When Zimmer Inc. marketed its new Durom hip cup to patients with joint problems, the company positioned it as a device that was perfect for use in young and active patients who were likely to live longer than the life span of a conventional prosthetic hip. Now, as a modern medical device product liability scandal unfolds, we’re seeing evidence that Zimmer might have known about the product defect in its cup even as it was promoting it in the market.

Since the cup was introduced in 2006, numerous complaints have been made about problems with the cup. These complaints received a sudden boost of interest when a prominent orthopedic surgeon Dr. Leary Dorr, of the Dorr Institute for Arthritis Research and Education, wrote a letter to his colleagues at the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons, warning of defects in the device.

In his damning letter, Dr. Dorr claims that there have been a total of ten revisions with the device in a total of 165 hips that he fitted. The letter goes on to state that one cup that he had personally worked on, had migrated a short distance. The failure rate with the cup, Dr. Dorr noted in his letter, was evident within the first two years of inserting the cup.

The company, Dr. Dorr’s letter states, refused to take its product off the market, even after his complaints insisting that the surgeon’s surgical technique might have caused the defect, but Dr. Dorr is not impressed.

Now, a number of other surgeons have come forward to corroborate Dr. Dorr’s claims, and state the product defects that they have encountered with the device. They have called for the establishment of a national joint registry that would track recipients of artificial hips and joints, making it easier to track product defects and alert other patients to these.

The rising crescendo of complaints has finally filtered though to Zimmer, and they launched an investigation into the matter. In July 2008, the company suspended sales of the device from the market, no doubt wary of the barrage of product liability lawsuits that it expected to descend on it. As of now, there has not been a product recall for the device.

Meanwhile, at least 12,000 patients throughout the country are going about their daily affairs with a Durom hip cup inserted into their hip joint. The cup has already found to actually make the socket separate from the bone, migrating away as Dr. Dorr stated. Many of these patients have already been complaining of pain, but the frightening fact is that there’s no telling what a serious product defect like this could do inside a patient’s body. The extent of injuries could be devastating.

For Zimmer to wait this long to suspend sales of its product is too little action too late. Patients who have a Durom cup inserted should consider legal action as quickly as possible.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of product liability. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

Talk about a death wish. A Stockton motorcyclist who was caught in a high-speed chase with the California Highway Patrol, died after a motorcycle accident in which he crashed into a Jeep, got up severely injured, and continued to run away on foot.

The series of illegal activities that this guy notched up to his credit is long. First, 47-year-old Daniel Humphreys accelerated his Yamaha 2000 up 100 miles per hour on Highway 12 in the late evening. CHP officers noticed him westbound on the highway, and began tailing him. The cops signaled to Humphreys to pull over, but once Humphreys realized that he was being chased, he began to avoid the cops, taking dangerous turns into heavy traffic to throw them off his trail. He headed onto the heavily-crowded I-5, snaking through the traffic, as CHP officers tried to keep pace.

The motorcycle accident, when it did occur, was not entirely surprising – after all you had a man, presumably under the influence of alcohol, zipping through crowded freeways with no regard to his own safety or that of others. On I-5, Humphreys approached a Jeep Wrangler which was traveling in the same direction. His motorcycle sideswiped the Jeep. He was immediately thrown into the air, and astoundingly, he continued to try to escape the police even after being severely injured. He got up and began to run, and then collapsed as he approached the center divider. He was taken to San Joaquin General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The driver of the Jeep, meanwhile, 32-year-old Marlene Romalla, lost control of her vehicle. The jeep overturned, and landed in a field off the road. Romalla suffered minor injuries.

Imagine the sequence of events if Humphreys had just decided not to evade the police, and submitted to an alcohol test right away. He’d probably still be alive, well and wiser from the experience. Instead, his family has lost a father, and a woman has been injured, and so unnecessarily. The cops don’t know why he was on the run, but claim alcohol played a part in the motorcycle accident.

It’s not hard to understand Humphrey’s behavior when you factor in the role of alcohol in this accident. The man was obviously under the influence, causing his bizarre behavior. This is just one more example of the tragedy that can be averted if people just use their common sense, and refrain from getting behind the wheel of a car or on a motorcycle, in an intoxicated state. In spite of having caused a major car accident, and being thrown off his bike, Humphreys under the influence, got right back to his feet and attempted to flee. Alcohol severely impairs a person’s judgment, causing the kind of illogical behavior that we have seen in this motorcycle accident – behavior that ultimately cost Humphreys his life.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of motorcycle accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

Investigations are still on in the swimming pool accident in Huron on Wednesday in which a 10-year-old girl drowned in a public pool. So far, there has been nothing more then speculation and gossip by way of information coming in, police officers handling the investigation say, and they are still far from getting to the bottom of the truth.

