You must agree to stop using social network sites before I will agree to represent you in your Florida injury lawsuit. I just read a new article about several ways that police have used the internet to gather evidence. Before you think this is limited to criminal matters, let me assure you it is not.

Insurance companies routinely hire investigators to follow accident victims for surveillance. Those investigators can follow you in your car and they can follow you online. Increasingly, online surveillance is becoming more rewarding for investigators because of people’s incredible willingness to share personal details online that investigators couldn’t uncover otherwise.

Here is a summary of the article I read detailing police successes online:

- You Tube cell phone videos allowed Virginia police to identify suspects in a December street brawl.

- An illegal drag racing organization was busted when Tennessee police discovered the online chat-room they used to plan their activities.

- Suspects in riots celebrating the LA Lakers’ NBA championship were identified in You Tube and Flickr content.

The judge did not remove Daniel from his parents’ custody but required that they proceed with medical evaluations to determine whether chemo is the best course of action

The judge said that if the boy’s prognosis remains good, the judge will require chemo, but if the cancer is too advanced, then he will not.

If the boy and his family refuse judge-ordered chemo, then the boy will be removed from his parents’ custody. The judge did not comment on what result would follow if the boy physicall fought the administration of the drug.

Daniel Hauser has Hodgkin’s lymphoma and his doctors say chemotherapy will give him a 90 percent chance of survival. Without it, they say he will die.

However, Daniel and his parents want to treat his cancer with nutritional supplements and alternative treatments promoted by the Nemenhah Band,which advocates natural healing methods used by some Native Americans.

“This is about the right of a 13-year-old young man to be free from acts of assault on his body,” said the family’s attorney, Calvin Johnson.

Daniel was diagnosed with cancer this January. A week later, Daniel had to visit an emergency room due to a severe illness. At that time, the family consented to his first and only chemo treatment to date.

However, Daniel became depressed after his chemo treatment and decided he did not want to continue them.

When Daniel’s doctor notified child protection authorities, the county Daniel lives in brought charges against the family to require Daniel to submit to treatment.

What do you think readers?

Which party has a stronger interest in its rights? Does the boy and his family have a stronger interest in living (and dying) as they so choose or does the government have such a strong interest in this matter that it would be justified in forcing him to undergo and invasive, painful and lengthy treatment?

Lack of supervision is one of the legal definitions of child neglect. However, we are left to decide for ourselves to what degree someone must fail to supervise a child before we say they broke the law.

WESH TV2.com is reporting that two children in Volusia County called 911 after their mother left them home alone.

The headline described the 6 and 4-year-old children as “panicked” but the 911 call transcript does not lead me to the same conclusion. It reveals the 6-year-old boy saying, “when we were freaked out, I told my sister, ‘You need to go to sleep and stay calm until tomorrow. I think she’s coming back.”

That seems pretty level-headed and calm to me. Is that headline another example of media sensationalism to drum up their audience? I digress.

The topic of this post is to discuss legal line drawing. The boy in this story called 911 at about 2 a.m. and said he was home alone with his 4-year-old sister.

The operator talked to the boy after asking him to turn on the TV to entertain his younger sister. Volusia County Sheriff’s Deputies arrived to supervise the children until their 23-year-old mother, Megan Hester, returned home 30 minutes later.

She said she went to a convenience store to fill up her car with gas and that when she left, the children were sleeping. Deputies reported that she did not seem drunk or otherwise intoxicated, the house was clean and the children were fine.

She was arrested and charged with felony child neglect.

In this post I will not take one side or the other but encourage you to comment on where you would draw the line between behavior that is imprudent versus behavior that is criminal. Where would you draw the line?

Gerold Lee Drosky was shot in the head, hand and groin around 4 a.m. at the Ocean Sands Hotel at 1024 N. Atlantic Ave. and remained on life support as late as Monday.

Police arrested James “Jimmy” Nicolas Costa, 27, of Orlando about an hour afterward. Costa attempted to evaid liability by removing some of his clothes, abandoning a .380 semiautomatic pistol outside the hotel by the beach approach, and hiding in the beach dunes about a block away.

Costa has a lengthy criminal record and the News-Journal reports that he came to Daytona to sell drugs to spring breakers.

One witness, Steve McKinnon, 22, of Ocala, said that Costa and Drosky were arguing when Costa pulled a gun on Drosky and shot him in the face. When Drosky fell to the floor, Costa shot him twice more.

My firm handled a case similar to this several years ago where a young man was shot and killed during spring break in a Burger King parking lot.

Florida law requires businesses to maintian reasonably safe premises. That includes providing adequate security and safety when unsafe conditions are foreseeable.

In our past case, violence had erupted at the Burger King previously on several occasions and management expected an increase in violence because of spring break. In that case, we were able to acheive a successful outcome for the family of the deceased man.

Depending on the specific events, the hotel may be liable in this case. This is certainly not to say that every business owner should be liable for the death of a customer. Businesses and landowners are only liable for such occurrences if the business is at fault.

For example, since businesses are required by law to maintain safe premises, if the hotel in this case knew that an armed drug dealer was one of their guests, then most reasonable people would agree that the hotel should have provided more security.

In cases where businesses have repeated rapes or violent attacks occurring on their property, then they have a duty to the public to provide security to protect their customers. Not only is it required by law, it’s just good business practices and plain common decency.

