Articles Posted in Personal Injury

In Fecke v. Bd. of Supervisors Louisiana St. Univ. & Agricultural & Mech. College, a case from the Supreme Court of Louisiana, a college senior went to an indoor rock climbing facility located on the university campus.  He had been enrolled in an Outdoor Living Skills Activity course and this rock climbing activity was actually a mandatory requirement.

Once plaintiff arrived at the rock climbing facility, she completed a participation agreement as the staff asked her to do.  Following her signing the participation form, there was instruction into how to make the climb, and she successfully climbed the wall.  However, on the way back down from the wall, she fell to the ground.  When she hit the ground, she landed on her foot hard and fractured the talus bone. Continue reading

In Huang v. The Bicycle Casino, an appeals court in California was tasked with weighing the issue of liability of a common carrier.

For example, if you are injured while riding in friend’s car, and that friend was at-fault in the accident, your friend would be held to the ordinary standard of care as in any other negligence case.  The reason for this is because your friend is not a common carrier of passengers. However, if you are riding with a driver working for a bus company and you were injured as a passenger – even as a guest of a free shuttle – the driver (and vicariously, the company) would be held to a higher standard of care.

In Huang, plaintiff was injured when she was getting on board a shuttle bus provided by defendant’s casino.  When plaintiff sued, defendant casino claimed it should not be held to a higher standard of care because as a casino, it was not a common carrier of passengers. Defendant that the free shuttle was provided as a courtesy for customers, but it were not engaged in the business of carrying passengers from one location to the other. Continue reading

For several decades, healthcare providers and patient educators have recommended putting ice on an injury as soon as possible. The acronym RICE is commonly used, as it stands for “Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation.”  A medical doctor created RICE as a term in 1978, and everyone else just ran with it.  It is now taken as gospel.

However, a recent news feature from Soccer America takes a new look at RICE and whether it is actually a good practice or a faulty concept. The reason for skepticism is because the body will cause the site of trauma to swell as part of the body’s natural healing process.  This is similar to how a person who gets a fever is experiencing a higher body temperature because that is the body’s natural way of killing germs that cause illness. If you take a fever suppressant, it might make you feel better, but it might actually take the body longer to fight the virus.  However, it should be noted that if a fever is very high, medical intervention might be necessary. Continue reading

A recent news feature form Care2.com looks at three types of burn injuries we tend to see more often during the summer months than we do in other months, and it is is important to understand that all three of these types of burn injuries are preventable if the adequate level of care is taken.

As one might expect, we tend to see a lot more fireworks injuries during summer months than we do the rest of year.  While fireworks are also used during New Year’s Eve celebrations and other festivities throughout the year, during non-summer months it is often professionals that are providing the fireworks displays.  This is not to say that even professional shows can’t result in serious personal injury or death, but the chances are much greater that there will be a preventable accident when amateurs are the ones lighting off the fireworks displays. Continue reading