10-year-old Janet Ramirez who if she had lived, would have attended sixth grade this fall, was part of a group of children from the Keenan Recreation Center who had a swimming outing scheduled for the day. The child did not know how to swim, her parents say, but they felt safe when they found out she was going in the care of one of the adults at the center. Janet promised her parents she would stay at the shallow end of the Chestnut Park Pool, which is manned by lifeguards.

No one knows exactly how the swimming pool drowning happened, and there are all sorts of rumors flying around, including one that claims another child threw her in. Whatever the cause of the swimming pool accident, the most astonishing fact was that none of the lifeguards on duty even realized that there was a child drowning. In fact, it was only when panicked children began pointing to something at the bottom of the pool that was lying completely submerged and still, that people acted. It was only then that lifeguards – and there were four of them – at the pool, began performing CPR in a desperate attempt to revive her. She was transported to hospital where she was declared dead.

Janet was found at the deep end of the pool, and none of the people at the pool – not the lifeguards, or any of the several adults and kids who were present at the pool – have any idea how she got to the deep end of the pool.

Janet’s father claims that several kids told him that she had been thrown into the deep end by one of the other children. Even if this was the case, the lifeguards should have been able to spot the commotion, and been alerted as to what was going on. Blaming the parents in this tragedy is absurd. They had a valid reason for allowing her to be near a pool – she was being accompanied by a supervisor from the recreation center. Plus, the fact that there were a total of four lifeguards at any time at the pool should provide comfort to a parent.

Not any more apparently. It’s astounding how four people who have been certified as lifeguards and have passed all qualification criteria for that post, absolutely failed to notice even the slightest splash when Janet began to drown. Janet’s drowning has taken on the shades of a mystery, with almost every one at the pool completely clueless about what happened.

There really is no mystery here. It’s obvious that a child’s safety was taken very carelessly at this swimming pool, and that is what caused this tragic swimming pool drowning. Pool management says that they have never had a single drowning accident in their 37 years of operating the center. Perhaps, this gave all concerned, including the lifeguards, reason to be complacent? Time will tell.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of swimming pool accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

A Wasco father of four was one of four people killed in a massive two-car accident on Saturday. Alfredo Badillo Guzman worked at a farm in Wasco. On Saturday, Guzman and his colleague Felipe De Jesus Granados were headed on their way back home from work in a pickup. The car accident, according to California Highway Patrol, occurred at about 9 p.m. at West Tulare and Wasco Avenues. A 1990 Toyota Camry driven by 18-year-old Almadelia Ramirez, also a Wasco resident, along with her two teenage passengers was driving west on West Tulare. She failed to stop at a stop sign at the Wasco Avenue intersection.

Granados was driving the truck which was headed north on Wasco Avenue and when the two cars finally collided, the pickup was sent crashing into a power pole. Both Guzman and Granados were killed. Ramirez as well as her 14-year-old passenger were killed due to injuries sustained in the car accident. The other passenger, a 13-year-old girl has received severe injuries, and is being treated at Kern Medical Center.

Guzman leaves behind a large family - his wife, two daughters and a son. Granados’ wife has suffered a particularly poignant tragedy. The couple has four children, and his wife is currently pregnant with the fifth one. As of now, both families are struggling to give their members a decent burial. Guzman’s widow insists that he will be buried in Mexico, although Guzman is a US citizen. Financial limitations are already making their presence felt, and the families are trying to gather resources for the religious funeral.

The woman whose negligence behind the wheel has caused two families all this suffering and misery has also been a victim of her own actions. Nevertheless, responsibility has to be placed for the Guzman and Granados family’s loss. Life for surviving members of these two families has been a never-ending nightmare since they received the news of the car accident. These are hardworking immigrant families who arrive here to make a decent life for themselves and their families. When their carefully built up dream is shattered due to another person’s negligence, it’s only right that they seek compensation from all available channels.

The two families should look at seeking compensation for their loss. There are several hurdles they face as they contemplate life without the breadwinner of their respective families, and life promises to become only more challenging in the future. The right legal counsel at this delicate time would give the Guzmans and Granados’ a clear picture of their options, as things stand.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of car accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The son of the leader of the Harvest Christian Fellowship was killed in a car accident yesterday morning on the 91 freeway. Christopher Laurie was the son of Pastor Greg Laurie.

