“I heard about this particular case, and it raises some very serious questions about the drugs on board EMS ambulances. While this instance was reported in Georgia, the ramifications could apply across the US, even down to a local ambulance service provider,” insisted Donahue.

“It was time for state inspections for ambulance crews and the results of the inspection in one county were quite disturbing. At least two of the local ambulances had expired drugs on board; drugs that are commonly used to save lives. For instance calcium chloride, the drug used to kick start a failing heart and EpiPen, used for people with severe allergies who are going into or have gone into anaphylactic shock,” recounted Charlie Donahue who is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States.

Granted, not all drugs that reach their expiry date have gone “bad,” and in fact the shelf life of some of the drugs is a great deal longer. However, expiry dates are stamped on them for a reason; a “what-if something happened if we gave someone an expired drug and it harmed them” kind of reason. “More to the point, if anyone should have up-to-date drugs, it should be paramedic crews. That is mandated by law,” stated Donahue.

Unfortunately, one ambulance had nine expired drugs and another was found with two expired drugs. This was not only a breach of safety regulations, but a potential accident looking for a place to happen. There are a lot of people today that are drug sensitive. If they’d been administered an expired drug and the result was serious personal injury or death, the fault would lie with the paramedics and the ambulance company.

The scary part is that all paramedics in this particular county (and quite likely in other locations as well) are obligated to verify that all on board meds have “not” gone past their expiry dates. In fact, all drugs were/are to be checked the first day of every month and daily before responding to any calls. “Granted that an expired drug doesn’t go bad immediately, the point remains the same: having expired drugs on an emergency vehicle is simple not a safe option. The consequences could spell disaster for some unsuspecting person in need of medical assistance,” Donahue outlined.

Cases like this are tough ones because it is only the luck of the draw that uncovers the fact that there may be a potential serious issue. “A more difficult thing to comprehend is someone not doing their job and checking the on rig medications, as required by law. If you think something like this may have happened to you, you might want to check in with a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer to find out what your rights are, and if it is possible to file a lawsuit what your next step should be,” added Donahue.

To learn more, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

I’ve been practicing personal injury law in New Hampshire for over 27 years, and I’ve seen a lot of interesting cases and a lot of lives thrown into chaos. This case was interesting to me when I read about it, because it has a variety of elements that will make it a difficult case in the long run for the families of the two dead women who lost their lives in a bus crash.

In this instance, the young son of one of the deceased women filed a wrongful death suit against the driver of a tour bus and the tour bus company itself. The crash in question took place in 2009. The deceased was 52-years-old at the time of the wreck. She and several other people were on the bus that had taken them to a casino, when all of a sudden it went out of control, crossed the median and flipped over on its side in a ditch. Two passengers were killed and 20 others were seriously injured.

The woman’s son, who was 17 at the time of the wreck, filed the wrongful death suit when he turned 18 and is seeking compensation for the death of his mother. The suit argues that the driver of the bus failed to control it and was reckless and negligent in driving it, causing it to crash. The suit further alleges that the driver was unfit to be driving that day and that the bus tour company was negligent in entrusting their bus to his care.

The bus line company filed a countersuit asking to have the case dismissed, as they state the driver had a medical emergency that he didn’t cause to happen, and thus under the rule of law in the state where the accident took place (Minnesota), the crash was a “sudden, unforeseen medical emergency” and state law precludes any liability on the part of the defendants in those circumstances. They added the driver was fit to drive at the time of the crash.

The interesting thing here is that the driver alleges he lost consciousness because he had a rapid onset of an undiagnosed condition. This makes me consider something about human nature. If he lost consciousness then, due to a medical condition, chances are he had done that before and had not informed his employer because it hadn’t happened at work – yet. Certainly the case would bear closer scrutiny, but there are some warning flags for a personal injury attorney that would make me dig deeply into the bus driver’s medical condition.

Every personal injury case is different, and while things may look one way on the surface, what you find later may be something entirely different. Never take an accident at face value. Talk to a skilled New Hampshire personal injury attorney and find out if there is more than meets the eye in “your” personal injury accident.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

Being a New Hampshire personal injury attorney, I often have the chance to read about other cases that involve things like car crashes, motorcycle accidents, slip and falls, and medical malpractice and wrongful death. This one case stood out for me because it seemed senseless. It involved a rollover that killed one and injured four others, including a toddler.

