Dog Bite and Other Personal Injury Causes of Action

Although Arizona car accidents are one of the most common types of personal injury cases, there are other types of injuries that can also give rise to the filing of a personal injury lawsuit. If you have been the victim of an injury due to the another’s action or inaction, please contact the Phoenix and Tucson area personal injury attorneys to discuss your case.

• Dog Bite and Other Animal Bite Cases
• Catastrophic Personal Injury
• Construction Site Accidents
• Defective Air Bags
• Head or Brain Injury
• Lead Paint/Lead Poisoning
• Plane Crash
• Poor Road Design
• Railroad Accidents
• Tire Tread Separation Cases

Dog Bite and Other Animal Bite Cases

In Phoenix, dog bite and other animal attacks can cause serious permanent injuries. Unfortunately, these attacks often involve small children. The Phoenix and Tucson area personal injury lawyers with Phillips Law Group can help those injured by dog bite and other animal bite.

When an owner of an animal acts irresponsibly by failing to protect the public from injuries caused by the animal, the owner may be held accountable under the law.

If you or your child suffered a dog bite or other animal bite, it is important to seek treatment as quickly as possible, then seek the advice of our Phoenix dog bite lawyers. You may be able to recover damages from the irresponsible animal owner by filing lawsuits for injuries and property damage caused by their animal. Often, our Arizona personal injury lawyers in Phoenix find insurance available to cover these types of cases.

If you believe that the owner of the animal may have been negligent, please contact the Phoenix dog bite personal injury lawyers to discuss your case.

Catastrophic Personal Injury

Even when car wrecks, product-related accidents, medical malpractice, or industrial accidents result in catastrophic personal injury, it is still necessary in Phoenix and in the surrounding areas of Arizona for our personal injury lawyers to prove fault. Another important aspect of a catastrophic personal injury case is evidence to establish the extent of our client's injury. The development of this detailed evidence is critical in cases involving spinal cord injury, brain injury, amputation, severe burns and any other catastrophic personal injury.

For victims of a catastrophic personal injury and their families, it is vital that they receive the full amount of compensatory and punitive damages that they are entitled to under the law. Victims of catastrophic personal injury may be disabled for life, and very often a family can be financially devastated if they are not fully compensated.

As with all AZ personal injury cases, there is a statute of limitations involved with catastrophic personal injury lawsuits, so it is important to speak to one of our Phoenix personal injury lawyers as soon as possible after the accident.

Our Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, and Tucson area, Arizona personal injury lawyers at Phillips Law Group understand the importance of full compensation for a catastrophic personal injury. As a large law firm, we have the talent and resources to handle even the most serious and complex cases.

If you or a loved one has been the victim of a catastrophic injury, please contact our Phoenix and Arizona personal injury lawyers to discuss your case.

back to top

Construction Site Accidents

If you or a loved on has been the victim of a construction site accident, contact our Phoenix construction accident lawyers. We can help.

Unfortunately, construction site accidents happen often in Phoenix and other areas of Arizona. Injuries from construction accidents can result in catastrophic life changes or even an untimely death. The Phoenix personal injury lawyers with Phillips Law Group help the victims of construction site accidents and their families receive the compensation they are legally entitled to.

A construction site should be a safe place to work. Construction companies should inspect each site and provide safety programs, but often this is neglected in Phoenix and Arizona. This leads to personal injury accidents that we feel could be prevented.

Manufacturers of construction equipment are responsible for designing and maintaining safe products. Defective or dangerous products can include scaffolding, cranes, power tools, derricks, hoists, conveyors, woodworking tools, ladders, winches, trucks, graders, scrapers, tractors, bulldozers, forklifts, backhoes, heavy equipment, boilers, pressure vessels and gas detectors, as well as many other types of construction equipment. When construction equipment fails, the resulting personal injury is often serious physical injury or even death.

When a construction site accident occurs the owners, architects, insurance companies and manufacturers of equipment might be held responsible for inadequate safety provisions and the resulting personal injury. The general contractor and subcontractors are required to provide a reasonably safe site, inspect and warn of hazards inherent to the site, hire careful employees, coordinate job safety and supervise compliance with safety specifications.

When a construction site accident occurs in Arizona that results in a personal injury or accident, it is often important to find liable third parties. Since many jobs involve subcontractors, often there are parties at fault, other than the direct employer or co-workers.

The Phoenix personal injury attorneys with Phillips Law Group will investigate your claim and help you determine who the responsible parties might be. We will file construction personal injury lawsuits against them and help you receive the full compensation you may be entitled to under the law.

back to top

Defective Air Bags

The AZ personal injury lawyers with the Phoenix area law firm of Phillips Law Group have successfully handled many defective air bag cases. If you or a loved one has suffered because of an air bag deploying in a motor vehicle accident, please contact our Phoenix and Tucson defective product lawyers to discuss your case. You may be legally entitled to compensation.

