caffeine. By comparison, eight ounces of coffee can range from 100 to 150 milligrams depending on how it is made.

The FDA has stated it cannot justify changing regulations on energy products based on current evidence. Complicating matters is the fact that some caffeinated drinks, like Red Bull, are deemed “beverages” and covered by one set of rules, while others, like 5-Hour Energy, are designated as “dietary supplements,” and are covered by other rules.

In an interview with the New York Times, Daniel Fabricant, the FDA’s director of dietary supplement programs, said the agency was investigating fatality reports that cited 5-Hour Energy. He added that Living Essentials had submitted all 13 such reports to the FDA. A law that took effect in late 2008 requires dietary supplement producers to notify the agency when they are made aware of incidents of injury and death involving their products.

The company issued a statement saying that it takes “reports of any potential adverse event tied to our products very seriously,” and that it complied with all FDA reporting requirements.

In a 2011 report, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said that energy drinks were associated with at least 13,000 emergency room visits in 2009.

Robert Joyce is a Tampa personal injury attorney at Joyce & Reyes Law Firm. To learn more about the Tampa personal injury lawyer, visit http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/ or call 1.888.771.1529.

Meningitis is an infection of the membranes surrounding the spinal cord and brain. Symptoms include fever, nausea, and headache. The fungal form of meningitis is not contagious.

NECC has since surrendered its license and recalled its products. In addition, Ameridose LLC, a company owned by the same individuals as NECC, has given up attempts to distance itself from its sister company and the meningitis outbreak. Ameridose has agreed to close down for two weeks while officials investigate the matter.

The outbreak has prompted calls for better oversight of the custom pharmaceutical industry. The process of drug “compounding,” as it is called, is regulated mainly by state governments. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration admits their legal authority to regulate such activity is “complex” and actively opposed by industry leaders.

In 2006, following an inspection of NECC’s facilities, the FDA and the Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy issued a warning letter to the company regarding their operational safeguards. Specifically, they took issue with the company’s practice of opening sterile products and repackaging them without sufficient protection against infection.

The letter also alleged that the company was violating a law forbidding the sale of compounded drugs without receiving a prescription for a specific patient.

“Your firm has reportedly also told physicians’ offices that using a staff member’s name on the prescription would suffice,” the letter said.

Up to 13,000 patients nationwide may have received tainted injections of anti-inflammatory steroids manufactured by NECC for purposes of pain management.

In a Reuters report, Jim McGuire of Tennessee said that his local emergency room was flooded with patients ordered to undergo tests for fungal meningitis.

“It was kind of a chaos in the emergency room,” he said. “The triage for this was incredible. There were beds lined up in the hallway. As soon as one spinal tap was over, they were pushing another one in.”

U.S. Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts was recently the beneficiary of a fundraiser held by Conigliaro, NECC’s owner, to help his re-election campaign. A spokesperson for the campaign said that Brown would donate the $10,000 contributed by Conigliaro to the Meningitis Foundation of America.

Call Joyce & Reyes at 1.888.771.1529 or visit more of http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/.

Officials reviewed the records of 98 patients receiving inpatient treatment at Florida Institute for Neurologic Rehabilitation and found that 50 of them do not meet criteria that the facility is licensed to treat. The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration order requires FINR to submit to the state a plan to relocate those patients. Officials also found that the facility was treating patients for too long, in violation of its license as a “transitional living facility.”

Although the violations detailed in the report may seem mostly technical or procedural, the surprise inspection may have been motivated by allegations far more sinister in nature. Shortly before the inspection, Bloomberg News reported on dozens of cases of alleged neglect and abuse at the facility. Indeed, in at least five cases of patient death since 1998, families or state officials have alleged abuse or neglect by FINR staff. Three former staff members currently face criminal charges.

FINR is fighting the relocation order, claiming regulators overstepped their authority. They are appealing the case to the Division of Administrative Hearings and say they will not submit a plan to comply with the order unless their legal challenge is defeated. FINR claims the state is enforcing a too-narrow definition of brain injury limited only to that which results from physical trauma, such as a car accident. That unfairly denies treatment to patients with other kinds of brain injury, the company said.

The matter has recently grown even more complicated for FINR. Allstate Corp., the second-largest auto insurance company in the U.S., filed suit against the company recently in the U.S. District Court in Tampa, Fla. Allstate seeks fraud damages of $7.6 million it says it paid FINR to treat its auto insurance claimants.

