Articles Posted in Press Releases

Premises liability is a bit of a strange duck in the legal arena, and proving slip, trip and fall injuries is sometimes hard work.

Oddly enough, premises liability deals with personal injuries. On the surface one would think it is about a landowner, and obviously the conduct of the property owner needs to be examined. However, this area deals with cases involving injuries to others while on the property owner’s premises.

These injuries are most commonly slip and fall, or trip and fall incidents, but may also involve cases where the property owner has failed to provide adequate security against known hazards; for example, criminal conduct – where there is a history of criminal activity that the property owner knew about or should have known about.

Of all the things in this world that you would think should be safe for your children, you would think toys would be. In most instances they are; in others, they can cause untold harm.

What is this world coming to when we cannot even rely on the safety of innocent toys for our kids? Things aren’t so innocent anymore; we read in the news more and more about toys being yanked off the shelves for causing serious harm or death.

Think about it – lead paint on toys, poor design that causes a toy to malfunction and cause injuries, and magnets that could be swallowed. What a terrible litany of disasters. Imagine how a parent feels when they discover that a toy they thought was safe may cause a great deal of harm. What’s a parent to do when faced with a situation like this?

Dining out can be a lot of fun. What may come later might not be.

These days it seems that you have to really watch what you are eating and where you are eating. Kind of takes the fun out the experience, doesn’t it? The fact of the matter is that eating out has become a little like a round of Russian roulette, you never know when you might wind up with food poisoning.

In the US alone,the Center for Disease Control indicates that spoiled food is the reason for 76 million illnesses; 5,000 deaths; and over 325,000 stays in hospital yearly. Those statistics are quite scary. It puts a whole new light on staying at home and enjoying your own cooking, so long as you follow safe food preparation procedures.

Often we read stories in local papers about professional misconduct of a person in an organization or group. We shake our heads and wonder about what motivates people to do such mindless things. Often people don’t relate professional misconduct with its other term, malpractice.

Professional misconduct is best shown by an example of a doctor treating a man for an infection by giving him antibiotics that are not suited for that particular bacteria, and the patient dies. Although the doctor intended to treat the person, s/he killed him as a direct consequence of professional misconduct/malpractice.

Put another way, malpractice is about the behavior of a professional (doctor, dentist, chiropractor, nurse; accountant or auditor) doing something that doesn’t live up to the standards of his or her profession. That “something” usually results in harm to patients or clients. That “something” also may be due to an omission, negligence, intentional fault, or ignorance of information the person should have known.

Warning labels are on products for a good reason. Unfortunately many people don’t read them, and in some cases they’re not adequate.

There are a lot of funny warning labels on the Internet, including one that said something like “Don’t operate hairdryer while having a shower.” Or one of the better ones floating around says about a mattress – “Warning: do not attempt to swallow.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone trying to swallow a mattress. However, the fact that the warning label states that it shouldn’t be attempted indicates the manufacturers are trying to make sure they don’t get sued for the eventuality. That’s the main reason for warning labels – to avoid lawsuits if something goes wrong with the product.