Literally thousands of motor vehicles with defective air bag systems are on the road in the United States today, and many are in Phoenix. The potential for serious personal injury in these vehicles is great and most drivers are not aware that they may be in danger. Even when their cars are involved in only a minor collision, serious defective airbag injuries can result.

Defective air bags cause serious personal injury to many in Arizona every year. Personal injury caused by a defective air bag can be devastating for families who expected an air bag to protect their loved one, not harm him or her. Air bags often cause injuries that would not have occurred if the car did not have an air bag. The primary problems with air bags, as we have seen in litigation are the following:

1. Over-aggressive air bags - Some air bags deploy too fast and too far into the occupant's space, causing serious personal injury. Some bags deploy at speeds in excess of 200 mph and, since they are designed to restrain an average sized male, such bags can have devastating effects on small women and children. This air bag defect can cause severe head injuries, brain damage, blindness and even decapitation.
2. Oversized or untethered air bags - Some air bags, because they are too big or they do not have tethers, come too close to occupants during the inflation process and serious personal injury can result. Tethers are simple cloth straps sewn into the fabric on the inside of the bag to limit the rearward movement of the air bag during inflation. Despite the industry's knowledge of the dangers of untethered bags (most driver's side bags have been tethered for years), many passenger side bags do not have tethers.
3. Too low of an air bag deployment threshold - Many people have been injured by air bags in low speed accidents in which they would not have been hurt at all if the air bag had not hit them. Since air bags are not needed in low speed impacts to prevent personal injury, they should be designed to deploy only at higher speeds. A simple alternative is to set the deployment threshold (the speed at which an air bag will deploy) 18-25 mph, instead of at 8-15 mph as many systems are now designed. Another alternative is to make air bags deploy less aggressively in low-speed collisions and more aggressively in high-speed collisions -- the technology to do so has been available since the 1970s. Also, some companies make cars with so-called "smart air bags" which deploy at higher crash speeds if the occupant is belted and at lower crash speeds if the occupant is unbelted. This prevents belted passengers in low speed accidents from suffering serious personal injury by an air bag that isn't even needed in the accident.
4. Front-mounted horizontally deploying air bags - This design causes the air bag to deploy directly toward the passenger during inflation before it has formed its fully inflated shape - the "giant pillow" shown in the television commercials. In truth, in the early stages of deployment, an air bag is more like a missile than a pillow, and this missile can result in serious personal injury to the passenger. A safer design used by some car manufacturers is to mount the air bag on the top part of the dashboard as close to the windshield as possible and to direct it upward toward the windshield at the beginning of the inflation process. Ford, GM and Chrysler discussed such air bags (called top-mounted vertically deploying air bags) back in the early 1990s, yet continued to put rear facing horizontally deploying bags into its cars. Particularly alarming is the presence of these defective bags in many minivans, which are intentionally marketed to families with young children. Worse still, the Chrysler minivan television ads show young children sitting in the right front passenger seat directly in the line of fire for these defective bags.
5. Inadequate warnings. The government only requires the sun visor warning label. The car companies could put more warning labels in cars (on the dashboard, for example) to explain to people that a deploying air bag can be very dangerous and can cause great personal injury, especially to children and small statured people.
6. System malfunctions. There have been numerous reported instances (and recalls) of air bags because of unnecessary deployment (on ignition, upon striking a pothole or curb) resulting in serious personal injury. These are typically caused by a problem in the electrical system or sensors.
7. Failure to deploy. Many in Phoenix suffer great personal injury because of the failure of an air bag to deploy. Although air bags are not designed to deploy in every type of collision (such as rollovers and side impacts), they should deploy in accidents where the impact is frontal and the speed at impact is moderate (about 20-25 mph). The failure of the air bag to deploy can be caused by defective sensors or improper placement of the sensors.
8. Lack of an air bag. Air bags are not a new idea. Air bags were first patented in 1920 and the major car companies have been designing and testing them since the 1950s! Ford and GM were selling cars with air bags as early as 1972. Yet, many cars that came off the assembly line in 1997 still did not have air bags. A person who drives a car without an air bag may be in danger of suffering from a preventable serious personal injury in a collision.

If you or a loved one has been seriously injured because of a defective air bag, please contact the Phoenix, AZ personal injury lawyers. We want to help you receive the compensation you may be entitled to under the law.

back to top

Head or Brain Injury

Few personal injury situations are as devastating for families as a head or brain injury. If you or a loved one has suffered from a head injury or Traumatic Brain Injury, our Phoenix personal injury lawyers with Phillips Law Group want to help.

Traumatic head or brain injury results from sudden physical damage to the head or brain. This type of personal injury may be caused by the head forcefully hitting an object such as the dashboard of a car or by something passing through the skull and piercing the brain, as in a gunshot wound. Major causes of head trauma are motor vehicle accidents, falls, sports injuries, violent crimes and child abuse.

