September 1st, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
The number of alcohol-impaired female drivers involved in fatal motor vehicle crashes increased in 2008, Department of Transportation officials said at the Aug. 20 launch of a nationwide enforcement campaign against drunk driving.
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said researchers studied fatal crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, paying close attention to driver gender as well as where the crashes occurred.
According to the report (.pdf file), the number of alcohol-impaired female drivers increased or remained flat in 15 states in 2008, compared with 2007, while the number of alcohol-impaired males involved in a fatal crash increased or stayed flat in 13 states. Recently released FBI data also showed an increase in the number of female drivers arrested for driving under the influence
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September 1st, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
ALBANY – Two teenage sisters have been awarded $11 million in a malpractice lawsuit against a prominent Saranac Lake pediatrician who failed to take steps to prevent the girls from being repeatedly sexually assaulted by their half-brother when they were children in Lake Placid.
An eight-member jury in U.S. District Court ruled against Dr. Patricia Monroe and her workplace, Adirondack Internal Medicine and Pediatric, ending a federal case rooted in horrific abuse dating back more than nine years.
The older sister, now 18, will receive $6 million, the 16-year-old younger sister $5 million, according to a news release issued by Albany attorneys Pamela Nichols and Stephen Coffey, who represented the victims. He noted they were “never offered a dime” to the settle the case, which dates to 2002.
The news release said the jury of four men and four women found Monroe and her medical group were “negligent in their care and treatment of the children when they failed to take the proper measures to investigate a situation which would have prevented the girls from being sexually assaulted by their half brother.”
The series of events leading to the suit began as follows, according to interviews with attorneys and documents filed in the case:
On Aug. 15, 2000, one of the sisters, then 9, showed her mother a diary and asked her to read it.
The girl had written that she was “sad all the time because I’ve been touched in places I don’t want to be touched.”
She disclosed that her half-brother, then 14, had inappropriately touched her at least three times.
The next day, Aug. 16, 2000, the mother called Monroe, informed her of the abuse, and that the brother was living with the victim and the other sister. The doctor only suggested the victim and boy be separated.
The doctor examined the older daughter that September for a sore throat – yet never asked about the reported abuse.
Monroe examined the child again that October, again not inquiring about the abuse. But police were unaware of the rape and sodomy of both girls, then ages 8 and 9, until February 2001.
The lawsuit was filed by the victims’ family. It had targeted Monroe and others, including a school, rape crisis center and county mental health office, but the cases against the other defendants were dismissed. The suit against Monroe was dismissed as well, but that ruling was reversed by a U.S. Court of Appeals court.
The trial began Aug. 18 in U.S. District Court on Broadway. Nichols noted the most severe sexual attacks on the victims could have been stopped had the doctor spoken up.
“We were very pleased with the verdict,” Nichols said. “What happened to them was horrific. It was preventable and they’ll live with the ramifications of this for the rest of their lives.”
Monroe could not be reached. A call to her private office was not returned.
According to the Web site of Adirondack Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, the doctor is a married mother of three who received a medical degree and completed her residency in pediatrics at Syracuse College of Medicine, SUNY Health Science Center in Syracuse.
It stated she returned to the area in 1999 to practice with the medical group, primarily working in Saranac Lake.
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September 1st, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — Toyota Motor Corp. may face demands that rollover-crash cases it won or settled be reopened, in light of accusations by a former company lawyer that the company hid records sought by plaintiffs.
The ex-Toyota lawyer, Dimitrios Biller, sued the company in July, claiming the world’s largest automaker and its U.S. units destroyed engineering and testing evidence relevant in more than 300 suits over sport-utility vehicle rollover accidents. Biller managed the electronic document-discovery program for Toyota, he said in court papers.
“The petition alleges conduct by Toyota that would cause every case ever resolved by Toyota in the past 10 years to be re-opened,” said Mikal Watts, a lawyer in Corpus Christi, Texas, referring to Biller’s suit. “We intend to ask the courts to re-open these lawsuits.”
Watts said Biller’s claims raise questions about the results of 10 other Toyota cases he handled. They include a trial he lost in Huntsville, Texas, over an accident that left a 6-year-old boy quadriplegic and dependent on a ventilator.
“A lot more information can be gleaned from electronic documents than paper,” said Sean Kane, co-founder of the advocacy group Safety Research & Strategies in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. “You are looking for who knew what and when.”
Biller, 46, said he worked from 2003 to 2008 managing records for Toyota litigation. He “suffered a complete mental and physical breakdown” battling company executives and finally resigned after objecting to Toyota’s insistence on hiding data, he said in a July 24 complaint in federal court in Los Angeles.
‘Systematic Practice’
“Defendants are, and have, engaged in a systematic pattern and practice of discovery abuses and criminal acts against plaintiffs in litigation against the Toyota entities,” according to Biller’s complaint.
Toyota has 27 million vehicles on the road, and rollovers “are a rare event,” Sona Iliffe-Moon, a U.S. Toyota spokeswoman, said by e-mail on Aug. 30. “The number of rollover claims by Mr. Biller pending at this time is many times less than the number claimed by Mr. Biller.”
Iliffe-Moon declined to comment on the specifics of Biller’s lawsuit or confirm his former status as national counsel for the Toyota rollover program. She also declined to comment on a $3.7 million settlement he said he received after claiming he was wrongfully discharged from Toyota. Biller attached a copy of the settlement agreement to his complaint.
Avoiding Obligations
“Toyota takes its legal obligations seriously and works to uphold high professional and ethical standards,” Iliffe-Moon said in another message. “We are disappointed that Mr. Biller has elected to file this lawsuit to attempt to avoid what we believe are his obligations as an attorney formerly employed by Toyota. Since this matter is in litigation, that’s all that we have to say at this time.”
“This is the kind of publicity no company wants,” said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst at auto industry forecaster IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. “If the allegations are true, it would violate the trust so many people put into Toyota.”
Toyota gained 0.8 percent to 4,020 yen at the close of trading in Tokyo.
The case is Biller v. Toyota Motor Corp., 2:09-cv-5429, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).
To contact the reporter on this story: Laurence Viele Davidson in Atlanta at lviele@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: September 1, 2009 05:24 EDT
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