]]> http://www.floridainjurytriallawyer.com/spring-breaker-shot-in-daytona-will-likely-die-is-the-hotel-liable/feed 0 http://www.floridainjurytriallawyer.com/lawyers-adopt-tactic-used-by-steroid-abusers http://www.floridainjurytriallawyer.com/lawyers-adopt-tactic-used-by-steroid-abusers#comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:50:46 +0000 Art Zimmet http://thefloridalawyer.wordpress.com/?p=94 For those who follow the news, you’ve probably heard about the rash of professional baseball players who have either confessed, been caught or are under investigation for abusing steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. This sport-wide scandal has tarnished the reputation of the nation’s past-time and ruined the reputations of players.

For those caught up in the scandal, two approaches to dealing with it have emerged. Many players such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have chosen to outright, adamantly, and repeatedly deny the allegations. Others, exemplified by Alex Rodriguez, have chosen to come clean so to speak and openly discuss their guilt.

I can only speak for myself, but Alex Rodriguez has saved his reputation in my mind by being a man about it, owning up to it and openly discussing his transgressions. I wish him nothing but the best and continued success in the future and I hope he can lead the way to a clean Major League Baseball.

On the other hand, I am completely offended by the likes of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens who have not chosen the higher road and have attempted at every turn to use lame and unconvincing excuses for why they aren’t guilty. This tactic has turned the tide of public opinion against them. I for one do not wish to see them in the Hall of Fame.

This tactic of owning up to your transgressions and admitting your faults is a powerful influencer of opinion. Confession is one of the foundations of Catholicism for reason and lawyers have begun to catch on.

I participated in a mediation yesterday in a medical malpractice case where the hospital was quite clearly negligent. However, the Florida Legislature passed a law saying that if a medical malpractice victim is not married and does not have children under 25, then no one can bring a wrongful death claim on their behalf. The only legal claim available in that case is for the pain and suffering of the victim, not her relatives.

In our case, the victim only lived for about 20 days past the time she began suffering from the injury the hospital inflicted so the damages that her estate could collect would be limited to the dollar amount that a jury believed would properly represent her pain and suffering for that short period.

The hospital’s defense counsel shrewdly used this to their advantage and indicated that at trial, the hospital would admit negligence. The hospital would “pull an A-Rod.” Not only would this admission soften the jury’s opinion of the hospital, but it would have important legal ramifications as well.

By admitting fault, the hospital would avoid the ill will that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have incurred. Perhaps more importantly, that move also would mean that I could not present evidence at trial to prove that the hospital was negligent because that evidence would be rendered unnecessary by their admission.

If a jury could not hear all the horrible things that this hospital did to my client, the jury would be less likely to award a high amount of damages. All the jury would hear about would be the pain and suffering my client endured in those short 20 days that remained in her life.

It was a shrewd move and also one defense lawyers urge doctors to adopt. Studies show that if a doctor simply apologizes for injuries he inflicts on patients, then that doctor is significantly less likely to be sued by that patient.

Neither of the injuries were life-threatening, and charges are still pending against the truck driver. This guy is very lucky that the women were lying in soft sand. On other stretches of the beach, the sand is very hard-packed. If the accident had taken place there, we would likely be hearing a much different story.

While I’m not commenting either way, this incident brings to mind something we discussed in law school. Sometimes, the law can be quite arbitrary. The same action by a person can result in very different legal outcomes.

The truck driver in this case backed out of his parking spot without looking. That’s of course clearly negligent, but the legal outcome would have been very different had he been on hard sand and the girls had suffered critical or lethal injuries.

The quality of the sand was just blind luck. For the same action, this truck driver could be facing life in jail. Be careful out there.

The guy who caused the accident was arrested for drunk driving and is uninjured. Hopefully justice will be served in the future for this driver because nothing about the accident was just in my eyes. Why is it that the drunk driver is completely unhurt while one innocent woman died and a family of three was seriously injured?

Mark Lester Wolf, 39, of Palm Coast was speeding southbound in his Mercedes and did not even hit the brakes before rear-ending a ‘06 Nissan Frontier driven by Christopher T. Reaney, of Port Orange. The Frontier spun clockwise, overturned with its roof hitting a metal sign pole. Everyone inside was wearing their seatbelts but Kelly L. Frates, 35, of Port Orange died from her injuries.

Chris Reaney, Catherine Reaney, 66, and William Reaney, 68, also of Port Orange were taken to Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach with serious injuries.

I pray the Reaney family members recover fully from their injuries, but they likely face a long road back. While my heart goes out to them and to the family of Kelly Frates, as a lawyer, my thoughts are also drawn to the legal implications.

For everyone reading this blog, this is a stark reminder why you need underinsured motorist coverage. I haven’t seen Wolf’s insurance policy but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does not carry enough bodily injury insurance to cover the damages he caused. Someone who is reckless enough to drink and drive so irresponsibly does not strike me as the kind of person who will carry lots of insurance to protect others.

That is why it’s so important for us, the responsible drivers to protect ourselves. Insurance companies do not explain the importance of underinsured coverage because it is not in their best interest to do so. The Reaneys may not have even heard their agent mention those words. If Wolf’s insurance won’t cover the damages and the Reaneys don’t have adequate underinsured coverage, they might be looking at out-of-pocket payment for their medical bills. The majority of US bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

It may not if the Reaneys can avail themselves of a recent court case that could allow them to collect punitive damages from Wolf’s insurance company. Normally, auto insurance companies do not have to pay for the punitive damages caused by a drunk driver. However, a wrinkle in insurance law says that if certain conditions exist, then the insurance company can be on the hook for punitive damages.

If Wolf is underinsured or uninsured and the Reaneys do not carry underinsured coverage, this punitive damages strategy is likely the only avenue for the Reaneys to cover their medical expenses.

For more information about auto insurance, how to protect yourself and pay for your injuries, visit this car accident lawyer site.