The physical, behavioral, or mental changes that may result from a head trauma personal injury depend upon the areas of the head or brain that are injured. Most injuries cause focal brain damage, damage confined to a small area of the brain. The focal damage is most often at the point where the head hits an object or where an object, such as a bullet, enters the brain.

Closed head injuries frequently cause diffuse brain injuries or damage to several other areas of the brain. The diffuse damage occurs when the impact of the personal injury causes the brain to move back and forth against the hard walls of the inside of the skull. The frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, the major speech and language areas, are often injured. When these major speech and language areas are damaged, problems may include voice, swallowing, walking, balance, and coordination difficulties, as well as changes in the ability to smell and in memory or thinking skills.

At Phillips Law Group we can help you with serious injury cases such as head or brain injury. Please contact our Phoenix and Tucson personal injury lawyers to schedule a free office visit.

back to top

Lead Paint / Lead poisoning

Lead poisoning is the number one environmental health threat to children under the age of 6 and it is entirely avoidable. If you or your child has been harmed by lead poisoning, please contact our Phoenix personal injury lawyers to discuss your case free of charge.

Lead poisoning is a disease caused by swallowing or breathing lead. Even small amounts of chipped lead paint or lead dust can be dangerous to children and lead to a personal injury cause of action. Children face great risks because their bodies absorb lead more easily than adults do. Children put everything into their mouths, and no matter how hard you try, it is almost impossible to keep an eye on a toddler every minute.

Lead paint is the major source of lead poisoning in the United States and in AZ it is the basis for many personal injury lawsuits. Chipped or peeling lead paint poses the greatest risk. However, even intact lead paint can create fine lead dust, which may be difficult to see. Millions of homes have lead on windows and sills, doorframes, stairways, railings, banisters, woodwork, molding, porches, and fences.

Lead paint chips, peeling paint, and dust are either inhaled or eaten by children. Children also suck on their hands or toys that have lead dust on them. Some toddlers even eat paint chips or chew on lead painted windowsills and stair rails because the paint chips are sweet.

Have Your Children Been Exposed to Lead Paint?

If your house or building was built before 1978, it is possible that lead paint was used. Peeling paint is a signal that there may be lead in your home. Paint chips containing lead are very dangerous and can cause learning problems. At high levels, lead can cause mental retardation. A blood-lead test is the only way to diagnose lead poisoning. We urge you to test your children to detect lead poisoning in time to prevent or limit injury.

If you suspect that your child has suffered from lead paint or lead poisoning, please take your child to a doctor immediately. Then contact our Arizona personal injury lawyers. We can help you receive the compensation you deserve and are entitled to under the law.

back to top

Plane Crash

Airplane accidents and plane crashes are often avoidable tragedies that result from negligent acts or omissions, or from the failure of a defective part. If you or a loved one is the victim of a plane accident, please contact Phoenix, Arizona personal injury lawyers for help in receiving the compensation you may be entitled to under the law.

Even though we focus our personal injury practice on serious injury cases, at the Phoenix law firm of Phillips Law Group, we treat the area of aviation accidents separately, as it is a highly specialized field of law and requires different treatment and processing than other types of personal injury cases. In Aviation Law, international treaties may come into play to determine compensability of the injured party or their heirs. We represent persons that have been injured in an airplane related accident (as a passenger or a ground victim) and/or the legal heirs or representatives of deceased persons.

back to top

Poor Road Design

Negligent road design on the part of a city, county or state entity can lead to serious personal injury in some cases. When there is a sink hole, pot hole or some other type of road condition that the municipality governing that road should have known about and should have fixed to make a safe roadway, and you are injured because of this, you may be entitled to compensation.

The Phoenix personal injury lawyers at Phillips Law Group can help you if you have been injured due to poor or unsafe road design. It is important to research past accidents and to consider many factors in trying to determine whether or not a government agency is at fault. Accident reconstruction experts and other experts can be used to show poor road design and how it could have led to or contributed to your injuries.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a motor vehicle or other road accident, please contact the Arizona personal injury lawyers at Phillips Law Group. We can investigate your accident and determine if poor road design was a contributing factor.

back to top

Railroad Injuries

Individuals who have worked on our nation's railroads and sustained a personal injury as a result of their employment are protected by The Federal Employee Liability Act (FELA). This law imposes a non-delegable duty on the railroads to provide a safe working environment. Most railroad workers' workplace injuries resulted from the railroad's breach of this duty.

The FELA statute covers all types of personal injury that are work related whether they result from slips and falls, equipment malfunctions, hearing loss from excessive exposure to noise, or exposures to toxic substances such as asbestos, diesel fumes or other toxins in the workplace.

