Texas Personal Injury Lawyers – Jim Adler & Associates – Blog

The famous Keebler elves are probably in shock. Their cookies are on a list of 3,222 products
recalled by the federal government since January because they were made with peanut butter paste tainted with Salmonella Typhimurium. It came from a plant in Georgia – Peanut Corporation of America – that has since declared bankruptcy. Questions about products should be directed to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since the company no longer takes calls from consumers. The FDA has created a special web page where the public can research products by brand name, UPC Code and product description or any combination of the three. The government agency plans continuous updates to the site. As of March 9, 2009, its list included hundreds of America’s favorite foods, including ice cream, candy, cookies, brownies, cakes, pies and donuts. If any of these products have made you sick, you may be eligible for legal action against the manufacturer of the peanut butter paste.

“Seeing is believing,” the old saying goes. While statistics can make believers out of some doubters, there is nothing like watching an accident happen. In this case, the deadly force of an 18-wheeler. When there’s a fatal accident with a truck, more often than not, the dead are found in the other vehicle. An animation by the National Transportation Safety Board on http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/animations.htm demonstrates the deadly force of a truck in an accident that left three school bus passengers dead and seriously injured two others. The truck weighed more than 79,000 pounds. It slammed into the side of the bus when its brakes failed. The NTSB said the poor condition of the truck’s brakes and inadequate truck inspections were the cause of the 2001 Arkansas accident. But the safety lesson for all drivers is clear: Don’t drive in or around 18- wheelers on the highway if you can avoid it. And watch side roads for truck traffic. There’s no room for mistakes. Note: The National Transportation Safety Board website also has scores of animations that recreate plane crashes, collapsing bridges and other accidents that have made national headlines, including the crash of a light plane into a Manhattan skyscraper in 2006 and the a Southwest Airlines plane that overran the runway in Chicago in 2007.

In fact, it’s the biggest in years! It means that people hurt by bad drugs can sue drug manufacturers in state court even if labels on the drugs include a federal warning about their potential danger under some circumstances. You might be tempted to say “So what?” But if the ruling had gone the other way – that is, for the drug company involved – millions of Americans would have no right to sue drug companies that hurt them or their loved ones when federal warnings on their drugs are inadequate. Jim Adler, an attorney with 30 years experience in personal injury law, says that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – the federal agency charged with making sure drugs are safe – is “underfunded and understaffed…” setting up the situation where “…drugs are being tested on the American public.” How did the question end up before the court? A Vermont musician was injected with a drug to relieve migraine headaches even though the warning label said the type of injection she received might cause gangrene. A large portion of her right arm was amputated after the worst happened. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, she can keep the $6 million awarded to her by a Vermont state court.