33-year-old Christopher was the art director of the fellowship of which his father is the chief pastor. The church which has some 12,000 members, is known for the Harvest Crusade that is organized every year.

According to the Orange County Register, the car accident occurred when the car Christopher was driving, a 2008 Dodge station wagon rear-ended a Caltrans truck that was part of a group of five trucks involved in cleaning debris from the car pool lane. The car accident occurred at 9 am, and according to a Caltrans official, the last two trucks had been equipped with crash cushions and light boards, warning traffic of the work that was going on.

According to the California Highway Patrol, the Caltrans truck which was the one evolved in the accident, was traveling at a speed of 15 mph in the car pool lane. Laurie, the officials said, was driving at a high speed, and was not able to stop the car in time to avoid an accident. He was killed at the scene of the car accident.

Traffic after the car accident was stalled for hours, and according to Caltrans, none of its workers were injured in the car accident. Authorities are still trying to understand the cause of the crash, since it was broad daylight, and the last truck was obviously equipped to warn traffic of their presence. According to Caltrans, they undertake cleaning as a matter of routine, and this is the first that they can remember when one of their trucks has been in an auto accident in situation like this.

This auto accident is one more example of the importance of being aware of your surroundings when you’re on the road. What happened here is obvious, if not confirmed. Unfortunately, Laurie wasn’t paying attention to the work that was going on in the car pool lane, and failed to notice the large trucks. It’s extremely important to have your wits about you at all times.

Another issue that will probably find itself mentioned in relation to this car accident is the role of excessive speed. Witnesses report that Laurie was driving at high speeds while the trucks were moving along at a snail’s pace. It’s hard to regain control of a vehicle after losing control at high speeds. It does seem like the speed must have been considerably high for the accident to have an impact as strong as death of the victim.

It’s fortunate that no Caltrans workers or other motorists were injured in the course of the car accident. The tragedy in this case is that Laurie leaves behind a young child, and a wife who is expecting their second child. This was a needless tragedy that could have been easily avoided.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of car accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The father of a five-year-old autistic girl who was found drowned in the swimming pool of an after school program has filed a lawsuit that seeks unspecified damages. The child, Anya Glossinger, who was blind and autistic, was found drowned at a pool here she was undergoing hydrotherapy at a facility in Desert Springs California. She was found submerged, and rushed to hospital where she died a day later. Her mother says the girl did not know how to swim.

At the time of the pool accident, Anya was supposed to be under the care of workers from the United Cerebral Palsy Dennis James Center. The Riverside County Distinct Attorney’s Office refused to file criminal charges against those involved, but Anya’s mother Emily Weteschagin convinced them to consider corporate liability against the United Cerebral Palsy Dennis James Center in Cathedral City.

Emily is considering filing her own lawsuit in August. She is separated from Michael Grossinger, who is filing his lawsuit on his own.

After the pool accident, investigations by the Desert Springs Police concluded that the pool drowning was an accident. The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office too has claimed that the conduct of the workers who were supposed to be taking care of Anya was not criminal. The three workers who were in charge of Anya at the time of the pool accident are no longer working for United Cerebral Palsy Dennis James Center.

Gossinger’s lawsuit names all three workers, and is asking for punitive damages. To award punitive damages, the judge or jury will have to find reckless conduct on the part of the workers and the center. Glossinger has also filed a $10 million government claim against the California Department of Social Services, Palm Springs Unified, and United Cerebral Palsy of the Inland Empire. This is the preliminary step to a lawsuit against those public agencies and the agencies have 45 days in which to respond. Depending on the situation, they may be added to the list of defendants in Grossinger’s lawsuit, his attorney says.

There are no details about the police reports after the investigation into the pool accident, so we cannot make any assumptions about the facts here. But it seems like the facts played out in a straightforward manner. Three workers of the center were in charge of kids under their care at the hydrotherapy pool. When one of the kids drowns, it obviously happened because the workers were not paying as much attention as they should have been.

Anya was found submerged in the pool indicating that she had been left unsupervised for a while. This was a child with a severe mental condition, besides being legally blind. In short, this was a child you shouldn’t take your eyes off for even one second, especially with her in close proximity to water. It’s obvious that there was extreme negligence at play here.

Grossinger has done the right thing by filing a lawsuit against the parties responsible. When a criminal court can’t give you justice, a civil court can be a person’s only hope.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of pool accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

An unexpected, though not unprecedented outcome of the increase in gas prices is leaving auto safety authorities pleased. As gas prices rise, more and more Americans it seems, are cutting their propensity to dash out in their vehicles at the drop of a hat, choosing instead to walk or cycle. The result? Fewer car accidents and fewer car accident fatalities.

