The first incident occurred at the I-26/U.S. 301 interchange in Orangeburg County. The South Carolina Highway Patrol indicated the driver of a tanker truck carrying sodium bisulfate decided too late to exit I-26 and ran off the ramp because he was traveling too fast to handle the curve. The tank developed three leaks, releasing the sodium bisulfate, a skin and respiratory irritant. Nearby businesses were evacuated until a hazmat team contained and removed the spill.

The second incident happened in Dorchester County near the I-26 interchange with I-95. A tanker truck carrying 22 tons of acrylamide from Florida to Michigan overturned when the driver took the exit for U.S. 15 travelling too fast. Acrylamide is a potential carcinogen that is also flammable. The South Carolina Highway Patrol and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control closed I-26 and U.S. 15 in both directions for 6 hours until hazmat teams could evaluate and contain the spill.

Thanks to WIS and the Charleston Post and Courier for reporting.

For example, after the injured person's attorney reaches a settlement with an at-fault driver, most members of the public assume that the money, minus attorney fees and costs, goes straight to the injured victims. But very often, the wreck victim still must pay back the costs of their medical treatment to an insurance company or the government.

If a health insurer, Medicare, or Medicaid paid for the initial treatment, there is generally a requirement to repay these insurers for the costs of treatment. This is called "subrogation." In the case of the health insurer, this is part of the contract between the person and the company. For Medicare and Medicaid, it is part of the law that created these programs. There are some exceptions to when an injured party must repay the cost of treatment, but these exceptions are limited.

What any insurer can do, however, is voluntarily waive or reduce the amount they will accept. Part of our job for our clients is to obtain these reductions whenever possible. It's important. Some insurers and state Medicaid programs routinely do this in cases where it will be a severe hardship, while other insurance companies take a hard line. Which brings me to a case that recently came to my attention.

Debbie Shanks, who lives in Missouri, was a married mother of three who was severely injured in a crash with a tractor trailer. Mrs. Shanks was severely brain damaged and requires constant care. Mrs. Shanks was awarded nearly $1 million following a lawsuit against the trucking company. Of this, $417,000 was put into a trust for her health care. But instead of having this money to care for her in the future, Wal-Mart’s health insurance plan insisted it should have the money - all of it. Every penny of it. Wal-Mart was her employer at the time of the wreck. Mrs. Shanks was insured through the retail giant’s plan. Wal-Mart had paid $470,000 for her care and wanted to be repaid.

The Wal-Mart plan’s contract language stated that the company was first in line to be paid in the event she sued someone else and won. Wal-Mart’s plan gives no credit to the employee or her attorney for the expense and effort of bringing a lawsuit to recover money for Wal-Mart. Her attorney explained the extreme circumstances to Wal-Mart, but they insisted that they would not make an exception. Their reason: it wouldn’t be fair to the other employees, who pay health care premiums. Wal-Mart sued to recover the money paid and won, although the court limited its recovery to funds actually in the health care trust. The Shanks appealed the decision as far as they could, but on March 17, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear their appeal.

As I wrote this blog post, I found that Wal-Mart gave the Shanks a too-late surprise. After fighting the Shanks all the way to the Supreme Court, after the Shanks divorced to increase her Medicaid eligibility, after wasting years and years in litigation, Wal-Mart on April 1 announced that it had decided to do what it had the option to do from the very beginning: not take the money from this innocent woman. It even offered this apology: “We are sorry for any additional stress this has put on the Shank family.”

Thanks, Wal-Mart.

Thanks to cnn.com and the Wall Street Journal for reporting.

Initially, it seemed the collision was entirely Christina’s fault. The truck didn’t have a stop sign, only Christina did. She may not have come to a full stop before pulling out and she may not have had her lights on. But further investigation told another part of the story. The truck driver had driven more hours than safety regulations allow. The “black box” on the truck showed he was speeding. A reconstruction of the collision indicated the driver didn’t hit his brakes until 3 seconds after he slammed into the Grand Am. Together, this painted a picture of a truck driver who was profoundly tired - and not paying attention.

The teens’ families brought suit against the shipper, the driver, and the driver’s trucking company. Lawyers for the teens presented evidence of the collision. They presented evidence that the trucking company should have known the driver wasn’t safe because he had a history of falsifying his driving logs, something the company should have been aware of. The defendants presented evidence of Christina’s fault and argued the black box showed the driver was driving below the speed limit.

On November 2, 2007, a Cook County, Illinois jury decided that the truck driver was 60% responsible for the collision. The jury awarded $8 million to Diana’s and Adam’s families for their losses. The jury valued the loss to Christina’s family at $7 million, but the amount was reduced to $4.2 million because she was 40% responsible.

