Minnesota Wrongful Death Lawyer category
1Deadline approaching for survivors of I-35W bridge collapse to submit claims
19 September 2008
The deadline is approaching for people who seek compensation from a special fund set up by the legislature last year to help victims of the Interstate Hwy. 35W bridge that collapse.
Claims must be submitted by Oct. 15, according to the legislation signed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty in May authorizing $37 million for survivors and family members of survivors who perished when the bridge went down on Aug. 1, 2007.
According to the law authorizing the compensation, a survivor is defined as “a natural person who was present on the I-35W bridge at the time of the collapse.” A survivor also includes family members who survive a person who died in the collapse, or the legally recognized representative of a survivor, such as a parent or guardian of a survivor who is under 18 years old.
Claim forms are available at www.BridgeCollapseClaims.com or by calling the Office of the Special Master Panel at 651-485-1153.
2Mother’s death leaves family questioning care
3 September 2008
According to Dunham’s medical records received from Pinnacle Hospital, the spinal fusion surgery went well. Her family was elated by the news and awaited her return to her room.
Dunham left surgery late that morning complaining of pain.
Prior to the surgery, the Dunham family had apprised hospital staff of their mother’s allergy to codeine and morphine.
It was entered in her medical chart. It was identified on the red tag she wore on her wrist. And in the final presurgery meeting with physicians, Dunham’s children say they reminded anesthesiologist Dr. Nageswar Yelavarthi that their mother was allergic to morphine.
READ MORE ON MINNESOTA WRONGFUL DEATH ARTICLE……
3Car accident wrongful deaths take ….
2 September 2008
Our Toledo, Ohio car accident attorneys see the devastation that wrongful deaths from car accidents can have on a family.
A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report found that for every 100 million miles traveled on the roads, there were 1.37 wrongful deaths in 2007. Wrongful death caused by motorcycle accidents is also prevalent in the United States, with the number of wrongful deaths increasing to 5,154 from 4,837 in 2006.
More than 41,000 people suffered wrongful death as a result of car accidents in 2007, according to the report.
4Jury to convene in malpractice case
15 August 2008
An Olmsted County jury could decide Wednesday whether Mayo Clinic doctors were negligent 11 years ago in their treatment of an infant who ended up with permanent brain damage.
Final testimony in the medical malpractice trial is expected Wednesday morning, followed by closing arguments and instructions from Judge Robert Birnbaum.
The lawsuit was initiated in 2001 by Nancy and Michael Becker, who adopted Nykkole Rossini as an infant. She had already suffered the brain damage at the hands of her biological father, Brian Rossini, who was convicted in criminal court and sentenced to prison.
Jurors have learned through testimony and video that Nykkole, while growing physically, will never function beyond the level of an infant. She can’t walk or talk and is fed through a tube. She needs constant care.
Chris Messerly, one of the attorneys for the Beckers, asked jurors to award damages of $20 million.
5Wulff completes a long road home (Minnesota wrongful death lawyer)
12 August 2008
Not at the news that nobody knew where his mom was. Not at the weekend expeditions when his cousins would drive out into the Northern California farmland, digging for the woman who disappeared.
Paul Wulff never cried, not when he went through junior high as somebody different, the kid with the bizarre family tragedy in his background. Not when he grew to man size, dedicating himself to weightlifting and getting better and bigger and stronger. He never cried, not through the newspaper stories and all the lingering questions, not through an entire adolescence growing up without a mom, and really, a dad.
He never cried.
There would be plenty of time for tears later.
Trying to dig up a body somewhere
So much to do, so little time. Paul Wulff strides into a motel lobby, straight and tall, trimmed down now considerably from a generation ago, when he played center at Washington State on the best offensive line in the school’s history.
He needs to recruit. He needs to rebuild a sagging culture. And oh yes, he needs to go just up the hill with his wife, Sherry, to their new house and decide on interior paint colors.
Tuesday, he begins his first fall camp as coach of the Cougars. Who knew that when he was hunched over, cradling a ball he’d snap to Timm Rosenbach on the 1988 Aloha Bowl team that effectively ignited Dennis Erickson’s coaching career, that Wulff would someday be back here, making it his team?
“The odds are so far out there,” Wulff says reflectively. “I knew if it ever came to this, there’d be so many people interested.”
But there wasn’t anybody quite like Wulff, no other candidate who embodied what it meant to be a Cougar. Nobody else who had lived in a trailer in the early days of working up the road coaching at Eastern Washington, or won as much while given as little as he was at Eastern.
Nobody else who had been to hell and back.
6A TV Reporter Tackles Workers’ Comp
30 July 2008
In the decade and a half or more than I have known Rick Kupchella of KARE-TV in Minneapolis, he has always been attracted to stories that are complex and tough to tell. I have seen him try to explain community sprawl, how long-distance phone companies price their plans and how Ticketmaster works. I have seen him explore stories like global warming and alcoholism. That is not the stuff that local TV gets stereotyped as covering, is it?