This was a single vehicle crash and from the looks of the police report, it happened when a silver Infiniti was heading east on the highway, when the driver tried to pass a slower vehicle on the left. Just as the passing Infiniti got to the midway point in passing, the driver saw another oncoming car, swerved right suddenly and hit the right shoulder, causing the vehicle to flip over and land on its roof in the ditch.

When EMS crews arrived they immediately took the backseat passenger, a 60-year-old man, to the local hospital. He was dead on arrival. The driver, a 32-year-old man, his wife and two kids (2 and 12) were taken to the hospital by other rescue teams. Thankfully, although badly shaken up and sporting a variety of crash related injuries, they were all treated and released. Narcotics were found on the 60-year-old man who died in the hospital. There will be a full investigation.

The presence of narcotics raises a lot of unanswered questions, and it’s a good bet the local police will be running tests on the driver of the car to check for drugs and other substances. No one knows for sure if the man in the back seat was related in any way to the driver and his wife, or was a friend.

This would raise the issue of whether the man’s family could file a wrongful death lawsuit for the negligence of the 32-year-old driver for attempting to pass while it was not safe. If the investigation shows negligence, a civil suit can be expected. There may also be a chance of a criminal investigation. In circumstances like this, you sometimes you get both. “Frankly, it looks like someone screwed up, because passing while unsafe to do so is negligence, plain and simple, and this case screams for a civil suit,” added Donahue.

Like many personal injury car crashes, sometimes things look one way on the surface, and yet on further investigation, they turn out to be something else. If you have been involved in a car accident or other vehicle crash, and you suspect drugs may have been involved on the part of the other driver, you might want to speak to a seasoned New Hampshire personal injury lawyer; one whose only job is to help injury victims.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

Fire power is best left for wars, not as souvenirs kicking around someone’s house. While many people may indeed have old guns, pieces of shrapnel, bullets and other mementoes of serving in the Armed Forces, they need to be locked up safely and out of the reach of children. In this case that New Hampshire personal injury lawyer Charlie Donahue heard about, someone had the stupidity to take a WW II hand grenade and rearm it. What on earth was that person thinking?

Aside from the fact that it obviously took a remarkable lack of brain cells to do something like that, a 9-year-old boy was seriously injured when it exploded in his hand. The young boy had a lighter in one hand and the rearmed hand grenade in the other. Being a child, he was playing, as children do, and touched the grenade with the lighter. It detonated.

Not only was the child critically injured, shrapnel flew through pretty much the whole house. It was not a small blast by any means. The 9-year-old was listed in critical condition when he arrived at the hospital. The responding police officers were stunned, to say the least, that some moron in the family had taken an empty grenade and armed it with a detonating device, and then used it for a paperweight.

Once the police investigation is done, they hope to identify the person who armed the WW II memento. Whoever the person turns out to be, they’re likely going to wish they’d never done something so completely idiotic. Stupidity certainly prompts some people to do very weird things at times. Even if the idea of having an armed grenade as a paperweight was intended as a joke, it showed incredible lack of foresight and intelligence.

To say that the 9-year old’s family would have a good personal injury lawsuit here would be a slight understatement. The whole premise of personal injury law is based on – but for the negligence of another – this critical accident would not have happened. This case definitely involves reckless negligence.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

“The way I heard about this case was that it involved a snowplow operator who blew a yield sign,” explained Charlie Donahue, a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer.

The way this accident happened was that two teens were headed home in their white Pontiac Grand Prix when they were broadsided by a snowplow. “While the plow operator admitted he was tired and wasn’t seeing straight, there is still a duty on the driver to take care and obey the rules of the road – more so because of the size of the vehicle he was driving and the fact that he didn’t pay attention to a sign right in front of him,” said Donahue.

