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Sports Injuries
As an Accident and Injury Law Firm, the attorneys with McCutcheon and Hamner get alot of questions about sports related injuries to minor children. Often these sports injuries occur at a school or during a school sponsored event. Occasionally, we will see a child or teenage athelete injured pretty badly and often as the result of a flagarant foul committed by an opposing player. Outraged parents want to sue someone and ask us about lawsuits arising out of sports injuries.
Schools, school officals, teachers, coaches and school boards are all protected by the concept of sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity is a concept that comes to us from English common law when the kings and queens of England were thought to have been anointed by God. They were deemed imune from the courts of justice here on earth as they were beyond its earthly influence. Governments still retain sovereign immunity especially as it protects the governmental pocketbook.
Generally speaking, governmental immunity or sovereign immunity applies to employees of a governmental agency in about the performance of their duties. Obviously if they are not at work, but merely citizens violating traffic regulations and injuring someone, they are not immune.
An intentional injury by an opposing player could be the basis of both a criminal and civil penalty. This does occasionally occur. the problem with a civil lawsuit against a minor for injuring someone in a sporting event is that minors have no money and you cannot insure against an intentional act. If you intend to hurt someone and do, there is no insurance coverage to protect you.
The only cases that have been truly successful are those unfortunate cases where there is a failure of equipment such as a football helmet that is designed to protect against injury and injury occurs. Those cases have been successfully litigated as product liability cases.
Product Liability & Defective Products
How do I know if I have a product liability case or not?
Roger – Killen, AL
Roger, any time you feel you have a products liability case, it is advisable to contact attorneys such as McCutcheon & Hamner Accident and Injury Lawyers, who have extensive experience in the area of faulty or defective products.
No product liability case really exists without personal injury or death. Currently McCutcheon and Hamner is handling a product liability case that involves $250,000 in “property damage” from a fire caused by a defective cruise control switch in a Ford product. However, this is the only case that we have seen where a faulty product has caused enough property damage to warrant filing suit.
Within the last week we have seen three examples of potential product liability cases, these are typical examples of defective or faulty product liability which should be investigated by an attorney.
We know that Ford Explorers have a tendency to rollover and that should have been corrected in the design phase. Ford rollover cases are good cases has to be preserved and the scene of the accident needs to be thoroughly photographed because Ford will make the argument that the truck slid sideways and built up a furrow of dirt that caused the vehicle to roll. The true story is often told on the metal rim of the tire by looking to see where the cut marks from the road appear. If they appear on the bottom of the rim we know to look at the tire because it must have been flat at the time. If the cut marks on the rim are at a pretty flat angle we know the tire was inflated. If the rim is indented strongly, an expert can tell whether that indentation was made by the furrow of dirt that Ford will say caused the roll over or not.
We also worked with a car accident where a fuel fed fire occurred causing a tragic death. Fuel fed fires should simply not occur. Gasoline is a known combustible. On GM automobiles, on the expensive models, you get a flexible fuel filter line that tends to prevent fire. On the less expensive models you get a fixed fuel filler line that when it breaks off in an accident it is known to cause a fuel fed fire. These fires are product liability cases.
When a lawnmower rolls over and catches fire and burns someone, that is a product liability case and the lawnmower should be preserved in the state it was in after the fire so it can be used as evidence.
We at McCutcheon and Hamner believe manufacturers understandably but regrettably benefit from the fact that when someone is hurt badly or killed nobody really cares about preserving lawnmowers or burned or wrecked cars. If you want to help your family, preserve the evidence and call the Accident and Injury Attorneys at McCutcheon and Hamner. Without those pieces of evidence the loved ones who survive cannot pursue the case. In all the cases McCutcheon & Hamner work on we try to accomplish two important goals; 10 the family or injured person is provided economic security as a result of a lawsuit and 2) we help make sure that other people in other families are not hurt or killed the same way.