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Food safety continues to be a major concern to California food poisoning lawyers. There are far too many failures in federal oversight and regulatory glitches that continue to place Americans at risk from eating contaminated food. Now, a report by a government auditor has more bad news for consumers and food poisoning lawyers.

According to the report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, between 2004 and 2008, there was a drop in the number of food safety inspections conducted by federal regulators and the number of enforcement actions resulting from those inspections.  According to the report, the Food and Drug Administration inspected less than half of the 51,229 facilities that come under its regulation. Besides, the number of important actions resulting from these inspections fell from about 614 in 2004, to 283 in 2008.

The inspector general’s report warns that if the Food and Drug Administration fails to inspect the facilities that fall under its regulatory powers, it is not likely to be able to guarantee food safety for consumers. Lack of inspections means that the Food And Drug Administration will not be able to ensure that these facilities are complying with federal rules and regulations.

The report by the inspector general of the Department Of Health And Human Services is not alone in its criticism of the Food and Drug Administration. That agency has also been criticized by the Government Accountability Office and food safety groups. Even the Obama administration has not held back in criticizing the agency for its lack of the enforcement tools necessary to guarantee food safety for Americans.

The Obama registration has made food safety a major priority since it came into office. California food poisoning attorneys have been encouraged by the increased attention paid to long neglected food safety laws in the country. These food safety laws continue to be archaic and outdated. These laws were passed back in 1938, when the Food and Drug Administration was given the power to reject food safety.

Not much has changed in these laws since then. One important piece of legislation passed the House in July, but has been stuck in the Senate. That legation would require that the Food and Drug Administration conduct more inspections of food facilities. The bill would also give the Food and Drug Administration more sweeping powers to regulate food safety. The bill has been widely supported by California food poisoning lawyers and food safety experts, who believe that it would give more bite to the Food and Drug Administration’s powers to regulate food processing facilities.

Every year, millions of Americans fall ill from tainted food. The contamination can be in any kind of food product that lands on your table, from meat patties and other meat products to cookie dough, peanut butter and even fresh produce. These food poisoning epidemics cost the American economy billions of dollars in medical care and rehabilitation expenses every year, which is just one more reason why the federal administration should take these threats more seriously.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of food poisoning. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

The truck driver involved in a fatal accident in Los Angeles County in 2009 that killed two people will face murder charges. The driver Marcus Barboza Costa earlier had murder charges dismissed against him. This week, a California appeals court ruled that murder charges must be reinstated against Costa.

On April 1, 2009, Costa was driving a truck hauling a load of cars through the Angeles Crest Highway. As he navigated the steep highway, the truck brakes failed, and the truck went out of control as it neared a busy intersection. The rig ran into several vehicles at the intersection, including one which carried a 12-year-old girl Angelina Posca, and her father Jorge. Both father and daughter were killed in the accident. The truck continued on its murderous rampage, injuring several other people and damaging several vehicles before it finally came to a stop inside the bookstore.

After the accident, prosecutors said that Costa had ignored a sign warning against rigs of his size and weight entering that section of the highway. A mechanical investigation of the truck after the accident showed that five out of the 10 brakes were not functioning properly. Even the brakes that were working were in poor condition, and had signs of cracking and overeating.

In October 2009, Costa received a reprieve, when a Superior Court judge ruled that there was not enough evidence to prove that Costa intended to kill Angelina and Jorge. The judge ruled that murder charges against Costa be thrown out, although he continued to face charges of reckless driving and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence. However, the appellate court has now ruled that the fact that Costa continued to drive his truck down the highway in spite of signs warning that trucks that size were not allowed. That showed that Costa knew of the risk to other motorists from his actions, but he chose to drive on that highway anyway.

The accident had also raised plenty of blood bad blood between the California Department of Transportation and the City of La Canada Flintridge. According to City officials, they had frequently raised the issue of truck safety at the intersection, and the risks to motorists from trucks using the highway. They had asked Caltrans to install additional safety measures at the area, citing other accidents that had taken place there, but the agency had failed to respond to these requests. After that accident, Caltrans responded by imposing a 90-day ban on five axle trucks traveling on Angeles Crest Highway. That ban has since become permanent.

