Los Angeles Personal Injury Law Blog

Last week we told you about a person who was critically injured in a car accident in Los Angeles. This comes as new statistics show that pedestrian related car accidents increased in 2010. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which monitors transportation related accidents across the country to determine the cause of accidents and issues recommendations to help prevent accidents, released the new data late last year.

The NHTSA says that the number of pedestrians injured across the country increased a staggering 19 percent, increasing to 70,000 people, up from 59,000 in 2009. The data also show there was a 4.2 percent increase in the number of pedestrian deaths. These numbers are alarming, and experts say they have yet to determine the cause of the increase.

Losing someone you love can be overwhelming. There are many questions a family asks and a lot of details to deal with when someone dies. Funeral costs, dealing with the emotions of losing your family member and figuring out how to deal with the person's estate are some things that a family usually goes through. If your family member is killed by someone else's negligent or illegal behavior, a wrongful death lawsuit might help cover some expenses incurred by your loss.

A California family has been grieving the loss of their loved one since 2007. The woman was beat to death with a baseball bat on a gymnasium floor in a Los Angeles area armory, leading to her wrongful death. Now, the family has settled a wrongful death lawsuit, just before the defense testimony. The woman's three half-siblings sued the state of California after their sister's death.

A growing pain relief technique could lead to serious injury, and is now being investigated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency is looking into an increase in severe complications, including paralysis from steroidal injections into the epidural space near the spine.

These injections are meant to relieve pain for people suffering from chronic neck and back pain. They take just a few minutes to administer, but increasingly are causing a lifetime of complications or paralysis, according to reports. In the past, it was believed these shots caused few side effects and were mostly safe, but more data is suggesting that complications increase with the number of shots. With an aging population and higher reimbursements from Medicare, these injections are being used more often.

We all think we are good drivers. However, sometimes it doesn't matter how good we can drive, especially when other people on the road are not paying attention. With more distractions than ever, people are paying more attention to their cell phones than they are to the road. From cell phones to GPS systems, people's eyes can sometimes be watching anything but the road.

Although the cause is still unknown, it is a good possibility that a multiple car accident in south Los Angeles on New Year's Eve was caused by a distracted driver. The accident left 11 people injured, and probably a lot of damage to vehicles.