Boca Raton, FL –Balkan & Patterson, LLP, a personal injury and class action law firm based in Boca Raton, is pleased to announce the addition of attorney Allison Lane to its legal team. Lane joins the firm as a skilled associate attorney and will serve personal injury, auto accident, class action and wrongful death clients in South Florida.

A graduate of the University of Florida Levin College of Law, Lane was accepted into The Florida Bar in 2007. To date, she has been practicing with a personal injury firm in Palm Beach County and has achieved a verdict in excess of $1 million. She will continue to represent auto accident, personal injury, class action and wrongful death clients at our Boca Raton and Hollywood locations. For more information about Lane, please click here.

The main office of Florida trial attorneys Balkan & Patterson is located in Boca Raton, Florida, with a satellite office in Hollywood, Florida. They represent personal injury, auto accident, defective products, and consumer fraud clients throughout South Florida, including all of Palm Beach County, Boca Raton, Deerfield Beach, Lighthouse Point, Parkland, Delray Beach, Boynton Beach, Broward County and throughout the United States. For more information, please visit www.balkanpatterson.com.

A woman was killed in Coral Springs this morning on the Sawgrass Expressway after her car had a flat tire. She was walking to get help when she was struck by two cars. According to the Florida Highway Patrol, she was walking in the traffic lanes when she was hit.To view the complete story, please click here.

This accident reinforces the need for drivers to ensure their vehicles are in good working condition to prevent and be prepared for incidents such as this. By having the appropriate spare parts, it would be possible to fix the tire without having to leave the vehicle and seek assistance. Additionally, services like AAA can assist drivers is the event of an emergency. If you do have an emergency and have to leave your vehicle, use extreme caution, especially when walking in a high-speed traffic area like an expressway or highway.

The law firm of Balkan & Patterson LLP works with personal injury, auto accident, premises liability and wrongful death clients in Boca Raton, West Palm Beach and all of Broward County, including Parkland, Lighthouse Point and Coral Springs. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the negligence of another, please contact us for a free consultation at www.balkanpatterson.com.

Warning from South Florida law enforcement: If you receive an offer in the mail that seems too good to be true, it probably is. Right now, there is a secret shopper scheme circulating around Broward and Palm Beach Counties. You could receive a letter in the mail, asking you to be part of a practice to test out customer service at money-wiring services. The letter could be accompanied by a check for almost $3,000.

If you get any type of offer like this in the mail, be skeptical. You can call local authorities and report the matter. For more information about the current scheme, please see the full story on the Sun Sentinel’s website here.

A new year is upon us, and with it comes new opportunities for all - even scammers who will try to make a quick buck off honest consumers. It’s best to be wary of before you make any big purchases or buy in to any deals that sound “too good to be true” - chances are they probably are.

For some good tips on protecting yourself, your credit and your family, take a look at the following article on smart consumer tips, posted on www.fosters.com.

If you have any questions about consumer fraud or securities/investment fraud, please contact the attorneys of Balkan & Patterson, LLP. We are happy to help and answer any questions you may have. Visit us online at www.balkanpatterson.com.

Our personal injury law firm, with headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, is pleased to announce that we have opened a satellite office in Broward County to better serve our clients further south.

New offices are located in Hollywood, Florida.

3230 Stirling Road, Suite 2A
Hollywood, FL 33021

Our Broward phone number is (954) 767-9190.

As always, we can be found online at www.balkanpatterson.com. The main office of Florida trial attorneys Balkan & Patterson is located in East Boca Raton. They represent personal injury, auto accident, defective products, and consumer fraud clients throughout South Florida, including Boca Raton, Deerfield Beach, Lighthouse Point, Parkland, Delray Beach, Boynton Beach, and throughout the United States.

In the news recently there have been several tragic stories about student violence in South Florida schools.  What often gets overlooked is the damage that poor staffing at these schools brings on children.  Another example came to light on today when a Pine Crest teacher was arrested for having sexual relations with minors.  See the full story here.

The attorneys at Balkan & Patterson, LLP have received justice and financial settlements for victims of abuse and injuries occurring at schools, including against Pine Crest.  Balkan & Patterson, based in Boca Raton, FL, have personal injury lawyers with experience at handling child abuse cases both as former child abuse prosecutors in Broward County and as civil justice attorneys. For more information or to contact us, please visit www.balkanpatterson.com.

Over-the-counter medications made specifically for children have been getting some attention lately, as a major pediatrician group advised that these medications be banned. However, the FDA has rejected the request for a lack of information. Additionally, it’s thought that if these medications are no longer available, parents will begin treating their children with adult-strength medication.

According to an article children’s cough and cold medications on MSNBC, the reason is this:

“With a new cold season coming, pediatricians are urging the government to demand a recall of over-the-counter cough and cold medicines for children younger than 6. The effectiveness of the medicines in children was never scientifically established, critics say, and problems with the drugs send thousands of kids to the emergency room every year.”

For years drug makers and medical device manufacturers have known of risks associated with their products.  It used to be that you could count on the FDA to weed out harmful products. On the heels of questionable products comes legislation from the Bush administration, which could prohibit product liability litigation on all sorts of consumer products. Essentially, these laws would protect large corporations – not the consumers. See this article in the Wall Street Journal for more information.