These findings were revealed in a report by the National Safety Council which found a drop of 9 percent overall in traffic accident fatalities through May compared to the same period in 2007. The drop in auto accident fatalities was as high as 18 percent in March and 14 percent in April.

In fact, people are traveling less than they used to, with a 1.8 percent drop in auto travel in April this year compared to 2007. Gas prices of course, have made it harder for the average American to be able to afford luxurious cross county trips, and the accompanying economic slump has only added to the general pall of gloom. People are showing a disinterest in traveling. There are fewer late night trips to the store to pack a case of beer, and fewer late night partying and drinking sessions, than there used to be when the economy was on a roll. This has led to a decease in late night alcohol-fueled drunk driving car accidents. People are choosing to go from Point A to Point B without taking detours or making any stops on the way. The fewer people clogging the roads, in a hurry to get to a party or a bar before it closes, the less the chances of serious auto accidents.

This fall in fatalities is not without precedent. According to experts, the last time we saw a significant drop in auto accident fatalities was back in the seventies, when the Arab oil embargo caused a shortage of gas and increased prices. The other time there was a significant drop in fatalities was in 1982 when the minimum drinking age was raised to 21. This proves that there is a definite connection between events, especially those that affect oil prices and the rate of car accidents.

Many states have reported this steep fall in auto accident fatalities, including Ohio, which saw a 20 percent drop, and Indiana where the fatality rate has dropped to 26 percent.

Some of the states report that there have been road safety measures adopted that have also contributed to this decrease in fatal car accidents. They point to the role of vigilant cops and increasing pursuits of drunk driving offenders, who are constantly involved in causing fatal car accidents, as well as safer vehicles being manufactured under stricter regulations. While these factors could have played a part, a look at the numbers does seem to indicate that people are less inclined to travel without necessity, or over too long of distances, which is causing fewer collision and fewer fatalities.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of car accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The country faces a major transportation safety problem, claims the director of an auto safety group, and we have failed to correct it. He is referring to the findings of a new US safety study reported at kansascity.com which alleges that a shocking number of bus, and truck drivers in the country are medically unfit to drive. These medical ailments can range from heart conditions to sleep apnea, and have been found to be linked to a number of bus and truck accidents caused in this country.

According to the 30-page study, these medical problems afflicting drivers of heavy duty vehicles have been confounding government officials, and the government has issued its share of warnings, and tried to enforce safety. But there still hasn’t been any decrease in the number of medically unfit drivers who are getting behind the wheels of these behemoth machines on the highways, posing serious danger not only to themselves but also to other drivers on the road with them.

Back in 2001, the government outlined several recommendations to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to tackle the growing number of truck and bus accidents that were taking place due to the poor health conditions of the driver. One of these steps was the setting of minimum standards for officials who would determine the driver’s fitness to drive. Truck drivers were also prevented from shopping around for physicians who would falsely give them a clean bill of health. Well, comfortingly enough for those of us who look outside the car windows, and find these 80,000 pound vehicles parked beside us at traffic lights, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has not followed up on even one of these eight recommendations, a fact that it openly acknowledges.

Thankfully, Congress is finally waking up to the fact that this is not simply a problem of fatigued drivers that occasionally drop off to sleep at the wheel causing multi-car collisions. This is a malaise in the system, and its taking more lives and maiming more people than we should have to be asked to bear.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is expected to conduct oversight hearings on Thursday, and one of the proposals is the compiling of drug test records of drivers, so potential employers have easy access to the driver’s records. Expected to speak at the congressional hearing is a Florida bus driver who admits to suffering from severe lung problems that force him to depend on inhalers. He has told investigators that he is prone to blackouts and bouts of amnesia.

The Florida bus driver is a rarity – someone who admits that he is one of growing breed of medically unfit drivers who are taking over trucks in the country. Most truck drivers choose to hide the problem, and when major truck accidents are cased due to their life-threatening diseases, use their conditions as an excuse to escape justice. Take for instance George Albright Jr., the Missouri driver who crashed his tractor trailer into crowded traffic in Columbia in June 2006. Four women in a sedan were killed instantly in the truck accident, and Albright’s lawyers raised the defense that he was diabetic and was on sedatives, and had experienced some form of sedative-induced altered consciousness. The jury acquitted. As far as we are concerned, Congress can’t step in, and put an end to this anarchy fast enough.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of truck accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

A few weeks back, we discussed the road rage bicycle accident in Los Angeles where a motorist braked his car right in front of two bicyclists, injuring them both seriously. This bike accident, and other similar bicycle accidents, have led to authorities in the city waking up to the increased hostility between cyclists and motorists on the city’s crowed streets. After a long time, there is consensus among the city’s engineers and politicians, as well as cycling enthusiasts and motorists that something needs to be done to address this problem before more such road rage incidents send more bicyclists to the hospital.