I asked Rick what story we should all consider taking on and he points us to a big one: workers’ compensation. He explains in today’s guest column:
One of the issues I’ve covered at KARE repeatedly over the years focuses on the inadequacies/inequalities of the workers’ compensation system in my home state of Minnesota and throughout the nation.
Congressional sources peg the number of work-related fatalities in this country at 6,000 a year, with millions more injured.
Injured workers — or survivors of those killed — really cannot sue a company for wrongful death. The workers’ compensation system involves its own judges, in its own courts, with its own laws.
7There Goes Worker Safety - ( Minnesota wrongful death lawyer )
27 July 2008
The reality of current worker safety is that more Americans are killed at work each year than died in the twin towers on September 11th. Every day eighteen Americans die preventable deaths; preventable because mandated safety precautions go unheeded. When a preventable death occurs it means that someone, somewhere, dropped the ball. Possibly a safety measure was not followed by an employee or their supervisor. Or, an employer who has repeatedly and maliciously disregarded OSHA regulations has been allowed to literally “get away with murder!”
According to Webster’s Dictionary, an “accident” is defined as “an unexpected unusual event.” But, when an employer repeatedly breaks laws, there is nothing unusual or unexpected about an event that produces a tragic debilitating injury or death to an employee.
This is the dirty little secret of Workers’ Compensation: employers hold the ultimate “Get Out Of Jail FREE” card when it comes to their employee’s safety. Employers are immune from civil wrongful death actions and, for all practical purposes, criminal prosecution.
Prior to Workers’ Compensation laws employees had the right, just like any other citizen, to sue their employers if the employer’s tortuous behavior caused the employee an injury or worse, death. Unfortunately, very few workers prevailed in court. The employer’s ability to afford more lawyers and more investigators outmatched that of the resources of the workers.
Employers did not take safety precautions seriously or provide adequate safe working conditions because they had absolutely nothing to fear from the injured worker.
An idea that developed shortly after the turn into the 20th Century was the formation of state-created industrial commissions to establish health and safety regulations and to compensate injured workers. The various state commissions desired to make available a fund which would compensate workers for their injuries without draining the resources of the employers.
The general idea was that companies would contribute to a self-insurance fund; the fewer injuries there were, the less the fund would have to pay out and the lower the premiums would be to the employers. Thus, the initial Workers’ Compensation concept was a
preventive measure by individual states in reaction to the need to protect workers..
Then the insurance companies of America got hold of these commissions with their massive economic and legislative clout and that is what we have today; a system that gives the employers and their insurers the ultimate shield against civil and criminal prosecution for crimes which if committed anywhere else, would land them in jail poste haste!
Welcome to the doctrine of the “Exclusive Remedy!
And what do injured workers get in exchange?
The ability to get medical treatment when the insurance company feels like giving it.
The ability to have their medical needs reviewed by doctors who are not impartial, and who are paid by the employers and insurers to delay and deny industry standard treatment modalities.
The ability to get little or no compensation for their inability to compete in the workplace for jobs that will fit their post injury abilities.
It’s time that our legislators got off their respective hind ends and passed some laws that will aid and assist the working population of this state or there won’t be anyone left to man the jobs that we already have.
The State of Minnesota has a bill in it’s Senate sponsored by Senator John Marty that is a unique one-of-a-kind bill that will hold employers accountable for the Minnesota wrongful death of a worker due to their ignorance of OSHA regulations. It’s a start.
8Fred Pritzker: Litigating Food Borne Injury Cases
23 July 2008
Minneapolis, MN: Fred Pritzker and the lawyers at his Minneapolis firm always have a lot on their plate, so to speak.
His firm, Pritzker|Ruohonen & Associates P.A., is one of very few firms in the U.S. that can claim expertise in representing people injured by food borne illnesses, like E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria. It is a highly technical business, which requires experience, and a lot of scientific detail.
“It is a very small group of lawyers, I can think of one other firm. Plenty of lawyers do food borne illness cases,” he says “but I don’t think that many of them have the kind of experience and consistency that we have,” says Pritzker.
Over the years, Pritzker has served as legal council in “hundreds” of cases where people have suffered serious injuries, even died from eating contaminated food.
Pritzker|Ruohonen & Associates have been involved in most of the major food borne illness outbreaks involving E. coli 0157:H7, and collected millions on behalf of food borne illness survivors, and the families of people who have died.
“E. coli cases can be very large, especially if there is a Minnesota wrongful death case, or something called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which is destruction of the kidneys,” he says. “There have been many major outbreaks, for example, there was the lettuce outbreak involving Dole lettuce that affected a lot of the United States two years ago, and we had one of the wrongful death cases associated with that, and they are very significant claims,” says Pritzker.
E. coli poisoning victims often get sick, very fast. It is among the most dangerous of all types of food borne illnesses. Many victims recover, but about a third of all E. coli infections result in kidney failure. Other complications may be blindness, seizures, paralysis or other types of debilitating or disfiguring and permanent injuries.