There has been a concerted governmental effort to protect these corporations and their profits at the expense of consumers.  The law firm of Balkan & Patterson, LLP is dedicated to helping consumers who have been injured by defective products, pharmaceuticals and devices and holding accountable the corporations who have known of the problems but put profits over people. Visit our firm’s website at www.balkanpatterson.com for more information.

OIAs Reveal How Bush Administration Made Complete Immunity for Negligent Corporations a Top Priority

Federal Agencies Changed Rules to Usurp States’ Rights, Help Corporations Escape Accountability for Dangerous Products

Washington—In a stealth effort coordinated at the highest levels of the Bush administration, multiple federal agencies were repeatedly ordered to usurp state law and undermine consumer protections, according to documents obtained through repeated FOIA requests by the American Association for Justice (AAJ). The documents released today detail how helping corporations escape accountability for dangerous products has been the administration’s top priority.

“This is the real Bush legacy,” said AAJ President Les Weisbrod. “In effect the Bush administration made the safety of Americans secondary to corporate profits.”

The FOIA documents detail a Bush regulatory strategy called preemption. In short, the Bush administration has decided that federal rules should usurp – or preempt – the rights of states to protect their citizens with stricter safety standards. In turn, consumers can no longer use the state protections when harmed by negligence or misconduct, giving total immunity to corporations instead.

AAJ has tracked how the administration’s first attempts to preempt states rights utilized friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of corporations in civil justice cases. After only mixed success, the administration then shifted strategies, targeting instead regulatory agencies in charge of product safety oversight. Beginning in 2005, carbon copy statements claiming that federal agency rules preempt state law began surfacing in the “preambles” of regulation issued by the federal government, and in some cases in the body of the final rules themselves. Because the courts have not yet conclusively determined whether preambles carry the full weight of law, corporations have a new legal theory on which they can argue in product liability cases.

“Unelected federal regulators are now claiming that states can’t protect their own citizens with stronger consumer protections,” Weisbrod added. In an upcoming Supreme Court case, 47 state attorneys general filed a brief arguing the FDA is breaking with historical precedent. In fact, in their brief they urge the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a Vermont Supreme Court ruling that state law forces a drug manufacturer to pay $6.8 million to a Diana Levine, whose arm had to be amputated after she was injected with an improperly-labeled Wyeth drug.

Since 2005, seven federal agencies have issued over 60 proposed or final rules with preemption language in the preamble. During the past year, AAJ submitted numerous FOIA requests that prove the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had direct involvement in the placement of the “complete immunity” preemption language. In an earlier request, OMB responded that there were no documents. However, emails recently obtained from the individual agencies prove that OMB did indeed discuss preemption with agencies, and in some instances OMB officials wrote the language.

Given this discrepancy, AAJ submitted an expanded request for OMB documents. On September 26, 2008, OMB responded it had identified 146 documents, but refused to release any of them, saying that “the disclosure of these documents would not be in the public interest.”

In piecing together the emails from the FOIAs, AAJ uncovered the cozy relationship between federal officials and the industries they regulate. For example, the pharmaceutical industry intensified its efforts to influence the FDA in the months leading up to the physician labeling rule’s release on January 24, 2006. Much of the lobbying efforts were aimed at Sheldon Bradshaw, who had succeeded Daniel Troy as FDA chief counsel in April 2005.

AAJ obtained emails that list attendees of a meeting between Bradshaw and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) revealing the FDA chief counsel met with legal representatives from Pfizer, Wyeth, Eli Lilly, Berlex, Organon, Abbott Laboratories, Takeda, Sanofi-Aventis, Serono, AstraZeneca, Cephalon, Millenium, Eisai, Amgen, Astellas, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Merck, and 3M.

Less than six months after this meeting, the agency would release its final physician labeling rule with complete immunity preemption language in the preamble, a complete about-face from the language in the proposed rule that specifically said the agency did not intend to preempt state law with the rule.

“Big business lobbyists have been on a crusade to destroy state consumer protection laws, and further stack the deck against American consumers,” said Weisbrod.

Obtain a full copy of “Get Out of Jail Free: A Historical Perspective of How the Bush Administration Helps Corporations Escape Accountability.”

View the Wall Street Journal’s article “Bush Legacy Could Be Found In Tort Reform” online.

###

As the world’s largest trial bar, the American Association for Justice (formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America) works to make sure people have a fair chance to receive justice through the legal system when they are injured by the negligence or misconduct of others—even when it means taking on the most powerful corporations. Visit http://www.justice.org/.

Contact: Cecelia Prewett or Jen Fuson
202-965-3500 x369

Coming up is the Child Injury Prevention Conference, which will be held in Washington, D.C. from October 15-18. The conference highlights the “dramatic reduction of unintentional deaths and injuries to children over the last 20 years.” Additionally, the program highlights ways to continue to keep our children safe. There are different programs, seminars, lectures, discussions, etc. that talk about various topics - public health, injury prevention and more.

The law firm of Balkan & Patterson, LLP, welcomes you to our new blog, www.PersonalInjuryAccidentLaw.com. We are personal injury, auto accident, premises liability and class action attorneys based in Boca Raton, FL, and we serve clients throughout South Florida. Should you have any questions, please contact us at 561-750-9191. We also encourage you to visit us online at our website, www.balkanpatterson.com. Please check back often, as we will continually post news, alerts and information pertaining to consumers and personal-injury related topics.