Oil Executives & Congressmen Criticize BP’s Actions

June 15th, 2010

As Congress is holding hearings and investigating the BP oil spill, House Democrats made statements and read from a letter to BP CEO indicating their conclusions that BP cut corners and put time-lines and profits above safety.

And in testimony before Congress, oil executives from BP’s rivals all testified that their companies would not have drilled the well the way in which BP did that led to the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon.

According to the Washington Post, Rex W. Tillerson, chair and chief executive of Exxon Mobil submitted prepared testimony to Congress that referred to BP’ blowout as “…a dramatic departure from the industry norm in deepwater drilling.” Tillerson also demanded a critical review to “…know if the levels of risk taken went beyond industry norms.”

What oil executives sought to do was reassure Congressional investigators that what happened on BP’s Deepwater Horizon wouldn’t and couldn’t happen to their deepwater wells.  And the assurances come as the industry and its allies in Congress seek to lift the moratorium on deepwater drilling.

The problem, however, resides in the well reported and obvious fact that while deepwater drilling technology has significantly advanced, safety technology and clean up capabilities have not advanced.

So, all assurances aside, if any of the BP’s rivals were to suffer a similar blowout – there are no assurances that the response or damage would be any different.

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Prop 14 Will Hurt Personal Injury Victims

June 7th, 2010

If Proposition 14 passes tomorrow personal injury victims will lose.

The Proposition on its face sounds good enough – open up primaries in hopes that more moderate middle of the road candidates will have a shot at running on behalf of their party.  Because isn’t that were compromise comes from – the middle of the road, right?  Wrong!

There is nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.  And I wish that I could take credit for that sentence but it came from a much more famous Texan than I, Jim Hightower, the last democrat to serve on the Texas Supreme Court before tort reformers did to that state what they dream of doing to California.

What Proposition 14 will do is increase the overall spending on elections, which if you are from Wall Street or you made a bundle in Silicon Valley off of back-dated stock options that’s probably no big deal.  But if you are trying to back candidates that are concerned with the rights of consumers and personal injury victims, it’s a serious problem.

Besides, don’t take my word for it – just take a close look at who is backing the proposition: business groups, insurance companies, and the state Chamber of Commerce.  A group of folks that isn’t exactly a friend to injured workers, personal injury victims, and consumers.

Vote no on Proposition 14.  You’ll be glad that you did.

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Listen To Your Lawyers

June 5th, 2010

I’m a personal injury attorney – I represent injury victims in serious personal injury, brain injury, and wrongful death as well as workplace injury cases.  And I, like all personal injury attorneys and lawyers as well as others have experienced that client that either can’t or wont listen when I am explaining what’s in their best interest.

Well, it seems that big corporations are no different than my personal injury clients.

According to the New York Times, Wal-Mart hired a law firm to look into claims of gender disparities in promotions and pay among its workforce way back in 1995.  Now, this is significant because this is six years before one of the biggest discrimination lawsuits in US history would be brought against the retail giant.  And what did the lawyers and attorneys hired by Wal-Mart find?

According to a report obtained by the New York Times, the attorneys found found widespread gender disparities in pay and promotion at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores.  In fact, the attorneys found that men were five times more likely to be promoted.  So the attorneys and lawyers recommended and urged the company change its ways  in order to avoid liability in a discrimination suit.

The lawyers also told the company that without significant changes to the company’s policies and practices that it would be “…difficult to fashion a persuasive explanation for disproportionate employment patterns.”

Fast forward six years – it’s 2001, and seven women file a class-action, one of the largest discrimination actions in workplace history, complaining of a pattern of discrimination in pay and promotions.  “D’oh!“

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Personal Injury Attorney Ad Is Protected Speech

June 3rd, 2010

A personal injury attorney ran an ad – as we personal injury attorneys often do – informing consumers about certain product defects in a type of wooden deck that may be present in their homes.

The manufacturer of the product in question sued the personal injury attorney for making what it alleged were defamatory statements.

Now, I am being intentionally vague on the details because in this case the details really don’t matter.  And that, is because this is what personal injury attorneys often do – we warn the public in our online, radio, tv, and print marketing about dangerous and often defective products.

So, the case went all the way to the California Supreme Court – who ruled that the attorney’s ad was protected speech under California’s free speech law.  Good for them and good for us all.

For those interested the case was Simpson Strong-Tie Co. Inc. v. Gore, S164174 and be found on the Court’s website.

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BP Ignored Their Own Workplace Safety Policies

May 29th, 2010

Workplace Injury and safety policies exist on all job sites for a reason: to prevent serious personal injuries and even deaths.  And when the job site is an oil rig miles off the coast drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, workplace safety and the importance of preventing workplace injuries take on a whole new meaning.

This is just one of the many reasons why it is so alarming to learn that according to internal documents from BP, and as reported by the New York Times, there were serious safety concerns and problems on the Deepwater Horizon much earlier than BP indicated in recent Congressional testimony.San Francisco Personal Injury Attorney Comments On BP Oil Spill

In fact, according to the Times, BP went forward with a controversial plan to deal with the casing on the well, even though doing so violated the company’s own safety policies and design standards.

