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Should private arbitration that definitively — and legally — settles a nursing home dispute between a resident and facility matter to you if, as an adult reader, you have no personal connection to any such care provider? Put another way: Should you care a whit whether the outcome concerning an allegation of nursing home negligence or neglect is settled through arbitration forced upon a facility resident or, alternatively, proceeds pursuant to a process that works its way through court? According to a media article that examines nursing home arbitration versus litigation, you should care. And quite a bit. Here’s why. …

Those frantic, fleeting moments in the wake of a car accident will leave you intimidated and scared. What are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to react? Have people been injured in the wreck? So much is happening so quickly that it is understandable to freeze and not have the slightest clue how to react. To lead things off in this discussion about what to do after a car accident, let’s talk about something you shouldn’t do: flee the scene of the wreck. Doing so is a criminal act, and it deprives people who have been injured in …

A prominent California nursing home operator says that industry regulators are unfairly singling out his facilities and taking unnecessarily adverse actions against them. That is not how government officials see it. In fact, they say that many of the multiple homes owned and operated by business entrepreneur Shlomo Rechnitz — described in one media account as “California’s most influential nursing home owner” — are rife with worrisome problems. That concern has indeed brought a forceful response from officials, with a recent article focusing on nursing home neglect noting the “flurry of citations and fines [doled out] for alleged poor quality …

It is hardly surprising that an accident involving multiple vehicles and resulting in 10 fatalities has been under continuing study by federal accident investigators since its occurrence last year. The results of a lengthy and comprehensive analysis of a head-on collision between a commercial truck and a motorcoach bus in northern California last April concluded with a recent safety report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB states that the accident continues to be a puzzle of major proportions. Safety experts have been unable to pinpoint any reason why the FedEx driver of a tractor trailer crossed over …

Fast answer to the above-posed headline question: No, they do not. The seat belt that most drivers throughout California and across the United States are of course most accustomed to is the same one that dad, mom and perhaps even the grandparents used many years back (with some modifications). That is, the quintessential and long-tenured American seat belt has some give to it as a vehicle occupant is lurching forward, but only to a point. At that point, the belt stops a driver or passenger being propelled forward — suddenly and completely. There can be an occasional trade off with …

The non-profit and independent organization that accredits thousands of medical facilities across the United States has expressed a concern with a common post-surgical complication called respiratory distress. The Joint Commission’s focus upon RD is both logical and timely, given the often outsized and dire consequences that result for patients who experience this serious complication. The chief symptom associated with RD, and one which is directly implied by its name, is breathing difficulty — often so extreme that it can result in truly catastrophic outcomes, including death. As a recent media article discussing RD notes, the malady is especially linked to …

If company “A” issues far more safety recalls than company “B,” a business rival of comparable size that has a similar line of products, isn’t the former entity automatically more of a concern to consumers and safety regulators? Perhaps — but maybe not. Indeed, company “A” might be a relative outlier in its industry, marked by a problematic safety record and a demonstrated lack of concern for consistently stringent safety measures that protect consumers against defective products. Conversely, though, might it not be the case that consumers in Southern California and elsewhere who buy that company’s products are well served …

So, you are admitted to a hospital in Southern California for a surgical procedure. Your operation is a success, but with one caveat: you contract an infection that was acquired attendant to that surgery. That’s just bad luck, right? That hypothetical is, well, anything but fictional in the world of medicine as it is practiced in California and elsewhere across the country. Put another way: Any reader of this blog who thinks that infections visited upon patients receiving in-facility care are a singular anomaly in the medical industry needs to reevaluate that view after being introduced to some hard empirical …

“One hundred is not even the tip of the iceberg,” says one legal commentator responding to the news that a special compensation fund established by General Motors just acknowledged the 100th death tied to the automaker’s mammoth and infamous ignition switch defect. Many of our readers throughout Southern California and elsewhere across the state are of course familiar with the story surrounding that defect and the scores of wrongful death allegations it has engendered. In a recent article addressing the subject, the New York Times terms the ignition switch fiasco “one of the deadliest automotive safety issues in American history.” …

Do you like scary rides? Here’s an absolutely free one provided many millions of times each day to people across Southern California and the rest of the state: being a driver or passenger in a moderately sized car and having a 40-ton 18-wheel commercial truck whiz by you at 70 miles per hour. Those things are big, indeed, and we know that all our readers readily appreciate the damage they can do when they are involved in accidents with other vehicles. The occupants of those “other vehicles” invariably lose. In a best-case scenario, no lives are lost and property damage …

Accidents happen. That above sentence underscores about as succinctly as possible a fundamental reality attendant to human beings and their interactions with others. A tandem reality is that those accidents often result in devastating — sometimes fatal — injuries to persons who are victimized by the negligence of third parties. Indeed, there is a commonality attached to many personal injuries that befall individuals in Southern California and throughout the rest of the country, namely this: Those injuries are directly caused or centrally contributed to by other persons failing to act in reasonably thoughtful ways. Any such lapse in prudent conduct …

On November 10, 2010, a Los Angeles jury returned a $ 1.735 million verdict against the State of California, holding the State liable for the wrongful death of Francisco Castaneda. Mr. Castaneda was a former State and Federal prisoner, who had his penis amputated and died because the State (and federal officials) denied him a simple biopsy to rule out penile cancer. This verdict was the culmination of almost four years of fighting on behalf of Mr. Castaneda, and his daughter, seventeen year old Vanessa Castaneda. The significance of this case, in part, is evidenced by the fact that it …