Any California truck accident lawyer would support the murder charges being reinstated against Costa. There seems to be enough evidence to show that Costa was aware of the risks of traveling on that section of Angeles Crest Highway, but continued to do so anyway. His actions resulted in the deaths of two people, and injuries to several other people. That is not even counting the kind of property damage that resulted from the crash.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of truck accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

A man was killed in a motorcycle accident in Mission Valley in San Diego County last week. According to 10news.com, the accident occurred on an elevated freeway connector in Mission Valley. The motorcyclist seems to have lost control of his vehicle for unknown reasons, and struck a guardrail. He was ejected from his motorcycle, and was thrown over the edge of the bridge. He fell in a restaurant parking area, and died instantly. According to the California Highway Patrol, no other vehicles were involved in the collision. The California Highway Patrol is investigating the accident.

News reports don’t confirm whether the man was wearing a motorcycle helmet at the time of the collision. Motorcycle helmets can substantially decrease a person’s chances of suffering serious or fatal traumatic head injury in a motorcycle accident. In fact, a study released last week by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety showed that motorcyclists in states like California that have mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists, were less likely to file insurance claims after an accident for head injuries, compared to motorists who live in states that do not require motorcyclists to wear helmets.

There have been numerous studies done to confirm the substantially lowered risk to life and limb, when a motorcyclist is wearing a helmet. Last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a report which showed that motorcyclists who wore helmets during an accident, had a much lower risk of suffering a Brain Injury compared to motorcyclists who were not wearing a helmet. Not only were helmeted motorcyclists less likely to suffer a serious traumatic Brain Injury in a collision, but they were also less likely to require extensive hospitalization because of injuries after the accident, compared to motorcyclists not wearing a helmet.

Helmet use is the single biggest measure that motorcyclists can take to prevent serious injuries or fatality in an accident. Motorcycle design is also a major factor in the rising number of motorcycle accident fatalities in California and across the country. This week, another study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety showed that motorcycles that come with anti-lock brake systems were less likely to be involved in accidents. Anti-lock brakes, as the name suggests, prevent the motorcycle wheels from getting locked when the brakes are applied. A motorcycle that does not come with anti-lock brakes could be at a high risk of flipping over when the brakes are applied. In fact, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study showed that the risk of an accident decreased by about 37% when the motorcyclist was riding a vehicle that came with anti-lock brake systems.

California motorcycle accident lawyers believe more studies are needed to see if anti-lock braking systems on motorcycles can indeed reduce the risk of fatality. The rising rates of fatalities in motorcycle crashes have been a great source of concern to injury lawyers in California. If these systems can help in reducing those rates, perhaps they should be made mandatory on all motorcycles to save lives.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of motorcycle accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

It’s official. The Transportation Department yesterday made its first confirmed accusation against Toyota of breaking the law, saying that the company knowingly concealed a dangerous auto defect that caused its vehicles to accelerate to dangerously high speeds. Federal regulators will now seek the maximum penalty for Toyota. That maximum penalty amounts to a mere $16.4 million. That works out to just about $2.72 per recalled Toyota vehicle. It’s hardly the kind of amount the world’s largest automaker is going to lose sleep over.

It’s not the size of the fine that Toyota will worry about however. Instead, it is the loss of face and loss of confidence that will definitely result if the company decides to pay the fines, which most industry experts believe it will. However, Toyota officials are likely to be very concerned about the fact that paying the penalties would make the company look bad in court when it faces hundreds of personal injury, wrongful death lawsuits brought by motorists injured in accidents involving Toyota vehicles. Paying fines is almost equivalent to admitting that wrongdoing.

It will also not escape California product liability attorneys that the Transportation Department has openly chastised Toyota for knowingly concealing a dangerous defect in its vehicles that could prove deadly to motorists. According to the Transportation Department, Toyota was aware of the defective vehicles as far back as September 29, 2009 when it issued a repair procedure directive to dealers in Canada and in some European countries. The directive was meant to take care of the problem of a sticky gas pedal in some of its vehicles sold in those countries.

The penalties and the Transportation Department announcement that Toyota knowingly concealed dangerous defects, could not come at a worse time for the company. In March, the automaker announced that sales had increased by more than 41% this month, in a sign that the automaker could be recovering from the battering it had received over the past few months. However, California personal injury lawyers and Toyota owners will not be comforted by Transportation Sec. Ray LaHood’s announcement that the company knew about the sticky gas pedal problem, but chose to remain silent.

The fine comes from a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rule that requires automakers to report defects to the federal agency, as soon as they find out about the defect. Companies are given a period of five days within which they have to report defects to the NHTSA. Toyota was found to have neglected to inform federal regulators of the defect within five days of finding out about it, and hence, the fine.

