New Orleans Personal Injury Law Blog

It's quite common for locals and tourists to want to go tour historic buildings. However, those who own and operate those buildings need to make sure that the premises are kept reasonably safe to ensure that visitors don't end up hurting themselves.

Right now, there is a premises liability lawsuit that has been filed against a heritage association that manages a house museum. The claim is that the association should be held liable for the injuries that a visitor sustained while touring the house.

Louisiana residents were reminded early Friday morning about the sheer destruction that one driver traveling the wrong way down the interstate can cause.

Right now, families are surely morning at the recent news of five people who were killed when a wrong-way driver crashed head-on into another vehicle on Interstate 10 in New Orleans. Right before the accident, Louisiana state troopers had heard reports regarding the wrong-way driver, but sadly could not stop the driver in time.

Taking your eyes off of the road while driving -- even if only for a second -- greatly increases your risk of getting into an accident. And while we all tend to equate distracted driving with texting while driving, the truth remains that things like typing an address into a GPS or attempting to eat while driving, are also dangerous distractions.

When looking at the implications of distracted driving, it's important to realize that even if you are just quickly pre-setting a radio station, or attempting to open a mustard packet, in those few seconds of not paying attention, your vehicle may have already traveled the length of a football field. Along that length there can be a number of potential accidents that a quick reaction from paying attention would avoid.

The injuries sustained in a slip and fall accident can be quite serious, and can end up causing a person to suffer from unnecessary pain for some time to come. Some of these injuries can even affect a person for the rest of their life. Often times these injuries could also have been prevented had a property owner just taken the proper precautions to make sure that the area was kept reasonably safe.

Sadly, some owners fail to make sure that their property is free of falling hazards, and don't make sure that things like debris and spills are quickly cleaned up. When this happens in a store, for the unsuspecting shopper, the spill can cause a fall.

Truck drivers are responsible for safely operating several thousand pounds of machinery. Sadly, sometimes these drivers are negligent by either not following all traffic laws, or simply spacing out while behind the wheel. In cases where these behaviors lead to an accident, the results can be tragic to anyone inside of a much smaller passenger vehicle.

Last week, this was highlighted by the fact that two women were killed in Louisiana after a truck driver failed to realize the car they were in had come to a standstill waiting to turn. By the time the truck driver realized that the car was stopped, he didn't have enough time to stop, so he swerved to avoid smashing into their car.

While it's understandable that spills happen in grocery stores, it is still up to that store to make sure the liquid or food product is cleaned up in a timely matter to avoid the possibility of someone slipping and falling. But, sadly this is not always the case -- and without warning of the possible dangers -- a person who was just planning on doing some grocery shopping ends up suffering from serious injuries with expensive medical bills.

Back in May 2008 this is exactly what happened to one now 49-year-old man as he was shopping at a Kroger grocery store. He ended up slipping and falling on some fruit that was crushed on the store's floor. The fall caused serious injuries to his spinal cord, which caused him to be out of work. In the end, his medical bills reached around $135,000.

An accident that leads to any kind of brain injury is surely always traumatic. And now, a pair of recent studies also points to the fact that when a child suffers from a traumatic brain injury in life, their development can continue to be effected for some time to come.

One of these studies looked at children that sustained a brain injury before the age of 3, and the other study looked at children who sustained those injuries between the ages of 2 and 7. Both were published in the medical journal Pediatrics.

A Winn-Dixie shopper is suing the supermarket chain claiming that the company should be held liable for the injuries she sustained after falling on some grapes that were left on the floor of a New Orleans store. From falling, she sustained injuries to her legs, hip, back and shoulder.

The slip and fall accident happened back in August 2010, and the premises liability lawsuit was filed later on the same month of the accident. Earlier this month, that same lawsuit was removed to a federal New Orleans court.