Virginia Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Blog

Defamation Suit in Austin against Alex Jones Three parents whose children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 filed a defamation lawsuit on Tuesday against Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist who has long claimed the shooting was “completely fake” and a “giant hoax” perpetrated by opponents of the Second Amendment. Mr. Jones,…

After a serious car crash, it’s important to understand all the sources of insurance coverage available to pay your claim. Without help from an experienced personal injury lawyer, you might lose valuable compensation.  To help make things simpler for you, this article explains the basics of Virginia auto insurance law. 

NBC Nightly News reported that there have been hundreds of incidents of e-cigarettes exploding and catching fire.  This figure does not include numerous incidents of loose e-cigarette lithium-ion batteries exploding in consumer’s pockets or purses.  It should be no surprise to consumers that big tobacco is behind many of the companies that are selling e-cigarette…

Motorcycle license holders increased in Virginia from 353,117 in 2010 to 422,477 in 2017.  During the last year of this period, the number of  motorcycle deaths was up nearly 50 percent  in 2017 – going from 72 in 2016 to 107 in 2017.  The high number of motorcycle fatalities during the past 10 years was 126…

For years, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) has ignored complaints about dangerous doctors and hidden their violations from regulators, says a government watchdog organization.  If you were injured by a negligent VA doctor, you have legal rights and options. Learn more about the VA’s doctor crisis and about related medical malpractice claims below.  Virginia’s Veteran Population Is Growing Currently, Virginia has the…

I-81 is notorious for its fatal truck crashes. Its death rate is 70% higher than any other Virginia interstate. Now, Virginia lawmakers are interested in adding ultra-heavy, “monster trucks” to the mix on I-81. Learn more about their plans and how it might impact your safety. 

After a catastrophic truck crash, your first concern probably isn’t preserving evidence for your personal injury claims. But if you don’t act quickly, the trucking company might destroy valuable information that supports your case. Below, the truck accident lawyers at Phelan Petty explain the importance of an attorney-directed investigation in the aftermath of a tractor-trailer crash. 

Being in a five star crash rated car means very little when you are hit by a tractor trailer truck. Tractor trailer truck wrecks almost always involve catastrophic injuries or death. If the trucking company happens to be a “mom and pop” operation, the minimum mandatory insurance coverage by the truck company, which can be…

Working as co-counsel with other national truck litigation firms, our firm won an important federal court ruling from the United States District Court in the Western District of Virginia, Roanoke Division, in the area of freight broker liability. The lawsuit was filed by three plaintiffs against the freight broker, C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. We alleged…

A married Illinois couple filed an e-cigarette battery explosion lawsuit against two vape shops in Joliet, Illinois, claiming that e-cigarette batteries purchased at the shops caught fire in the husband’s pants pockets, causing second and third degree burns to his legs and genitals and damaging the couple’s love life. E-cigarettes are battery powered devices that…

Airbag manufacturer Takata’s airbags have been linked to multiple deaths caused by exploding shrapnel, which prompted the largest automobile recall in U.S. history. Unable to weather this storm, Takata Americas, the U.S. division of Takata Corp., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware over the weekend, and the parent company filed for protection under…

The New Jersey Supreme Court granted a motion to consolidate state court lawsuits in connection with Stryker LFIT Anatomic Cobalt Chromium V40 femoral heads filed against Howmedica Osteonics Corp, a division of Stryker Corp. The consolidated multi-county litigation (MCL) has been assigned for centralized case management to Bergen County Superior Court Judge Rachelle Harz, who…

“Frivolous lawsuits.”  Everybody knows that there are too many frivolous lawsuits in this country, right?  Everybody knows that our jury system is so broken that hordes of dishonest plaintiffs and their “greedy trial lawyers” file thousands of baseless claims every year, right?  Everybody knows that honest doctors are being driven out of the practice of…

Invokana belongs to a newer class of Type 2 diabetes drugs called sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors . Instead of metabolizing blood sugar, which is how insulin and other Type-2 diabetes drugs work, Invokana, by design, stops glucose from being reabsorbed into the blood and converted into an energy source that the body can use.…

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization’s (WHO), assessed the carcinogenicity of the herbicide glyphosate. Glyphosate currently has the highest global production volume of all herbicides and is the key ingredient in the popular weed killer Roundup. See IARC Monograph Vol. 112 (March 20, 2015).…

Xarelto and Pradaxa are non-vitamin K oral anticoagulants (blood thinners). A cohort study published in November 2016 JAMA International Medicine found that Xarelto 20 mg once daily use was associated with statistically significant increases in intracranial hemorrhage and major extracranial bleeding events, including major gastrointestinal bleeding, compared with Pradaxa 150 mg twice daily. The study…

If you pay attention to health care news like I do, you’ve probably noticed that most of the coverage lately has focused heavily –almost exclusively – on proposed changes to our current system and the costs associated with the various options.  As politicians in Washington argue about dollars and cents and about who is to…

Judge Eldon Fallon, the U.S. District judge overseeing the Xarelto MDL, denied two motions for partial summary judgment that were filed on January 20, 2017 by defendants Bayer AG and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Both motions sought dismissal of Xarelto pre-market design defect claims based on inadequate warnings and updated labels. The motions relied on the…

It should come as no surprise that stakeholders in the trucking industry – trucking companies, freight brokers, shippers, trucking associations and insurance companies – spend a lot of money lobbying Congress to de-regulate the trucking industry. And, unfortunately, they have been succeeding. These special interest groups have blocked Congress from raising the minimum required insurance…

The primary mission of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is to reduce injuries and deaths due to large truck crashes and bus crashes. One important way in which FMCSA pursues this goal is to regulate the number of hours that truck drivers can drive continuously a without rest. Obviously, fatigued driving is a…