Cleveland Personal Injury Law Blog

Because the enormous weight of large commercial trucks makes them more dangerous than other vehicles, commercial drivers must be more cautious than other Ohio drivers. Unfortunately, when these large commercial trucks are involved in accidents, their enormity makes it difficult for victims to survive.   

Four young children lost their father in a deadly truck accident near Lisbon. The driver of a dump truck apparently swerved in reaction to traffic and hit the man’s SUV as he was driving from the opposite direction. After the collision, the dump truck driver reportedly jumped out of his car and attempted to save the man, but he had been killed instantly. Now the victim’s family wants the driver to be punished for the death. 

Some Ohioans face potentially dangerous conditions at their daily jobs. For this reason, companies are responsible for ensuring that their employees are as safe as possible. Proper training and safety precautions help to reduce the likelihood of a fatal accident.

A local energy company supervisor knows about on-the-job accidents all too well. In 2007, one of his workers was injured as the crew was setting up a temporary power connection during a repair. The company apparently failed to learn from the mistake. Four years later, another worker on the supervisor's crew was killed while performing the same task. The man was reportedly electrocuted after someone told him it was safe to handle the wire; although the supervisor was on site at the time of the accident, it is not clear who told him he could proceed.

Ultimately, the state of Ohio determined that the woman's death was a direct consequence of the state's failure to repair its roads. As a result of the ruling, the woman's family will receive more than $3 million. However, the department of transportation is still investigating the incident.

Following snowy Ohio winters, potholes can cause potentially hazardous driving conditions. Although drivers must always be cautious, the government is responsible for restoring their roads to ensure that they're safe for drivers. When the government fails to fix potholes quickly, it puts drivers and pedestrians at risk for fatal accidents.

Five years ago, a truck hit a pothole before swerving into a 49-year-old nurse's car, resulting in the woman's death. If the city's potholes had been repaired, the woman's life would likely have been spared. Shortly after the accident, the department of transportation blamed the accident on the truck driver's careless driving and said that there was no way to determine the exact condition of the road on the day of the accident. However, two or three weeks before the accident, the department received notice that the road was in disrepair. Several days later, a supervisor looked at the road and decided it was unnecessary to fix the road's potholes right away.

Some of Ohio's brightest people are medical surgeons, and they use their skill to save countless lives every day. However, when surgeons are under constant pressure, the stress can lead to medical malpractice. Careless mistakes in the operating room can cause severe pain, an additional operation, or even death.

More than 4,500 patients leave hospital operating rooms each year with items such as gauze pads, sponges, and even metal instruments in their bodies. Of the items left behind, sponges are the most common and also the most damaging, likely because they absorb fluids that the body needs to function. For some patients, lost sponges have caused severe infections that led to death. These surgical errors are not easily tracked, however, because the patient typically doesn't experience pain until months or even years later, and doesn't always connect the symptoms to a previous surgery.