One page on his blog in particular is a life-saver for South Carolina attorneys. Questions SC Lawyers Want Answered collects together Dave's blog entries that offer some of the basic information that South Carolina injury attorneys frequently need to have at their fingertips - calculating witness fees, the damages cap on Tort Claims Act cases, maximum compensation rates in South Carolina workers' compensation cases, the critical case decisions affecting how punitive damages are awarded in South Carolina, recovering depreciation for vehicles, the maximum that doctors and hospitals can charge for medical records, the rate for calculating post-judgment interest on damage awards, and which South Carolina court takes priority when there is a scheduling conflict.

So, if you are a South Carolina attorney who is in occasional need of answers to these kinds of questions, or just a curious member of the public, now you know where to turn.

By all accounts, Trooper Haynes, the father of two, was a deeply committed family man. He was a little league coach and in one prior interview cited his mother as the most influential person in his life. On the job he was a frequently commended patrol officer who was named Trooper of the Month in September 2007 by the Orangeburg Times and Democrat newspaper.

Traffic-related incidents have been the leading cause of death of on-duty law enforcement officers for each of the last ten years.

Thanks to WIS, the Times and Democrat, and policemag for reporting.

Thanks to the Orangeburg Times and Democrat and The State for reporting.

The Reverand and Mrs. Willis were traveling through Milwaukee on I-94 in November, 1994 on their way to their adult son’s home for a birthday party. In their Plymouth Grand Voyager minivan were the six youngest of their nine children, ranging from six months to thirteen years old. The Willis’s minivan struck a piece of the taillight/mudflap that fell off a tractor trailer driven by Ricardo Guzman. This piece of debris was a two and a half foot long section of steel bracket. The truck piece punctured the Willis’s gas tank and the sparks that resulted from it dragging on the ground ignited the minivan's gas in the tank. Only one child, thirteen year old Ben, made it out of the van. Reverand and Mrs. Willis were severely burned trying to rescue the other children, but the others perished in the flames. Although his hair was singed off and his lips burned, Ben asked about his siblings before he was flown to the burn unit. He died the next day after asking the nurse to hold his hand and pray with him. Unfortunately, she couldn’t because of the severity of his burns.

The Willises wanted to know how this could have happened. Their lawyer took over 120 depositions of fact witnesses and experts over the next two years. The Willis’s attorney retained experts in fields such as metallurgy, fracture mechanics, and accident investigation. The Willises alleged that the company that leased the trailer failed to properly maintain it and that the truck company improperly hired the driver. The Willises also brought negligence claims against the mudflap manufacturer and design defect claims against Chrysler for its tank design.
One of the most shocking findings of the investigation was that the driver, Ricardo Guzman, couldn’t understand radioed warnings that the mudflap was about to fall off, because he didn’t speak English. When the lawyer dug deeper, he discovered that the driver was able to get a commercial drivers license only because he paid a bribe in the form of a campaign contribution for then Illinois Secretary of State George Ryan. When state investigators tried to investigate the connection of Guzman to Ryan, Ryan ordered his office to stop the investigation. Ryan soon went on to become Governor of Illinois, but the investigation continued. Ryan’s obstruction blossomed into a larger federal investigation that lead to the 2006 corruption trial of former governor. The Willises wrote letters to the court when Ryan was sentenced. The bottom line is that Governor Ryan might not have ever been exposed for his corruption, had the Willis family chosen to do nothing about the tragedy.

The Willis family settled with six civil defendants before trial for $100,000,000. The Willises reportedly have used the settlement largely to support missionary work.

Thanks to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Transportation Lawyers Association for reporting.

Thanks to AugustaChronicle, the Edgefield Daily and WIS for reporting.

Thanks to WIS and The State for reporting.

When you or a family member is in a wreck with a tractor trailer, your losses and injuries can be devastating. Depending on the circumstances, you may be able to recover compensation for your losses by bringing a legal claim against the responsible parties. However, in the case of a tractor trailer wreck, there are unique problems with preserving the evidence. Those problems mean that prompt action is critically important.

Also, there are special laws which regulate the trucking industry. Those special laws are designed to protect the public from the devastating injuries that can result when tractor trailers are not operated extremely carefully. Make sure the South Carolina lawyer you choose is well-versed in the particulars of tractor trailer litigation.

The bottom line is that if truck drivers or trucking companies are careless, awful things result. Eighteen wheelers cause a highly disproportionate amount of highway fatalities. It is extremely important that those who operate trucks are held responsible when they create harm. When they are held responsible, it makes it less likely that the same carelessness will be repeated. That means safer roads for all of us.

Thanks to WLTX and WIS for reporting.

Thanks to WIS television and The State newspaper for reporting.

Thanks to WIS Television and The Orangeburg Times and Democrat for reporting on this tragic story.

Thanks to ChicagoTribune.com and the Northwest Herald for their reporting.