Chicago Injury Lawyer Blog

Madison Park reports for CNN, “before Friday night lights, there is summer suffering.” The football tradition of two-a-days in scorching August heat to get ready for the fall season has recently come under scrutiny. As the medical understanding of the risks of heat exertion expands, more teams are instituting water breaks and monitoring their athlete’s body temperatures.

Last year, six football players died of heatstroke, four of them were high school students including a fifteen-year-old football player collapsed at practice and later died because his body temperature reached 107 degrees. His coach now faces a criminal trial.

Now High School sports associations are not forcing the abandonment of two-a-days, but are considering invoking guidelines similar to those successfully implemented by the NCAA Division I. As a personal injury lawyer, I understand both the need to prepare for the season, and the more important need to protect the players. I support the implementation of consistent guidelines for summer practices, as heatstroke deaths are easily preventable and therefore inexcusable.

As a personal injury lawyer in Chicago, I am pleased with the recent legislative action to hold foreign manufacturers accountable for defective products. The hurdles that obstruct seeking justice in foreign countries are often insurmountable, but the recent legislation helps to make justice more attainable.

Today, foreign manufacturers “are able to skirt the law, exporting billions of dollars of their products to the U.S. without facing accountability for product defects that injure or kill Americans.” The recent “Chinese drywall fiasco highlights [the] need for greater accountability with foreign products” (AAJ News, 8/7). 500 million pounds of this drywall is posing problems for homeowners across the country because of the sulfuric gas the drywall emits. Currently, these homeowners must overcome many obstacles that both lengthen and increase the expense of the legal process in order to hold the Chinese manufacturers accountable.

Fortunately, the “Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act of 2009 (S. 1606), introduced [recently] by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL), [will make] it easier to hold foreign manufacturers accountable in the U.S. civil justice system, putting them on a level playing field with American manufacturers.” The Act attempts to make certain that manufactures who profit in the American market place are also held accountable for their defective products in the same way domestic manufacturers are.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (7/31, Rust) reports, "Canadian regulators have found that baby bottles marketed to parents as 'BPA free' may actually contain the chemical bisphenol A, as two of nine bottle brands tested by Health Canada, Canada's public health agency, showed 'high readings' while 'traces' were found in the others."

Many relatively recent studies have linked the chemical to serious medical conditions including by not limited to breast cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Canada has banned the advertising and sale of BPA bottles, but the United States’ FDA, "has ruled that BPA is safe for use. That finding was based on two studies, both of which were paid for by the chemical-makers."

Last year, “the FDA's own science advisory board found that the ruling improperly ignored hundreds of studies that found that the chemical caused harm, even at low doses. It recommended that the FDA reconsider the ruling.”

As a Chicago personal Injury lawyer, I encourage all people to avoid products containing BPA until further research is completed. It seems as though there is substantial testing to support banning the use of BPA in the United States as the only two studies that refute this may be tainted by conflicts of interest.

The Washington Post (7/31, Layton) reports that by a 283-142 majority, the House passed the extensive food safety bill. The passing of the bill was perhaps expedited by the recent outbreak of salmonella in peanuts that has killed at least nine people.

This bill “affects every aspect of the US food system,” placing, “significant new responsibilities on farmers and food processors to prevent contamination before it occurs.” This represents a departure from past practices that relied on government inspectors to catch tainted food after processing.

Although the new legislation does not come without costs, as a Chicago personal injury lawyer, I support the initiative of the new food safety bill. More thorough and intense inspections both before and after processing will increase consumer confidence in food safety.