The other question here was how fast was the snowplow operator going, as the impact totally crushed the car; enough so that the EMS crews needed the Jaws of Life to extricate both teens. “Both teens were immediately taken to the nearest medical facility for treatment, where it was discovered they had sustained non-life threatening, yet serious head and leg injuries,” Donahue outlined. At the scene, the plow operator admitted he’d put in some very long hours clearing snow. If that was the case, one wonders why he was behind the wheel of a deadly vehicle.

“It should be mentioned here that head injuries have a nasty habit of turning out worse than they may appear, simply because the head is a very vulnerable area. If there was any traumatic brain injury involved and it is permanent and debilitating, one or both of these kids will need a serious settlement to be able to live a normal life,” Donahue added.

Responding police personnel issued the snowplow driver with a citation for failure to yield the right of way causing bodily harm. Whether or not alcohol or another drug played a factor in this case, no one is quite sure. The investigation will turn up that kind of evidence later.

Both teens will be in a good position to file personal injury lawsuits to recover the costs of their medical expenses, therapy, medications, pain and suffering, disability, impairment, anguish, counseling, loss of wages if they had jobs, possible wheelchair and rehab expenses, renovations to homes to allow for their injuries and possible home care if one of both of them are permanently impaired. While it may take a while for the case to get to court, they should stand a good chance of getting a fair and equitable settlement.

Being in an accident like this, or any other type of accident, is devastating for those involved and they feel like their lives are out of control. “My best advice to those facing something like this is to call an experienced personal injury attorney immediately and discuss the case. Find out what your rights are; find out how to handle the fallout from the case; and find out if you may be able to receive compensation from the person at fault in the accident,” added Charlie Donahue, a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

This is a case that Charlie Donahue, a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer, heard about that took place in Idaho and involved several young adults. The odd thing is that it took place early in the morning, not late at night, and thus falling asleep at the wheel was rather strange. It would likely prompt the responding police to check for alcohol or drugs in the driver. The outcome of any tests would certainly make a difference in what types of charges may be laid, or what evidence would be needed in court.

The Chevrolet Cobalt was heading east on the highway when the driver, a 20-year-old male fell asleep while driving. When the car sideways angled toward the side of the road, the driver jolted awake, instantly over reacted and did a sudden and deadly overcorrection at high speed.

The vehicle responded by rolling over and ejecting three backseat passengers, none of which were wearing seatbelts. The backseat passengers ranged in age from 9 years old to 22 years old. The 17-year-old ejected from the backseat and was alive when EMS crews arrived and airlifted him to a medical facility where he later died from his trauma.

The other survivors, including the driver who dozed off and another front seat passenger, were transported to the nearest medical facility to have their injuries treated. Both the driver and front seat passenger managed to come out of the crash with non-critical injuries.

In this case the driver is clearly at fault for this horrific single vehicle crash, and he can be thankful he didn’t hit another vehicle at the time or the body count would be higher. The survivors of this accident will have solid grounds to file personal injury lawsuits to recover damages for their medical bills, etc. The family of the young boy killed in this accident should be able to file a wrongful death lawsuit based on the facts of this case. All they would need to do is to contact a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer.

If anyone is faced with a situation like this one, don’t wait to contact a skilled New Hampshire personal injury lawyer. Time is of the essence in any case like this and if you wait too long before filing, you may run afoul of the Statute of Limitations. Find out what your rights are. It’s a call well worth making.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

Consider this case that Charlie Donahue heard about. A 19-year-old high school senior killed on Valentine’s Day 2008. His passenger and girlfriend was also severely injured; injuries that completely altered her life from the day of the impact. She remains in a wheelchair and is hoping to recover enough mobility to attend a university. Three other people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time were also victims of this tragic accident; an accident that should never have happened.

“The young man and his girlfriend were on their way to a Valentine’s party at a friend’s place that ill-fated evening. They were minding their own business and discussing the party, when out of the blue a 22-year-old man driving a smaller car, crossed the double yellow line, pulled next to the young man’s vehicle, and swerved in the direction of the driver’s door,” explained Charlie Donahue, a New Hampshire personal injury attorney.

This action caused the young man to boot his vehicle into high drive to get away from the second vehicle. Unfortunately, he lost control of his car, hit another vehicle and was ejected through the windshield. He was pronounced dead at the scene by attending paramedics.