In that particular accident, the driver was arrested. But in another bicycle accident on Mandeville Canyon that very same day, a woman was almost driven off the street and into the bushes at the side, when she was faced with a group of cyclists all riding their bicycles in a row instead of a single file towards her. The woman is one of the growing numbers of Angelenos who claim that bicyclists are to blame for the increase in bicycle/ motorist confrontations on our streets.

The country’s second largest city, according to the LA Times, has slowly evolved into the nation’s bicycling capital with thousands of commuters taking off on their bike everyday on their way to work, as well as leisure. For some, it’s a way of beating rising gas prices; for others, it’s a way of reducing their carbon footprint on the planet. No matter what the reason for bicycling, incidents of confrontation have become all too common. Motorists insist that the bicyclists can be rude and arrogant as they glide through the streets, in some cases even being offensive and abusive. Bicyclists meanwhile, allege that they are treated like the stepchildren of the transportation system, as if they don’t belong on the road, and say all the abuse and arrogance is a shield for the kind of vulnerability they feel when they are side-by-side with a massive machine. They feel, if it comes down to a show of force between a bicycle and a car or SUV, it’s the bicyclist who holds the short end of the stick.

City authorities are waking up to reality, and the need for making streets not just easy and convenient for motorists to use, but also safe for the bicyclists. The City has even hired a transportation consultant to design a network that would integrate all the city’s bike paths into one single, cohesive, smooth-flowing unit. Councilman Rosendahl has proposed the setting up of a task force consisting of bicyclists, transportation officials and Los Angeles residents to come up with measures to deal with these confrontation issues.

The kind of paranoia that bicyclists feel on Los Angeles streets is probably justified. After all, they are at risk of bodily injury or death from a bicycle accident at the hands of motorists who don’t really believe they should be sharing their roads with bikes anyway. What’s needed more than anything else now is for a planned system of education for the public, so bicyclists are given their space on the streets and there are less of these bike accidents.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of bike accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

Earlier this week, we ran a story on Sergio Delgado, the drunk driving offender who led police on a chase around Hollywood Boulevard, and ended up causing a fatal pedestrian accident. The accident killed both the pedestrians, a Latin couple, we had reported at the time. Well, officials have now identified the unfortunate two. They were an immigrant Mexican couple, 32-year-old Cecilia Diaz Vasquez, and her partner 40-year-old Pedro Davila.

The couple had entered the country a year ago in search of jobs to support themselves and their two children. They left the kids back with their parents in Mexico, and had found jobs in California. Davila worked at a pizzeria cleaning the kitchen, and on the day of the pedestrian accident met up with Vasquez at the pizzeria.

The two first made a call to their kids in Mexico, two teenagers and an 8-year-old girl. The kids had been missing them desperately, distressed relatives now say, and had been begging for their parents to move back home to Mexico. Then, the couple set off for home. It was while they were at the Wilcox crosswalk that this pedestrian accident took place. Delgado, speeding and on the run from police slammed into them. The two, witnesses say, had absolutely no time to save themselves. They were thrown across the intersection. They were declared dead at the scene of the pedestrian accident.

It has taken officials many hours to identify the two, and now new details are emerging about the lives of this simple, hard working, immigrant couple, and the innocent family that they leave behind.

Delgado tried to run away after the pedestrian accident, but was apprehended by police. He has been arrested for drunk driving. His blood alcohol test was above the legal limits, and police found an alcohol container under the seat of his car.

The couple’s kids meanwhile, remain back in Mexico with their grandparents. Their parents had recently sent them a few hundred dollars to pay for their up-keep, but that money will run out sooner or later, and their relatives say their grandparents are not in any position to take care of the kids.

In their parent’s absence, it really does seem like these kids have a bleak future. All because a drunk driving offender with known previous offenses decided not to learn from the lessons of the past, and sober before getting behind the wheel. Who is responsible for the innocent kids now? All they wanted was to have their parents back with them at home, and now, they’ve lost them.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of pedestrian accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.