Montgomery County Personal Injury Attorney Blog

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has received nearly 1,000 complaints regarding faulty rear axles on Ford Windstar vans operating in "cold weather states," such as Maryland.

A subsequent investigation by the NHTSA revealed that Windstar vans tended to acquire slush on the rear axle, causing it to rust and crack. In some cases, owners claimed that the axle broke completely apart.

Most of the complaints simply referenced fractured axles, though several motor vehicle accidents were reported.

On June 23, Joseph Wheeler was involved in a car accident and rushed to Maryland's Prince George's Hospital. After waking up in a hospital bed, he was able to flag down a nurse to inquire about food. At this point, he was informed that he was not allowed to eat due to an upcoming surgery to remove a cancerous mass from his chest.

Panicked, Wheeler attempted to explain that they had the wrong guy. After the nurse left, Wheeler checked his patient ID bracelet and found that hospital staff had misplaced him. Somehow he had been mistakenly identified as a woman 13 years his senior.

Suffering from serious injuries sustained in the car crash, but unable to convince hospital staff that he was not supposed to undergo surgery, Wheeler tried to leave the hospital.

In February 2008, Baltimore County police officers confronted Taevon G. Cann after he stopped at a gas station to fill up his car. Police spokesmen claimed that Cann was part of a criminal investigation, that when police approached him in the BP parking lot, he attempted to back over a police officer and escape.

The other side of the story, as told in a wrongful death lawsuit filed earlier this month, has two plainclothes policemen running up to Cann at the gas station and pointing firearms at him. Afraid, Cann attempted to flee in his vehicle, only to have Baltimore County police officers ram him from behind with a cruiser, blocking him in.

What's not debated is that, following a confrontation, police officers fired more than 70 bullets into the car, killing Taevon Cann.

Gwendolyn Cann claims that one officer even reloaded his weapon as her son lay there, wounded, and fired a fatal round into the back of his head.

Gus Sabra had just turned 53-years-old in May. A hard-working family man, the married father of four worked with his brother Zlad at the latter's Baltimore-based company. Recently, they had been hired by the state to facilitate traffic surveys. On June 3, Sabra was checking the equipment used on the road to count cars when he was struck by an unknown driver.

Panicked or indifferent, the driver sped off and left Sabra lying in the road. To this day, his family wonders whether he would have survived if the driver had stopped immediately following the accident.

Car accidents in work zones are common and almost always preventable. Simply staying alert and obeying both directional signage and the reduced speed limit are usually all it takes to ensure that everyone makes it home safely.

Even so, tragedies like Sabra's death occur far too frequently.

A Maryland construction worker died last week after being struck in the head by an excavator. Morgan Tyler Gainer, of Ellicott City, was working at a residential construction site in Laurel when the accident happened. Authorities are not sure how Gainer came to be in the path of the excavator's blade.

Even though a co-worker immediately dialed 911, Gainer was already dead when emergency personnel arrived seven minutes later. Excavators can run from fairly small to monstrous, but even the most compact often weigh more than 2,000 pounds.

At last report, Howard County Police were still investigating the construction accident. The Maryland Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as well as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, were also looking into the incident.

Another Sunday morning car accident resulted in serious injury for three bicyclists. The vehicle's driver perished in the crash.

Romota Olumemisi Koletowo was driving home from work around 10:00 a.m. when, for unknown reasons, her vehicle lurched off the road. It knocked over a light pole, sped across a roadside bike path and hit several bushes before launching into the bench where Franz Clementschitsch and his family had stopped to rest before continuing their bike ride.

The impact hurled Franz nearly 40 feet into the woods, while Koletowo's vehicle flipped and came to a rest upside down. Koletowo was pronounced dead by medical personnel at Prince George's Hospital Center around noon.

Last weekend was a deadly one for pedestrians in Maryland. Patricia Mauro-Cillo and John Cillo were killed on Sunday when a woman parking her large sport utility vehicle slammed into them as they crossed the road. 89-year-old Marian Derosa, who had just attended church with the Cillos, was also struck and seriously injured.

Derosa is currently being treated for life-threatening injuries at Baltimore's Shock Trauma Center.

The driver of the vehicle, a 63-year-old woman, claimed that she was simply attempting to park alongside the road and was backing up when her SUV accelerated into the Cillos and Derosa. The driver also smashed into two other vehicles.

She has not been charged for her role in the fatal car accident.

5 Hour Energy markets itself by offering "hours of energy now, with no crash later." However, if a recent wrongful death suit is successful, the energy drink could be facing bigger problems than a "2:30 crash." 

In the wrongful death suit, Monica Hassell accuses 5 Hour Energy of a failure to disclose the product's ingredients and risks associated with it. On August 2, 2009 her husband Antonio suffered a massive heart attack while playing basketball. Several months later, he passed away.

She claims that doctors later cited his "use of energy drinks" as the "sole causative factor" for his heart attack. Apparently, Antonio had begun using the drink in June to help him stay awake for his job at a warehouse.