On July 2, 2008, the firm filed a lawsuit in Ohio, on behalf of 21-year-old Zachary Everhart from Columbus, who became ill with an E. coli O157:H7 infection after eating Kroger ground beef. The defendants in this case are Kroger Co. and Nebraska Beef, Ltd.
“He has recovered from the physical injuries to a large degree, he’s still got a little bit of weakness,” says Pritzker “but anyone who has gone through a near death food borne illness experience, you can imagine, is very emotionally involved and very concerned about what they eat and how it is prepared and who makes it and things like that.”
In the Everhart case, Pritzker says, using a genetic fingerprint of the bacteria, it was possible to trace the illness back to Kroger Ltd. and then to Nebraska Beef Ltd. “He is a culture confirmed case,” says Pritzker.
LAS: How did you get interested in litigating food borne illness cases?
FP: Years ago, I handled a significant food borne illness case, but not as well publicized as E. coli, and just got to know the science involved, and became more and more interested in it, and had more and more cases and developed a reputation.
LAS: Do you represent companies in food borne illness cases?
FP: What we are usually involved in is individual cases, we feel we can do a much better job helping individual clients and helping people with real problems.
LAS: What kind of verdicts result?
FP: It depends on what kind of food borne illness is involved. There are probably a dozen that we see, some of them like listeriosis (which causes fever, meningitis, miscarriage, or premature birth and is spread by eating food contaminated with Listeria bacteria) is a rare food borne illness. There are only about 2500 cases a year in the United States. Of those, 20 per cent of the people die and the rate of serious complications is significant. When there is an outbreak of listeriosis, those cases typically settle in the millions and in several instances, in the multi million-dollar range.
E. coli cases can be very large, especially if there is a wrongful death case, or something called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which is destruction of the kidneys. There have been many major outbreaks. For example, there was the lettuce outbreak involving Dole lettuce that affected a lot of the United States two years ago. We had one of the wrongful death cases associated with that, and they are very significant claims.
LAS: What do you kind of evidence do you need to bring forward to successfully conclude these cases?
There is first, proving fault on the part of the producer or retailer.
The second is causation, and that is usually the more difficult one. By causation, I mean that this particular product was produced by a particular manufacturer and produced a particular kind of illness.
9Getting tased
21 June 2008
How Taser International expects to make millions from fear mongering, slick marketing and the Republican National Convention …
A Taser shock has been called the “longest five seconds of your life.” It incapacitates the nervous system. It causes a loss of bowel and bladder control. It produces a 50,000-volt shock from up to 10 yards away that pulsates through the body and causes every muscle fiber to recoil and stiffen. Yet Taser International and the Minneapolis Police Department stress that the Taser is an extremely safe non pain-compliance tool. “It saves lives,” they insist.
Despite these reassurances, in November a United Nations Committee ruled that Taser use constitutes a “form of torture” that can result in death. And just this week a federal jury in San Jose found the company responsible for the death of a 40-year-old man, awarding his family more than $6 million in punitive and compensatory damages. It was a landmark case, the first of at least 69 Minnesota wrongful-death lawsuits filed against Taser that the company has lost.
10Getting tased, Part 2: Beware of the ‘excited’
19 June 2008
Tasers were originally created as a firearm alternative—a weapon that didn’t kill, supposedly. But Tasers have become a popular police tool to use on suspects suffering from what Taser International calls “excited delirium,” a term coined in the 1980s after cocaine use become more widespread. According to the Minneapolis Police Department, all officers on the Crisis Intervention Team, which mostly deals with unarmed persons who are on drugs or mentally ill, carry a Taser.
Note: This story is the second feature in a two-part in a series. For more information, check out
Getting tased: How Taser International expects to make millions from fear mongering, slick marketing and the Republican National Convention)
Experts say “excited delirium” is a mythical condition used to boast Taser sales, and that its increasing rationale in Taser use is leading to more deaths.
Since the firm Taser International went public in 2001, deaths from stun guns, or Tasers, have grown steadily. In fact, the increase has been so profound that the National Institute of Justice is conducting its own study on the weapons, to be released in 2009. There is no way to get accurate reporting before 2003 on deaths occurring during arrest, since, oddly enough, there was central documentation of such deaths until a law passed in 2000 created the Deaths in Custody Reporting Program.
Even after its passage, the reporting program acknowledges huge gaps in departments reporting deaths from Tasers and/or stun-guns. What we do know is that at least 34 people have died in the United States this year after being Tased, two of them in the Twin Cities.
Here’s how one of those cases unfolded:
On Jan. 15, 29-year-old Mark Backlund is driving to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport from New Brighton to pick up his parents during rush hour. Backlund crashes into a minivan on Interstate 694. Five Minnesota State Patrol officers, two of them in training, immediately arrive on the scene. About eight minutes later, Backlund is unresponsive after being Tased three times. He is pronounced dead at the hospital.
According to video released by the State Patrol, Backlund appears to slow