Thanks to my many clients who trusted and depended upon me to handle their legal problems.   Thanks also to Wiggins, Childs, Quinn & Pantazis, LLC for their support and for the many friends there.

Many people have helped me in so many ways.  This includes both working on cases and church ministry.  Thank you and may God bless you.

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One of the lawyers in our office saw this and passed it on. I thought that you might like the sentiment as well. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior who was born and died for each of us.

P.S. Be sure to be safe as you enjoy time with family and friends!

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There is a common injury that you may not know about that occurs in car or vehicle accidents. It’s a pulmonary contusion which is a bruising of the lung. This occurs most often when the chest strikes the inside of the car. About 70% of pulmonary contusions cases are from motor vehicle collisions or accidents.

When you have a pulmonary contusion, you bleed internally in your lung, the tissue was torn by the blunt force trauma. Torn capillaries leak fluid into the tissues around them. That means that the blood gas exchange that normally occurs in your lungs when you breathe is impaired. Pulmonary contusion is characterized by tiny bleeds. Blood collects in the space which has been separated by your airway structure and then swelling occurs. An area of bleeding is commonly surrounded by swelling (called edema). The larger the area of the injury, the more severe the injury and your ability to breathe.

Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome can occur by an airbag causing pulmonary a contusion in a person who is not properly positioned when it deploys. Caudle JM, Hawkes R, Howes DW, Brison RJ (November 2007). “Airbag pneumonitis: A report and discussion of a new clinical entity”. CJEM 9 (6): 470–473. PMID 18072996. Of course, when you are in an accident there is not time to position yourself before the airbag deploys.

Many people are aware that airbags save lives. However, most people don’t know that they can have an injury that was caused by the airbag. So, if you are having trouble breathing after an accident, don’t hesitate to get medical care. You may be alive, but still injured after a wreck even if you aren’t bleeding on the outside or don’t have broken bones. It’s not uncommon for people to have breathing difficulties caused by an accident.  It’s a serious injury that should have immediate medical care.

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Questions? See my Frequently Asked Questions page. You can also Order FREE my book,

“Seven Deadly Sins That Can Wreck Your Alabama Injury Claim” for more in depth information.

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Researchers from the Automotive Safety Program at Riley Hospital for Children and Indiana University School of Medicine have found that an alarming two-thirds of the booster seats observed in a study conducted throughout Indiana were not being used appropriately.

It is not only important to use a booster seat, but to use it properly. I wrote about booster seats in my book that 51% of child fatalities involved children who were not restrained. If your child’s booster seat is not being used properly, it’s the same as if they were not restrained.

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Questions? See my Frequently Asked Questions page. You can also Order FREE my book,

“Seven Deadly Sins That Can Wreck Your Alabama Injury Claim” for more in depth information.

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My two oldest nephews are now Eagle Scouts! That makes a total of seven Eagle Scouts in our family, my father, my uncle, my older brother, me, my younger brother, and now the latest two Eagles. If you think we take pride on being truthful, you are right! We are proud of our family heritage and the principles that we live by each day.

So, your reputation for the truth is very important. A few weeks ago, a defense lawyer was trying to say my client was a liar. That’s his default position about people who file lawsuits. Of course, that’s not true. If I find someone who is a liar, I don’t take their case. If I learn about them lying during a case, I fire them as a client! Juries have to make a quick study of a person’s character and whether they are telling the truth. Your reputation for the truth is important. Even if it’s not directly spoken about in a trial, it is always an underlying issue that a jury has to decide. No one will give someone something if they conclude a person is a cheater. In a lawsuit, you are asking a jury to fairly compensate you for the loss that you sustained. How the accident happened, what caused it, the amount of your medical bills, how well your recovered, and your pain and suffering are just a few of the things a jury will consider. Your reputation counts, whether people openly talk about it or do not. The person who is honest and always goes the extra mile is the person who not only succeeds in life but in trials, both daily and at the courthouse.

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Questions? See my Frequently Asked Questions page. You can also Order FREE my book,

“Seven Deadly Sins That Can Wreck Your Alabama Injury Claim” for more in depth information.