The problem at issue, and what lead to the disastrous explosion that has caused immeasurable environmental damage, numerous personal injuries and eleven deaths, is the well casing and the “blowout preventer.”  Both of these devices on an oil rig such as the Horizon are important pieces of equipment when you are trying to close off a well.

What the new internal documents from BP show is that there were serious problems with both the well casing and blowout preventer and that BP was struggling with a loss of “well control,” according to the Times.

The documents reveal that there were warning signs before the explosion of April 20.  And, that the company was aware of the risk and potential problems but made an exception and went forward despite warnings from BP engineers that the well casing might collapse under pressure.

The New York Times, analyzed federal drilling records, well reports, and internal BP documents and over 50,000 company emails, reports, and engineering studies obtained from Congressional investigators.  These documents shed new light on the extent of the problems before the explosion and BP’s awareness of the risk that such an event might occur.

What is even more troubling is that the documents appear to reveal that BP failed to alert federal regulators to the type of well casing being used and they failed to disclose their own internal concerns regarding the safety of the well.

The New York Times article can be read here.

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Big Energy And Free Speech – Like Oil & Water

May 14th, 2010

As the personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits pile up over the environmental catastrophe taking place in the Gulf of Mexico, Salon’s Bill Moyers and Micheal Winship point out that an equally devastating catastrophe is taking place in South America, but one that involves the first amendment and Chevron.

Salon’s piece makes clear how Chevron worked to suppress journalistic free speech rights that may put in jeopardy not just speech but access to the truth.

Last Thursday, New York Federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered Joe Berlinger, a documentary producer and director, to produce to Chevron over 600 hours of raw footage used to create a film titled Crude: The Real Price of Oil.

The story is all about how over 30,000 Ecuadorians went up against an energy giant that was polluting their rain-forest and the air they breathed and water they drank.  The environmental disaster that they stood against has been described as the Amazon’s Chernobyl.  But have you ever heard of it – bet not – and that is exactly the way big oil want to keep things.

So check out the article on here on Salon.

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Jury Awards Bicyclist $2.9 Million

May 10th, 2010

A bicyclist suffered serious injuries to her back and neck when she hit a steel grate and broke her neck in four places.  And a jury in Connecticut has ordered the Hartford Metropolitan District Commission to pay $2.9 million to the injury bicyclists as a result of her injuries.

The issue in the case was whether or not the District had improperly placed a steel grate on the bike path.  The jury ruled that the District was in fact negligent in its placing of the metal grate and that this negligence caused the plaintiff’s injuries.

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New Treatment For Lower Back Pain

May 8th, 2010

As a San Francisco Personal Injury Attorney, I see and speak with injury victims who have suffered serious back pain and spinal injuries from car accidents, falls, workplace injuries, and even trucking accidents.

Spine or back injuries are very common and can be debilitating to say the least.  But now, researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a new method and approach to treating injury victims with lower back pain.

What the researchers are developing is a systems approach to lower back pain.  This would allow researchers to pool information, share data, and be able to evaluate a patients response to a particular method based on shared research.

According to researchers, adopting this type of approach and method is vital to fully understanding the spine and treating injury victims that have suffered injuries to the spine.

More can be read on this approach here at Science Daily.

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Brain Injury Victims Can Benefit From Dark Chocolate

May 8th, 2010

According to a new study from Johns Hopkins University, dark chocolate may decrease the incidence of subsequent brain injury in stroke victims and may even protect the brain from injury during a stroke.

The ability of the brain to heal and protect itself from further injury after a person suffers a stroke if vital to someone’s ability to recover after such an injury.  The compound in dark chocolate that scientist feel is beneficial in this regard is epicatechin.  And it appears to protect nerve cells thus guarding the brain against stroke and injury subsequent to a stroke.

Her is how the study worked: U.S. researchers provided mice with a dose of this compound, which is a flavanol, and then 90 minutes later facilitated a stroke in the mice.

What the scientist discovered was the mice that had consumed the compound suffered much less brain injury than those who had not taken it.  In fact, the compound seemed to work better than certain drugs given to human brain injury victims.

So, dark chocolate anyone.

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Ban Of BPA Threatens Food Safety Bill

April 26th, 2010

As reported by the Washington Post and others, Congress currently has a bill pending in the Senate to improve food safety and give the FDA more power over the production and distribution of food across the nation. But support for the legislation could be unraveling due to an amendment that seeks to ban the use of a BPA.

BPA is a used in thousands of household and consumer goods.  It can make plastics harder and is used in linings as well.  But it is the use of the substance in food and beverage containers that has researchers and consumer advocates worried.

BPA has been linked to a number of illnesses including cancer and developmental disorders.  Certain states and cities have banned it’s use in certain products and many would like to see it banned completely.

The food industry and their allies have threatened to withhold support for the food safety legislation due to the amendment implementing a BPA ban because of the problems such a ban would pose to industry.

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