Personal Injury Primer

Car Crashes into Building https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Ep-370-Car-Crashes-into-Building.mp3 I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we explain the law in simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. Today’s question comes from a caller who was injured at work when a car attempting to park in front of his office building mistakenly accelerated and crashed into the building, broke through the window and wall, and seriously injured building occupants. He wanted to know his legal options. In Indiana, drivers have a duty of care when driving, which also applies to parking a vehicle. More specifically, Indiana law imposes a duty on drivers to exercise the care that an ordinarily prudent person would use under similar circumstances, including the duty to control a vehicle safely in all circumstances to avoid collisions. For example, drivers must maintain a proper outlook while operating a vehicle. Also, Indiana Code 9-21-8-23 prohibits starting or stopping a parked vehicle unless the movement can be made with reasonable safety. In most situations, a driver’s actions in accelerating and crashing into a building will result in a finding that the driver breached the duty of care to maintain control of their vehicle and avoid collisions. The driver in the caller’s case likely bears legal responsibility for the crash under Indiana law. One defense might be for the driver to establish that the car mechanically malfunctioned due to a product defect with the vehicle or some other cause beyond the control of the operator. I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 370 Car Crashes into Building first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.

Protecting Important Documents in Emergencies and Natural Disasters https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ep-369-Protecting-Important-Documents-in-Emergencies-and-Natural-Disasters.mp3 I’m Katelyn Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. Today we’re taking a look at how we can plan and prepare to keep our important documents safe and within quick reach in cases of emergency or natural disasters. It’s common knowledge that when people get into their vehicle to drive, they should have their driver’s license, vehicle registration, and automobile insurance card with them. You never know when you might be in a situation in which you need that information. Hopefully, you won’t need it, but it is required and good to have that information on you. What about in the context of other kinds of emergencies or natural disasters that might arise? It’s not something most people like thinking about, but it is wise to take some proactive steps to ensure you know where all of your important documents are in order to quickly grab it on the way out of your house (if there’s an evacuation) or to protect it from things like heat or water. First of all, what kinds of documents should you prioritize as important to keep protected? Think things like: birth certificate marriage certificate social security card passport driver’s license or photo ID living wills and other advance directives power of attorney documents will and/or trust documents list of the names, ages, birthdates, phone numbers, and photos of immediate family members insurance declaration pages/cards property deed, mortgage or renter’s documents vehicle registration and title benefit letters for retirement or disability list of medications and allergies list of bank and investment accounts list of credit card accounts list of contact information for close contacts Plan on periodically checking this stack of important documents to ensure they are up-to-date. It’s good to also keep a digital back-up of these things on a thumb drive that you can easily grab, put in your pocket, and maybe keep in a bank lock-box. The paper copies of the documents can be store in a protective plastic bag or fireproof bag. While fireproof bags are generally not designed to be subjected to direct flames for very long, they can usually withstand high temperatures well and you can also find some that are also waterproof. Sometimes these important documents are destroyed regardless of the amount of work we take to protect them. In these cases, all is not lost. If you do need to replace something like a government-issued document, you can go to the applicable governmental agency for help with that. For example, for replacement birth certificates, you usually contact the birth state’s vital records office. If you need to replace social security cards, you contact the U.S. Social Security office. There are helpful government websites that give step-by-step instruction on what to do to replace lost or missing documents. I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com. While there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 369 Protecting Important Documents in Emergencies and Natural Disasters first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.

Link Between Licensing Requirements and Safety https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ep-368-Link-Between-Licensing-Requirements-and-Safety.mp3 I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. In this episode, we explore a high school junior’s innovative idea to enhance driving safety. Despite having just a year of driving experience, this young driver’s perspective brought fresh insight to an essay competition on traffic safety. The proposal advocates for a mandatory extension of driver education and training, surpassing the conventional training classes that most young drivers receive during high school. This additional education and training could significantly enhance driving safety. Courts have long required traffic offenders to attend traffic safety classes as a way of rehab. These rehab courses typically include coursework on nighttime driving, the dangers posed by speeding, and the potential for harm caused by driving under the influence. The concepts covered in a remedial driving course can potentially elevate the driving skills of all individuals. This underlines the importance of continuous education and training in driving safety. Many European nations require more study and testing to obtain a driver’s license than the United States. European countries have a licensing approach focusing on graduated licensing, leading to increased experience before obtaining full driving privileges. Germany and the UK have implemented graduated licensing programs, which include a learner’s permit, provisional license, and full license with increasing privileges and restrictions. European countries make a strong effort to make certain drivers have sufficient driving ability and competence. Due to the European approach to licensing, many EU nations have significantly lower road fatality rates (in Denmark, for example, the rate is 27 deaths per one million inhabitants) compared to the US (11.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020), according to the World Health Organization. I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 368 Link Between Licensing Requirements and Safety first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.

