Human Powered Law

In its continuing coverage of how unfair mandatory arbitration clauses harm Americans, the New York Times has a sad piece about a case currently pending in Massachusetts involving a murdered 100-year-old woman and the nursing home negligence that lead to her death. “Arbitration clauses have proliferated over the last 10 years as companies have added them to tens of millions of contracts for things as diverse as cellphone service, credit cards and student loans. Nursing homes

Road deaths in Oregon rose 27 percent in 2015. Experts with the National Safety Council blame Oregon’s continued recession (which has resulted in more miles traveled by people). From Oregonlive: "The economy did a pretty good job of masking the ongoing safety issues on the road," said Ken Kolosh, who heads the National Safety Council's statistics department. "They're becoming more obvious now with the increase in fatalities." The 446 deaths reported in Oregon last year is th

David Norelius, the COO of Kaiser Permanente Dental Associates, was sentenced to pay a $100 fine and serve two years probation for striking a pedestrian in April of 2015 and then fleeing first in his car and then on foot when his car broke down. He had a suspended license at the time of the collision. After the crash one of Norelius' lawyers contacted the victim and she "said she received a message from a lawyer indicating Norelius was a "person of means" days after the acci

Tesla founder Elon Musk told a recent conference that non-autonomous cars being driven by human beings are "death machines" and that people should not be allowed to control such dangerous machines. Musk also recognized that city driving is the most difficult for his inventions to navigate. "That kind of slow, city driving is the environment that self-driving cars have the most problems with, said Musk. When driving between 15 and 50 miles per hour, cars tend to run into unex

Occasionally the news media picks up a story about a person suing a member of their family. There was the example of the aunt suing her eight year old nephew for an overly enthusiastic hug in 2015 and now a case out of Canada where a teenager is suing his parents for injuries he suffered in a mountain biking incident. These are both examples of injured people, facing huge medical debt and future care, trying to seek relief from their bills through their relatives' insurance

Property Casualty 360, an insurance adjuster trade magazine, recognizes that insurance adjusters tell people one thing and then do another all the time. Their most recent issue includes an article called "A telephone isn't an adjuster's friend" about how telephone calls with insureds and injured people can backfire because when you tell a person X they come to expect X to happen, not Y. "The most hazardous method of communication is oral. Three little words an adjuster never

Maclean's had an in depth and informative article on the menace they call more dangerous than drunk drivers: distracted drivers who feel entitled to do what they want behind the wheel. Some choice quotes: "[Cpl. Chris Little has seen] the telltale texter (head down, stopped on a green light) is the least of it. Little, an officer with Strathcona Traffic Services in Strathcona County, Alta., has pulled over drivers brushing their teeth, applying makeup, even reading a novel.

After eight bicyclists were killed by big commercial trucks in London last year, the city is considering requiring new windows be retrofitted into truck doors to allow drivers to see other road users that may be sitting lower than they are, especially in bicycle lanes. The law being considered is, not surprisingly, controversial. Commercial truck operations, no matter where they are, have always resisted safety measures. Charley Gee is a Portland personal injury attorney. He

Claims Journal has a interesting explanation on how the new technology of driver monitoring devices (the little computers that plug into your car and record your every move) assist in adjusting car crash cases. "As an example, when an accident happens, the information is transmitted back to LexisNexis. The information is then used as a first notice of loss (FNOL). A message alerts the carrier of the insured’s accident. The carrier can then reach out to the insured and send he

Following an oven explosion at its factory near Spokane, in which 17 workers were injured, and a nearly six-month investigation by the Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) Zodiac Cabin & Structures Support LLC has been fined $1,316,000 for failing to use required safety interlocks and safeguards to ensure that the curing oven was safe and for failing to follow a safety recommendation report it received from a safety engineer. Charley Gee is a Portland personal injury lawyer