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One of the first things that people ask is: are you married; have children; what do you do; and where did you go to school? It helps us get to know someone. For some, it’s whose your football team? (For those who are from out-of-state, this is an important question in Alabama. Some have argued that football is the great religion in the South.)

For the person who loses a loved one, they never dreamed they would be a widow, widower, or parent whose child was killed or died. It’s a bitter taste, the depths of which they never knew of until that terrible day. When their loved one died because of a wreck or accident, they are literally gone in an instant. You recall the last conversation with them. Sometimes it was minutes before the wreck. There were no goodbyes forever, just the end of a “normal” phone call or see you soon as they left the house.

Women who have lost their husband have expressed their profound loss with these words:

I lost my rock.
I’ve lost my whole reality.
I lost my best friend.
My children lost their daddy and I lost a husband, now what are we going to do?

When someone loses a spouse, they become lost. They no longer have their compass. When a child dies, being lost is also the case. The future they anticipated together is no longer a reality. When they go home, that special, most important person is no longer there to greet them. When the phone rings, they have to “learn” (because they cannot believe the reality) that it will not be their loved one on the phone.  Their world has come apart.

Days no longer have any meaning. Friends fear mentioning the dead person’s name, because they don’t want to be insensitive. The dead person has become the elephant in the room that no one talks about. Missing from their normal day is hearing that person’s name – just as if they never existed.

Some try to keep busy so that they can “move on” as society, friends, and family expect. No one tells them what to do when the weekend arrives and they are home alone with nothing to do, they don’t want to do something alone, or the holidays with the many memories it evokes arrives, but that family member is not there. Depression is part of the process of their new, unexpected life. Why is it that when doing some things the mind works and in doing other things, it doesn’t seem to work at all? Grief.

That father or mother will not be there to provide their advice or shoulder to lean on when questions come up in their children’s lives. For daughters, Daddy will not be there to walk them down the aisle at their wedding.

On the financial front, if the person who died was working, suddenly the survivors are facing a financial crisis. Their finances were based on that person’s income coming in to pay the bills. They now don’t have that income. Even if there was life insurance, the bills just keep coming and unanticipated expenses are quite common.  A life that was in order is now in complete disarray.

Most clients tell me that when they’ve lost a loved one, they feel an obligation to pursue a lawsuit because they have to stand up for the person who was killed. They feel that emotional burden to make sure that someone recognizes what happened and is held responsible. The world shouldn’t have another tragedy, the death of their loved one is too terrible for it to happen to someone else.  They want to make sure that it does not happen to someone else like it did to them.

Each person who lost a loved one in one way or another has told me that they would trade any money recovered in a lawsuit, if it would bring back their loved one. Unfortunately, no court system can do that. Don’t think for a minute it’s all about the money. Love and the dignity of a loved one and preventing it happening to someone else are what these heroic family members are concerned about as they live their life without the person they loved so dearly.

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However, like Ralphie’s parents you want to get your children the gift they really want.

One place to check before or after buying is U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Toy Army Figures were recalled as dangerous! They are 7 ½ inch tall plastic toy Army figures. The figures are dressed in Army fatigues and have guns. On December 3, 2008 OKK Army toys which recalled them because they were found to have too much lead in the paint. Dollar type retailers and OKK Trading’s Web site www.okktoys.com from June 2008 through September 2008 sold them for about $1.00. Other types of toys to watch out for are those with magnets. Children can swallow them and choke. They also cause intestinal problems. Two toddlers died from Playskool Toy Tool Benches. The deaths of the children occurred when the children suffocated when oversized, plastic toy nails sold with the tool bench toys became forcefully lodged in their throats. Playskook recalled the toys. That recall was in 2006. However, not every toy recalled makes it back to the manufacturer.

If you have small children, you can assume that they will put every part of the toy in their mouth. I know from experience. I broke a tooth on my toy gun when I was a child. Try to anticipate what can go wrong when you pick a toy for your children. I hope yours is indeed a Merry Christmas not marred by injury to your child.

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Part of the danger to a child is they can’t see that well wearing a mask. Some of the costumes also meant that you could not be seen that well, too. We, the trick or treaters, had on our minds getting to as many houses as we could so that we could get more candy. We weren’t thinking about could a driver see us.