Railroad accidents kill or severely injure a number of victims each year. To prevent these tragedies, railroads have a duty to exercise due care. To protect your rights following a catastrophic injury or wrongful death due to a railroad accident, it is wise to consult a personal injury law firm as soon as possible.

At the Arizona law firm of Phillips Law Group, our Phoenix personal injury lawyers can handle all types of serious personal injury cases and we can help you on railroad cases.

back to top

Tire Tread Separation Cases

If you or a loved one has been harmed due to tire tread separation or other tire defect, our AZ personal injury lawyers with Phillips Law Group are here to help you. Using legal tools such as subpoenas, interrogatories, and depositions, we can help you discover exactly what happened in your situation and help you receive the compensation you may be legally entitled to.

Passenger and light truck tire tread separations are an unfortunate personal injury by-product of steel-belted radial tire technology. Due to the difficulty in obtaining adhesion of steel to rubber there is a potential for tread separation of all steel-belted radial tires. This is true especially at high speeds in hot weather. Industry records verify that tread belt separations are the most common mode of failure of steel belted radial tires. They result from both design and manufacturing defects.

The results of tread separation can be catastrophic personal injury. Tread belt separations frequently cause tire blowout accidents. Even when the tire does not lose pressure, the driver often loses control of the vehicle when the tread and belt separate from the carcass of the tire. These tread belt separations can cause vehicle crash and rollover resulting in serious personal injury and death. This problem is exacerbated by high-center-of-gravity vehicle designs used in popular sport utility vehicles. The tire design problem can be overcome by use of a nylon overlay design modification known as "safety belts", widely used in tires manufactured for the European market as well as many top line American tires. Manufacturing defects can be substantially reduced by appropriate adhesion, proper manufacturing practices, and adequate quality control measures.

After a personal injured in a tire tread separation accident, the tire should be closely inspected for exposed rusty wire, bare wire or brassy wire. Corroded wire is usually evidence of moisture contamination during manufacturing. Bare wire is also an indication of a manufacturing adhesion defect. Brassy wire is a strong indication of no adhesion. High-resolution photographs should be taken of any exposed wire surfaces as quickly after the accident as possible.

Plant practices which contribute to tread belt separation and may be useful in a resulting personal injury lawsuit include the use of over aged "dry" stock, use of petroleum solvent on tire components prior to vulcanization, moisture or foreign matter cured into the tire, improper repairs, inadequate final inspection and an emphasis on production or quantity over quality and safety. Many plants run on twelve-hour shifts with the tire builders working on a quota incentive system; exhaustion may also be a factor.

Bead Failures

Tire bead failure explosions usually occur during the tire mounting process as a result of a latent design defect present in passenger and light truck tires. Most light truck and passenger tires employ a .037 inch weftless bead configuration, which is subject to failure at pressures as low as 38 pounds per square inch. Personal injury due to low-pressure explosions most often occur if the splice of the bead wire becomes impeded during inflation of the tire. This is commonly referred to as bead hang-up and has been documented in the patent literature, industry documents, and litigation since the mid 1950s.

When a bead failure explosion occurs in close proximity to a flat surface the resulting trajectory of the tire and rim can cause devastating personal injury including amputation of limbs, crushing of facial bones and brain damage. The bead design hazard was substantially increased by the introduction of the unnecessary 16.5" rim size, which will allow the mounting of a 16" tire but will always result in bead hang-up and potential low-pressure explosions.

Multi-Piece Wheel Explosions

Multi-piece wheels (rims), often referred to as "widow-makers", have caused countless serious injuries and deaths to tire mounters since their introduction. There are various multi-piece wheel configurations, all of which are potentially dangerous. In almost all applications the multi-piece wheel can and should be replaced by a single-piece configuration wheel which has been available since the mid 1960s and which eliminates this personal injury hazard. OSHA has addressed the problem with guidelines that can somewhat reduce the hazard. However, one can still be injured or killed even if the OSHA guidelines are followed. For example, OSHA guidelines provide that multi-piece wheels should be inflated in safety cages. Tragically, accidents often occur after the tire and wheels are removed from the safety cage for mounting on the vehicle.

Zipper Failures

A personal injury caused by a sidewall zipper failure typically occurs during the inflation process. There is almost no way to determine whether a tire is subject to zipper failure. When the sidewall of a tire catastrophically fails the inflator and/or bystanders often suffer serious personal injury. These failures are referred to as "zipper failures" because of the appearance of the sidewall after the explosion. Despite widespread documentation of the problem and numerous accidents and injuries, the only action taken by the tire industry to date has been to issue vague warnings of the hazard.

If you or a loved one has suffered an injury due to the action or inaction of another, please contact the Phoenix, Arizona personal injury lawyers with Phillips Law Group. We can help preserve and gather evidence, develop your case, and negotiate a settlement or represent you at trial.

back to top