Practice Areas

With every passing year airbag systems become more and more complex. For example, many systems now monitor seat position and belt use or non-use to determine when and if an airbag deployment is needed in minor to moderate accidents to protect the occupant. With this ever increasing complexity, the ability to identify and prosecute airbag defect claims becomes more difficult.

Children are our most precious cargo, and as consumers we rely upon manufacturers of child seats, boosters and the like to provide our kids protection when it is needed. Unfortunately, not all child restraints are created equal. In fact, often those responsible for designing child restraints lack the experience and qualifications to adequately take into consideration the multitude of factors that play into making a seat perform adequately in foreseeable crashes.

Defects in consumer products are as varied as the array of products available to consumers for purchase. The term “consumer products” can be used to describe household products, items used in everyday activities, lawn mowers and other equipment, common safety equipment like helmets and eye protection, or any other product that consumers find themselves utilizing. If any of these products cause a serious or catastrophic injury, and it appears that the product malfunctioned or did not perform as expected, then a potential claim may exist.

It is generally recognized among automotive designers that vehicle occupants should not be seriously injured or killed due to a post-collision fire if the accident is otherwise survivable. Unfortunately, despite consensus in this area of the importance of designing vehicles to prevent thermal injuries or fire related deaths post-accident, an alarming number of people are still injured or killed each year due to faulty fuel system designs.

Industrial Products and Heavy Equipment Claims

Industrial products, for example, tractors, forklifts, scaffolding and cranes, can be deadly if they are not designed to address inherent risks and safety concerns. Forklifts account for thousands of serious injuries and dozens of deaths each year in American workplaces. Government inspectors report that each year 100 workers are killed and 20,000 seriously injured in forklift-related accidents alone. Victims of industrial and heavy equipment product defects are entitled to seek restitution from the manufacturers and distributors of these products. Often, claims of these types arise from worksite accidents, and if catastrophic injuries result from an accident, the potential role of a defect should be explored.

Accidents on American roadways are an everyday occurrence, but with every passing year the safety systems in vehicles improve increasing the likelihood that serious injuries can be avoided. Central to the concept of occupant protection in accidents is the idea that vehicle occupants must be safely contained within the vehicle.

The term “roof crush” is used to describe the unintended failure of a vehicle’s roof structures that occur when vehicles roll over. When these structures fail they can cause the roof to intrude into the occupant compartment causing serious injuries, including significant head and spinal cord injuries.

Often the ability of an occupant to walk away from a serious rear-end accident depends on how well that occupant’s and seatback performed in the crash. While there is significant debate within the automotive industry about the best design for seatbacks to prevent injuries, there is consensus that seatbacks should not fail uncontrollably rearward.

Seatbelts are credited with saving thousands of lives and are invaluable as a safety device when accidents occur. In fact, all major automakers stress in their marketing and vehicle manuals the importance of wearing seatbelts to prevent injuries. However, when these critical safety systems fail serious injuries and wrongful deaths can result.

Spoliation of evidence claims arise when evidence necessary to pursue a claim is destroyed by someone who owed a duty to prevent such destruction. In many of these cases where evidence has been destroyed, the guilty party will claim that they did not have a “duty” to preserve the evidence, and, therefore, cannot be held responsible. In Florida, a duty to preserve evidence can arise by contract, by statute or by a properly served discovery request after a lawsuit has been filed. Florida does not recognize a common law duty to preserve evidence, so in the absence of a contract, statute or valid request, a spoliation claim will likely fail.

Ever since the massive recall of Bridgestone Firestone tires a few years ago, public awareness has been on the rise with respect to the dangers posed by defective tires. Tire failure claims most often arise out of accidents that result from tread separations when the vehicle’s tread actually separates or peels off of the underlying carcass or body of the tire. When this occurs it can have dramatic effects on how a vehicle will react when the driver makes steering corrections to try to maintain control and can lead to lose of control and rollover accidents.

Every year on American highways preventable accidents occur involving travel trailers of various lengths and configurations. The phenomenon commonly referred to as “trailer sway” occurs when a trailer being towed by a car, truck or van begins to sway or swing back and forth as it is being pulled. Often this side-to-side oscillation of the trailer occurs due to air disturbances caused by passing tractor trailers or wind gusts.

With the immense popularity of Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV’s) has come an alarming increase in rollover accidents. These accidents are often blamed on the driver of the vehicle who is accused of over-steering and losing control. However, it is now known that the stability of the vehicle itself has an enormous impact on whether or not it may rollover as designed in foreseeable emergency driving maneuvers. Because the design of SUV’s vary greatly, some vehicles are more prone to rollover than others.