The idea never entered our minds that just because we could see someone, it did not mean that the driver saw us! You see that same thing with people who ride bicycles at night without lights on them. They ride like they think everyone can see them. They could easily get hit, because a driver may not be able to see them.

We will “fall” back an hour early Sunday morning when the time changes at 2 A.M. to standard time in the Central Time Zone. Clocks will be set back an hour. However, drivers will take a longer time to make the adjustment. CNN reported in 2007 the study of Paul Fischbeck and David Gerard, both of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. They found that pedestrian per-mile risk jumps 186 percent from October to November, but then drops 21 percent in December. “It’s not the darkness itself, but the adjustment to earlier nighttime that’s the killer,” according to the professors.

In the meantime, children will be out tonight trick or treating. Besides candy, give them the gift of safety. Be extra careful when driving. Take precautions with them when they are out walking from house to house and crossing streets. Make sure their costumes have reflective material and things easily seen. Remember, too, that besides tonight, be especially careful when you drive these next few months. You have to adjust to an earlier nighttime and the chances of an accident are much high. Please give the gift of safety.

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Jimmy Dykes worked for Lane Trucking, Inc. He alleged that they told him that he would not be required to drive an excessive number of hours. The United States Department of Transportation (“DOT”) limits how many hours a truck driver may legally drive. Dykes said that after he was hired, Lane wanted him to violate the DOT regulations and illegally drive more hours. Those regulations are there to prevent truck accidents. They protect you and me and our loved ones.

Dykes claimed that Lane Trucking fired him when he would not drive more hours than DOT permitted. Alabama is an at-will employment state. That means that an employer does not have to be “fair.” The employer can fire you for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all unless you have an employment contract such as a union contract. Other limited exceptions include race discrimination, sex discrimination, age discrimination and similar specific federal statutes that prohibit conduct. However, there was not a specific statute that prohibited firing an employee for compliance with DOT regulations. Dykes claimed that the Alabama Supreme Court should recognize a public policy exception. After all, he was just complying with DOT regulations. The Alabama Supreme Court held that instead of carving out a public policy exception to the at-will doctrine it “decline[d]” to do so, and deferred to the judgment of the legislature as to the need for such an exception. Some might well say they passed the buck. To date the Alabama legislature has not passed such an exception.

What does that mean? It simply means that instead of promoting safety on the highway, you, your family, and friends are at risk that a truck driver who cannot afford to lose his job will violate DOT regulations and drive when he should be off the road resting. Needless injuries and lives may be lost.

The time is long overdue for carving out a public policy exception to the at-will employment doctrine. If your boss tells you to lie, cheat or commit fraud and you refuse to do so, he can fire you under the at-will employment doctrine and you cannot do anything about it. Those are not the values that we should be promoting in Alabama. I encourage you to contact your Alabama House and Senate representatives to adopt a public policy exception to the at-will employment doctrine. Unfortunately, I see this “doctrine” all too often come into play in terrible situations where employees lose their jobs for doing the morally right thing. It is not judicial activism, but common horse sense that needs to be utilized. The Alabama Supreme Court will not act. To change this you must contact your Alabama Alabama House and Senate representatives today.

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First, they cover that speeding is a factor in 35% of crash deaths involving young drivers. If you look back at some of my posts you see that speeding was a factor. Second, is cell phone use which in teens increases the crash risk by 300%. I recently represented someone whose spouse was killed by a driver talking on their cell phone. It does happen with both teens and adults talking on their cell phones. Third, Reader’s Digest points out that adding one passenger increases the fatal crash risk by 48% with teenagers. Fourth,adding a second passenger increases the fatality risk by 158%. Fifth, 87% of teen deaths involve distracted drivers; radios rank as a top teen distraction. Sixth, the article points out that eating at the wheel causes 2% of teen crashes. Seventh, nearly half of teens are sleep-deprived, and young drivers cause 55% of fatigue-related crashes. I wrote about a recent tragedy that occurred due to sleep deprivation. Eighth, teens are three times more likely to die in a crash at night when its dark than during the day.

Please discuss this post and my last post with your teenager and take a look at Reader’s Digest’s related articles on teen driving. We all looked forward to getting our driver’s license when we were teenagers. We all want them to come home safely after they have been out driving.

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