Florida’s claim that FINR treated patients for longer than its licensing allows is central to Allstate’s lawsuit. The insurer alleges that FINR aggressively recruited brain injury patients from Michigan, where insurance companies are required to provide unlimited medical benefits for auto injury coverage, and promised those patients services they never received. The lawsuit further alleges that FINR tried to prevent patients from leaving the center with incentives and threats. One patient was told that if she left, Allstate would not pay for any further treatment, but if she stayed, she would get a trip to Busch Gardens.

A lawyer representing FINR said the company would not comment on pending lawsuits.

Call a Tampa auto accident lawyer with Joyce & Reyes at 1.888.771.1529 or visit http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/

The case will now return to Levy County Circuit Court by order of the 1st District Court of Appeal, with instructions to determine a lesser amount of damages for the death of James Cayce Horner, who succumbed to lung cancer in 1996, at the age of 78. Horner took up smoking in the 1930s, when he was a teenager. Some of his preferred brands included Pall Mall, Lucky Strike and Camel. Diane Webb, his daughter, sued R.J. Reynolds, claiming wrongful death, negligence and fraud.

The jury heard some emotionally charged testimony about how Mr. Horner helped care for his granddaughter, who suffered from a congenital condition. The care he provided was part of the case for a large financial compensation, because it can not be replicated. (The physical care can, but the relationship can not.) However, the Appeals Court did not find the very large amount of damages initially awarded, to be in line with the loss, as it indicated in its ruling, “The amount of compensatory damages suggests an award that is the product of passion, an emotional response to testimony regarding difficulties Ms. Webb and her father faced and overcame before cancer befell him, rather than evidence of his illness, subsequent death and the noneconomic consequences of the death itself.”

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/04/11/45531.htm

The ruling did, however, reject R.J. Reynolds argument for a reversal, saying it is following the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Carter v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 778 So. 2d 932, 940 (Fla. 2000) The court also rejected an argument from the tobacco company’s lawyers that Dianne Webb had failed to make the case her father had relied upon misinformation and the omission of information by R.J. Reynolds, about the potential health consequences of using their tobacco products. In their own words, “the record contains abundant evidence from which the jury could infer [Mr. Horner’s] reliance on pervasive misleading advertising campaigns . . . and on the false controversy created by the tobacco industry during the years he smoked aimed at creating doubt among smokers that cigarettes were hazardous to health.”

Appellate Opinion (PDF)

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.courthousenews.com%2Fhome%2FOpenAppellateOpinion.aspx%3FOpinionStatusID%3D31871&ei=Z3S5T9X5AabZiQKnxq3PBg&usg=AFQjCNHYfzXOXP4k5lxSCsFmOrEiz0XLlQ&sig2=uNYrz9Oj8sI76tMlHXP8bQ

A new trial must be held on damages.

To learn more about the Tampa personal injury lawyer or the Joyce & Reyes Law Firm, visit http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/ or call 1.888.771.1529

Oxycodone abuse has reached epidemic proportions. The addictions and deaths resulting from this abuse have become a public health problem, if not a crisis. Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske has called Florida ground zero for this substance abuse problem.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 93% of unintentional poisonings in 2007 were from drug overdoses. Florida experienced an increase of 325% in the number of non-suicidal poisonings resulting in death from 1990 to 2001. In the last five years, Florida has experienced a boom in the growth of pain clinics dispensing oxycodone and alprazolam. From 2003 to 2009 there were over 16,000 drug overdose deaths in Florida. About one third of them were related to illicit drugs. Nearly 86 percent were unintentional. About eleven percent were suicides.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6026a1.htm

Given the alarming and disturbing loss of life associated with prescription medication abuse, it is especially shocking that one “pill mill” pain clinic in Florida was 20,000 square feet in size with doctors able to see five hundred “patients” daily. The two brothers mentioned above, as the main operators of several pain clinics, were associated with the trafficking of about 20 million doses of oxycodone. That number of doses was dispensed in just three years. About 53 deaths are thought to have resulted from overdoses from their drugs, and those were just the ones in Florida. Because about 80 to 90 percent of the total number of overdose deaths is thought to have taken place in other states such as Kentucky and Tennessee, the death total is likely to be much higher.

Shutting down the two brothers and their robust prescription drug business has been a real blow to the national pill mill industry. Authorities learned better surveillance and documentation techniques, improving their effectiveness. These endeavors can help authorities crack down even further, to help reduce the the country’s large number of prescription drug fatalities.

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/07/11542417-how-florida-brothers-pill-mill-operation-fueled-painkiller-abuse-epidemic

Robert Joyce is a Tampa pill mill litigation attorney at Joyce & Reyes Law Firm. To learn more about the Tampa pill mill litigation lawyer, visit http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/ or call 1.888.771.1529.