This blog has from time to time referred to non-economic damages like pain and suffering.
Following a car accident, the victim can claim different forms of compensation from the negligent driver. For one, she can ask for her special or economic damages. These types of damages include reimbursement for medical bills and related expenses, as well as lost wages.
A proposal pending before the New Mexico State Legislature would, if passed, increase the criminal penalties for the offense of careless driving. As it stands, drivers can be charged with careless driving when they fail to devote their full attention to operating their vehicle while in motion.
Police often use the careless driving offense as a way of ticketing motorists who are responsible for bicycle accidents and motorcycle accidents, such as in cases where the driver just was not paying attention and struck a motorcyclist or bicyclist.
New Mexico residents will be interested in a recent report on nursing home neglect. A recent report, which was possible because the government adopted a new method of collecting staffing data, suggests that the country's nursing home staffing problem may be a bit worse than originally thought, especially on weekends. The results of the report were communicated by at least one major media outlet.
The news came as the result of an analysis of the data that the government recently gathered from several thousand nursing homes. The collected data pertained to the homes' daily payrolls. In prior years, nursing homes did not have to provide this documentation when reporting their staffing levels to the federal government.
When one thinks about birth injuries, he or she may first think about the baby getting hurt or sick as a result of a medical mistake. However, during a pregnancy or labor, medical malpractice can also leave a mother in a worsened medical condition. In the worst case scenario, a pregnant woman can even die because of a medical error or oversight.
For example, a handful of New Mexico women will each year experience an ectopic pregnancy. In an ectopic pregnancy, the child does not implant in the womb of the mother but rather starts to grow and develop in the woman's fallopian tubes.
Drivers in New Mexico may be familiar with the so-called two second rule for determining how close one can safely follow another car. The way it works, a car's front end should arrive at the same point where the preceding vehicle's rear bumper was after at least two seconds. Otherwise, the person behind may be too close to safely stop.
When it comes to following motorcycles, it is especially important for drivers to observe the two-second rule. When traveling on the highways and interstates around Albuquerque, or at higher speeds generally, a motorist behind a motorcycle will want to give up to four seconds of following time.
An accident in another part of New Mexico left a school bus resting on its side after the driver of a passenger car stuck the bus. Police recently issued a citation to the woman who hit the bus, accusing her of careless driving. Police made it clear that the woman was not going to be placed under arrest.
According to reports, the car crash happened just south of a small city in New Mexico at an intersection. Reportedly, the woman missed a stop sign and went in to the intersection, striking the approaching school bus in a T-Bone fashion. It was not clear why the woman did not heed the stop sign.
As many residents of the greater Bernalillo and other parts of the greater Albuquerque area may have noticed, there is ongoing push to warn drivers about the dangers of texting and driving and other forms of distracted driving. Unfortunately, at least according to one recent report, it seems that these warnings are largely falling on deaf ears.
This report, which was based on a review of 12,000 drivers, suggested that the number of people willing to handle their cell phones while driving increased by well more than 50 percent between 2014 and 2018. Obviously, this behavior is potentially dangerous and even deadly, as one cannot both drive safely and look at his or her phone. To this point, one government agency recently estimated that distracted driving was to blame for over 3,000 deaths in 2017, a figure which represents over 8 percent of all traffic fatalities.
Many people in the Albuquerque area may have heard the term standard of care used in the world of medicine.
While they may have a general idea of what the term might mean, since it is a term of art, understanding a bit more about standard of care may be helpful, particularly if a New Mexico resident suspects that he may have been a victim of medical malpractice or nursing home neglect.
Since about three decades ago, the number of drivers in their teens has been heading down fairly steadily. In the 1980s, well over half of all 17-year-olds had a license to drive a car, while over 40 percent of 16-year-olds also had a license to drive. Now, that number is down to around 50 percent and under 30 percent, respectively.
As our readers in the Bernalillo area know, our law office represents victims of nursing home abuse and neglect. The types of cases we handle include situations that are either outright criminal or that involve physical or other forms of abuse. We also handle cases in which, for whatever reason, a facility just does not give a patient the care he needs.
In other situations, our representation of a nursing home patient may be akin to a traditional medical malpractice case, such as when we seek compensation for prescription errors or errors involving medication. However, there are some occasions in which, in truth, a nursing home patient's injuries may not be the fault of the staff in any respect. For instance, unbeknownst to the staff, a drug or a medical device may have been designed defectively or have had some problem with the manufacturing process that makes it unsafe for patients.
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The Jaffe Law Firm
1001 Gold Ave SW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
(505) 242-9311 [phone]
(505) 242-6225 [fax]
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