The $16.4 million fine will speed away into insignificance compared to the billions of dollars Toyota may be expected pay out in hundreds and thousands of personal injury and consumer fraud lawsuits that are mounting against the automaker around the country.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of product liability. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

Electronic on-board recorders have been a frequent demand by California truck accident lawyers and trucking safety groups. Finally, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has decided to choose a strict rule that will require these recorders on trucks belonging to carriers that violate hours of service rules 10% of the time.

If the carrier has been found to violate hours of service rules at least 10% of the time during a single compliance review, it will need to install these electronic on-board recorders on its vehicles.  The agency had one other choice.  It could have also allowed for two separate compliance reviews to be conducted before deciding whether carriers must have these electronic on-board recorders on their vehicles. Fortunately, the agency has decided to go with the stricter one-compliance review.

The new rule will affect approximately 5,700 interstate carriers compared to just over 1,000 carriers if the agency had decided to go with the two compliance review rule. According to estimates, carriers that break the hours of service rules at least 10% of the time in two compliance reviews have a crash rate that’s about 90%. Carriers that break the rules in a single compliance review have a crash rate that’s about 40%.

Carriers that have already installed the on-board recorders before a compliance review will be exempt from the rule. Carriers that violate the rule will have to install the electronic on-board recorders, and these must be used for a minimum period of two years. Carriers that violate the rule and fail to install electronic on-board recorders, will not be permitted to operate their trucks as part of interstate commerce.

This is yet another sign that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is taking the problem of driver fatigue very seriously indeed. Getting on-board recorders installed on trucks belonging to companies with a history of violating hours of service rules and using fatigued truckers, ensures that there is greater oversight over these companies. Electronic on-board recorders work by measuring the number of hours the truck driver has driven, by monitoring the number of times the vehicle is switched on and off.

Driver fatigue is a major factor in truck accidents in California. There are two main causes of driver fatigue. The first is driving for longer periods of time than allowed under federal rules. The second is sleep apnea. To California truck accident attorneys, it has been disappointing to see that federal regulators have not done much to deal with the problem of sleep apnea in truck drivers. Truckers have been found to be at high risk of sleep apnea because of their unhealthy lifestyle and a high risk of obesity. California truck accident lawyers however will be encouraged to know that the agency is at least dealing with the problem of exceeding hours of service rules, increasing the risk of fatigue.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of truck accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

Allegations of corruption at the Food and Drug Administration are nothing new. California pharmaceutical liability attorneys have frequently been concerned at the direction in which the agency sometimes seems to be headed. This very blog has made frequent mention of allegations of corruption at the agency, including coercing scientists to approve certain devices while bypassing normal protocols.

In yet the latest instance of such happenings at the agency, a former employee of the Food and Drug Administration has alleged that he, as well as other staff members at the agency, were pressurized to change their opinion after they expressed their disapproval of a CT scanner for colon cancer screenings.  According to the employee Julian Nicholas, even after he and other staff members at the agency expressed their disapproval of the device, higher ups at the agency went ahead to approve the device anyway. After that, Nicholas expressed his concerns to the device division’s director Dr. Jeffrey Shuren.  A month after that, Nicholas lost his job at the FDA.

According to Nicholas, “scientific and regulatory review process for medical devices was being distorted” by FDA managers, who are not following agency protocols before approval of devices. Nicholas doesn’t believe that the manufacturer in this case have anything to do with the rush to approve the device. However, he does believe that his cautious approach to the approval, was in stark contrast to higher-ups at the agency.

The injury risk from radiation overdoses is something that California product liability attorneys have been blogging about. This very blog has chronicled several instances of injuries to patients from radiation overdoses, including several that occurred at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Injuries from radiation overdoses can range from hair falling out, skin rashes and the development of tumors.

The New York Times earlier this year ran a series of reports on radiation errors, and how sophisticated new radiation technologies are being used to detect cancers, and to treat them. In many cases, errors are becoming more common because these devices are not equipped to catch errors, or safeguard against these. The devices are new, and have been introduced into hospital settings with minimal staff training, with the result that several overdoses have been traced to human error.

There is no doubt that high-end radiation technologies that allow doctors to focus targeted radiation only on the affected cancer region without impacting the surrounding areas, are a boon to cancer patients. However, the use of these machines has also contributed to the development of deadly tumors and other injuries in the same patients they were meant to treat.

After the reports of several radiation injuries at California hospitals, the Food and Drug Administration announced in February that it would launch efforts to improve radiation safety. In that light, the claim by Julian Nicholas stands out as a stark reminder that the agency needs to fix a lot of things internally before it can talk about enhancing radiation safety. Many of these devices, California product liability attorneys fear, are being approved quickly by the FDA, exposing patients to risks from unknown errors.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of product liability. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.