“Aside from the criminal charges laid in this case (vehicular homicide and 5 counts of reckless conduct), the wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the driver who swerved into the young man’s vehicle was driving his auto in a careless and negligent manner. The criminal matter will proceed later this year. The civil lawsuit was tried first. Often, it is easier to prove a case in civil court because the burden of proof is different,” outlined Donahue.

Under circumstances like this particular hypothetical case or in other instances where someone has lost their life as the result of the negligence of another, they may be able to file a wrongful death lawsuit. “Don’t wait to speak to a highly skilled personal injury attorney, as the statute of limitations needs to be strictly observed in order to even be able to file a lawsuit. Nothing is more important to the family who lost a relative than being able to find ‘justice’ for the wrongful death of a family member,” added Donahue.

To learn more, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

It’s hard to make blanket statements about child sexual abuse when it comes to the actual statistics. This is largely because the government lumps physical and sexual abuse together and survivors who blissfully “forgot” their abuse, tended to not report it until much later in life; meaning they were not counted in the final numbers evaluation.

Nonetheless, what those statistics show is that almost 62% of girls and 31% of boys are sexually abused by the age of 18 years old. Those figures are frightening, despicable, shocking and evil. Sexual abuse of a child is not acceptable – period.

Sometimes parents are not sure what sexual abuse is and may not understand what is going on in their homes and/or family. They may not know that child sexual abuse is both an abuse of the child sexually and about the abuse of power. It is considered by some to be violence that isn’t always accompanied by force.
Sexual abuse is a myriad of things and that includes words, sounds and exposing a child to sexual acts or sights but not directly involving the child. Sexual abuse may be overt and covert at the same time, or put another way, it may be blatant and/or hidden; a cauldron of unacceptable and immoral behavior.

Behavior of this nature needs to be stopped, and often the best place to stop it is before it happens. Oddly enough, most of the prevention that society talks about today is “not” before the deed is done, but “after” it has been found out. While it may be dealt with after the fact, this does not deal with the fact that it should never have happened in the first place.

“In the many years of practice I’ve had in this area, I’ve found that a great many parents override their child’s natural instincts when it comes to people. For instance, making the child ‘like’ Uncle Mike and not listening or paying attention when the child doesn’t want to spend time with him,” indicated Charlie Donahue, a New Hampshire personal injury attorney.

“Discounting the child’s sense of what is right for ‘them’ is asking for trouble. Hitting the child for ‘not’ liking uncle doesn’t work either. The reality is, the kid doesn’t like uncle for a really good reason and that is usually that they ‘feel’ uncle is bad. Kids have good inner radar, we ought to listen to them,” said Donahue.

The facts speak loudly and clearly; sexual abuse is not perpetrated by the stranger with a beard. The predator is usually someone related to the child or a friend of someone in the family or associated with the family. In any situation like this, it is critical to speak to a compassionate and skilled personal injury attorney.

“Sexual abuse ‘does’ happen at home. A good personal injury attorney knows this and can assist the victims in dealing with a court process. Don’t wait, don’t guess, don’t assume and most of all, listen to what the child is saying. They only tell what they feel. It is then our responsibility to protect them,” stated Donahue.

To learn more, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

When you make the decision to place a relative in a nursing home, you don’t do it just because you “can.” You do it because they need care you can’t provide. You trust the nursing home management and staff will treat your relative with the same care and dignity that you would. In many instances, you would be right; in others, you would be in for the shock of your life.

Consider the case of Betsy Penny(names have been changed to protect the victims), so doped with pain medications she didn’t need and that her family didn’t want give to her, that she could no longer recognize her sister or other family members that came to visit her. Penny herself barely recalls the ugly details of the nursing home she lived in for a year, but she does remember how frightened she was all the time.

When Penny entered the home in 2006 at the age of 73, she was able to walk and talk. Eleven months later her family took her out because by then she was strapped into a wheelchair and wasn’t aware of anything going on around her. Her family is positive she would be dead today if they had not removed her. It took Penny over four months to recover from the effects of all the unnecessary drugs she was given daily to make her compliant and complacent.