When to Require a Police Report https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ep-367-When-to-Require-a-Police-Report.mp3 I’m Katelyn Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. Today’s question comes from a caller concerned that he’d been in a small impact crash, and no police report was made. He filed a claim with the at-fault driver’s insurance, but they say the crash never happened. He asked, did I make a big mistake? Understandably, sometimes the urge to not take the time to call the police and have them document what happened in a crash will prevail over exercising better judgment to insist that a police report be made. Sometimes, you have to be somewhere, and the crash itself presents a stressful situation. You think that you don’t feel hurt and that the damage to the cars is minimal. Should you give in to the urge to skip calling the police? Here are the pros and cons of taking the time to call the police, compared with taking alternative steps to document what happened during the crash. We’ll leave it to listeners to decide what is more important, keeping in mind that the absence of a police report might adversely impact the chances of a claim for damages being approved. The more substantial the accident and the more significant the damage, the more important it becomes to get a police report to include when filing an insurance claim. Whether a police report is required depends on the insurance policy’s wording. Typically, the policy will instruct on how and when to file a claim. Depending on the wording of a policy, the ramifications of not having a police report may vary. In many instances, a claim without a police report may still be approved, but the approval process may take longer and require more investigation and verification of the details surrounding the crash. Depending on how much uncertainty is created by the fact that there is no police report for a given crash, the amount offered by insurance to settle a claim may be less than what you could otherwise get if you had more details known and outlined in a police report. One of the biggest reasons people don’t call the police and get a report after a crash is that they think the crash was minor. However, the extent of property damage or physical bodily injury is not always apparent at the scene, and what may appear minor could turn out to have significant effects. When a police report is impossible to obtain, the next best thing is to take detailed notes about the crash. Write down the date, time, and location of the crash. Note the names and contact information of all parties involved, insurance policy numbers, driver’s license numbers, and license plate numbers. Record the make and model of the vehicles involved, as well as their registered owners’ names and contact information. Gather the names and contact information of any witnesses. Take photographs and video clips of the scene of the crash. The more information you can provide to an insurance carrier when making a claim, the better. I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com. While there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 367 When to Require a Police Report first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.

Surgeon Mistakenly Removes Liver https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ep-366-Surgeon-Mistakenly-Removes-Liver.mp3 I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. Today’s podcast discusses an issue reported in the news not long ago. The news report was that a surgeon mistakenly removed a patient’s liver during surgery instead of the patient’s spleen. The mistake cost the patient his life. From a legal perspective, this medical mistake should result in civil liability for the surgeon and the hospital that authorized the surgeon to perform surgery. It also quite possibly will result in criminal charges against the surgeon. I encountered a similar scenario about 30 years ago. A surgeon removed several vertebrae from the patient’s spine, resulting in immediate paralysis. Upon investigation after the surgery, it was determined that the surgeon was addicted to a controlled substance. At the time of the surgery, he was having a hallucinatory episode, which caused him to believe that his surgery would improve the patient’s condition. Eventually, this surgeon was convicted of assault and battery and sentenced to prison. Back to the news report of a surgeon mistakenly removing a patient’s healthy liver. I would think that there should be an immediate alcohol and drug test administered to the surgeon that removed the liver instead of the spleen. This error is normally described as a never event, meaning it should never happen. If the surgeon learned anything in medical school, he or she would know the difference between a liver and a spleen on simple observation. The organs are located in different locations in the body anatomically. Further, the hospital that authorized the surgeon to perform surgery would have to answer civilly for many things, including what procedures were in place to confirm to everyone before surgery began the focus of the surgery. Before the surgery began, did everyone in the surgical room agree on the type of surgery that would be undertaken? In other words, was it announced that this was a surgery to remove the patient’s spleen because of a disease? There would seem to be no justification in any event ever to remove a patient’s liver unless there’s going to be a transplant. If, before raising a scalpel, the surgeon announced, “Now we are going to remove this patient’s liver,” you would expect everyone to tackle the surgeon and confiscate the knife. If the announcement was, “Now we are going to remove the patient’s spleen,” others in the room should have become suspicious when the surgeon began cutting on the wrong side of the chest that something was terribly wrong and interrupted the surgery. Moreover, you would expect that any nurse, anesthesiologist, or any other tech assisting in the room would have screamed out to the surgeon to stop if it was observed that the surgeon was removing the patient’s liver. Further, had any of the participants observed that the liver was removed, you would expect that the liver would be replaced immediately to correct that mistake. Perhaps a special team of transplant vascular specialty surgeons could have been called to correct the error. Did the hospital check the surgeon’s credentials before giving the surgeon staff privileges? In the case, I described above that led to a patient’s paralysis, one of the assisting surgeons immediately called security to escort the intoxicated surgeon from the room. Then the surgical team did their best to try to repair the damage to the patient. Unfortunately, there was a history of that particular surgeon being observed to be under the influence of drugs. Was the surgeon who removed the liver under the influence of drugs at the time of the procedure? Had that surgeon been observed by others to be under the influence at other times? Should the hospital have pulled the plug on the surgeon well before this particular event occurred? Was a program to require random drug and alcohol screenings in place? I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 366 Surgeon Mistakenly Removes Liver first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.