Jacksonville Injury Attorney Blog

A North Florida woman, Rachel Jollimore, was a passenger in a Yamaha Rhino all terrain vehicle (“ATV”) when the driver attempted to complete a turn when driving off road. Tragically, the Rhino rolled onto the passenger side and pinned Ms. Jollimore under the ATV. As a result, she suffered a brain injury and she has a permanent shunt implanted in her brain to allow fluid to drain.

Jollimore’s lawsuit alleges that the Rhino is too narrow, which makes it susceptible to tipping. The Rhino has been popular, in part, for this very reason. The Rhino’s narrow width allows it to be carried in the bed of a standard pickup truck. These types of product liability cases are known as "design defect" cases, in that the plaintiff alleges that the product was improperly engineered.

Product Liability cases such as this are expert intensive. The plaintiff will hire one or more engineers to examine the Rhino and testify about complex engineering issues, such as center of gravity, the steepness of the terrain at issue, the cause of the rollover at issue, the existence of other available, safer designs. Yamaha will probably raise defenses including the fault on the part of the driver and the failure to follow safety procedures for the ATV.

Nationally, there have been numerous lawsuits against Yamaha for rollover accidents involving Rhino ATVs. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (the "USCPSC") is investigating the safety of ATVs. According to the USCPSC, each year more than seven hundred deaths and 135,000 injuries result from ATV accidents. Alarmingly, more than one-third of these accidents cause injuries to children under the age of sixteen.

If you are injured by reason of a defective product, please feel to contact one of our Jacksonville injury attorneys.

Related Links

CPSC ATV Safety Guidelines

4-H ATV Safety

According to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, the intersection of Kernan Road and Atlantic Boulevard has the most car accidents each year of any intersection in Jacksonville. The second most common intersection for car wrecks is Beach Boulevard and University Boulevard.

What do both intersections have in common? They both generate very long waits during rush hour, which may make some drivers impatient enough to run a red light.

At my Jacksonville Florida law firm, we have seen many accidents caused by impatient drivers, especialy those who run red lights. Almost all of us on the road routinely witness drivers turning long after their light has turned red.

To avoid an accident, it may pay to allow a second or two to elapse before entering an intersection after your light turns green. If you are approaching an intersection and your light turns green before you come to a stop, it may be best to slow your vehicle as you will otherwise be entering the intersection more quickly than a red-light running driver may have anticipated.

Remember, defensive driving is your best ally to avoid an accident. If you are injured as a result of an accident, consider contacting our Jacksonville Accident Attorneys.

In workers’ compensation cases throughout the state, including Jacksonville, a 2003 state law greatly reduced the amount of fees awarded to attorneys for injured workers when winning claims. Because of this law, many attorneys stopped handling workers compensation cases as they were no longer profitable. As a result, employers gained a significant legal advantage as injured employees whose claims were denied were left without legal advocates.

The Legislature passed the restrictions in a supposed attempt to limit the costs of employers’ workers compensation insurance. However, while limiting the fees recoverable by attorneys’ representing injured employers, the Legislature made no effort to limit the fees that employers paid their own attorneys. The resulting unfairness often pitted unrepresented injured workers against well paid insurance defense lawyers.

In a widely anticipated Florida Supreme Court ruling, these restrictions were eliminated. With the Supreme Court’s decision, the law governing the award of attorneys’ fees returns to its pre-2003 state, requiring the employer to pay a “reasonable” fee when it wrongly denies an employee’s workers’ compensation claim.

If you have been injured in a workplace accident, please contact me Greg Lawrence, at my Jacksonville, Florida, law firm, Thomas & Lawrence, P.A., for a free consultation. If I accept your case, you will pay nothing unless I make a recovery for you.