There were other signals that all was not well at the nursing home in which Penny lived. Residents were so heavily drugged their heads were planted in the middle of their meals and Penny’s room smelled strongly of urine. Respect and dignity were totally absent.

Penny recalls the time she broke her hip and instead of getting protective bracing for the bed, they told her to sleep on the floor. The final straw was when a nurse gave Penny an insulin dose that just about put her in a coma. Penny is and was not diabetic, and had no need to use or any reason to be given insulin. Her family had enough and took her home.

Not only had the family had it with the nursing home, they were angry that other seniors were being treated the same way Penny was handled. They filed a nursing home malpractice lawsuit, yet to be resolved, but they are determined to stick to their guns and put an end to nursing home abuse. This may be a tough case, as the owner of the nursing home at the time Penny was a resident there was charged with felony health care fraud.

It also looks like the new owners have a string of charges and fines totaling $900,000 filed against them for Medicare and Medicaid fraud – specifically failing to provide proper/adequate care for residents of “their” nursing homes. Kind of makes one wonder about how the residents will be treated by the new owners.

Let’s be perfectly clear about something here; nursing home abuse is “not” acceptable in any way, shape or form. It is ugly, destructive, treats valuable human beings like garbage and needs to stop – right now. If you have suspicions about a nursing home your relative may be in, have proof abuse is stalking the hallways of the home, call a dedicated and skilled nursing home abuse lawyer. These cases are critically important for more than one reason. They are about making a nursing home environment safer for seniors and about putting a stop to this violence and abuse for the next generation to follow; and that generation would be us.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.

When growing up, there was a whole lot of time spent in the kitchen gathered around the oven, waiting for those hot chocolate chip cookies to come out. Impatience defined that brief 15 minute period while the cookies spread with the heat and went golden brown. There was nothing better than homemade cookies.

Along comes the 21st century and time is in short supply, so short we have taken to cutting corners when it comes to baking at home. For example, Nestlé’s refrigerated cookie dough that lets anyone cut off cookie sized chunks, slap them on a cookie sheet and when the timer dings, they’re done. Nice and crumbly and delicious. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

It’s no longer applicable with refrigerated cookie dough, since a lot of people are eating the dough rather than baking the cookies. While that might save time, it evidently may also cause them to be severely ill with E. coli 0157:H7. This strain of E. coli has some particularly nasty symptoms and has, over the last year, laid at least 72 people in 30 states flat out. What a world. We can’t even trust the cookie dough in the fridge. What’s worse is that Nestlé’s still hasn’t figured out “why” their dough is contaminated. Hardly a statement to instill consumer confidence.

Nestlé’s has cried “Mea culpa” and yanked its most recent batch of cookie dough out of circulation. Meaning, when they were doing routine testing at their main plant in early January 2010, they found two samples testing positive for E. coli. Dough produced before and after the contaminated cookie run was destroyed. Luckily, none of “that” batch was shipped. However, this recent move didn’t do much for the 72 folks who became deathly ill after eating “other” batches of tainted cookie dough. The company needs to be held accountable for their dangerous product and its affect on unsuspecting consumers.

While their proactive move in January to using heat-treated flour in their dough should make the product safer, the question is, what about the people who got sick earlier? Using the heat-treated flour will also mean a shortage of cookie dough on the market until March, when the new formulation hits the shelves.

So, why didn’t Nestlé’s do something about this earlier? Looks like the bottom line is that they had to reformulate their cookie recipes to make them still taste homemade and have the same cookie crumble texture. By all reports, they succeeded, and the new dough should be just dandy fine. The people who were violently ill will likely not be buying anymore refrigerated cookie dough; heat-treated flour or not. Consumers who have lived through wave after wave of dangerous product recalls, including Tylenol twice, are also jaded enough to revert to home cooking once more. It’s safer.

Right now, the company suggests that consumers don’t eat raw cookie dough and that they bake the cookies first. While the warning is welcome, it’s too late, and not everyone will be aware of the dangers even with the product warning. If you’ve eaten raw cookie dough and paid the price of becoming severely ill, or have a dangerous product horror story, you need to speak to a dangerous products lawyer who knows how to hold the culprits accountable. Find a people lawyer who will tell it like it is, not tell you what you want to hear.

Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.