Columbia MO Personal Injury Law Blog

A 36-year-old man from southern Missouri has been sentenced to four years in prison for his alleged involvement in a hit-and-run accident that occurred in August 2011. He has said he remembers very little from the night of the car accident, in which an 18-year-old male on a motorized scooter died.

According to reports, the teen was slowing to make a right turn on his scooter when he was hit from behind by a pickup truck. The truck fled the scene, leaving behind some paint chips and broken parts. Investigators from the Missouri State Highway Patrol discovered that the truck had dark blue metallic paint.

After a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri turned down several class-action lawsuits, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has rejected a petition to ban bisphenol A in food packaging. The chemical, also known as BPA, spawned several product liability suits against manufacturers.

Experts believe that the denials issued by the FDA and the U.S. District Court will diminish the number of suits brought against companies for the undisclosed use of BPA. More than a dozen class-action suits were filed against manufacturers in 2008. Many plaintiffs in these cases have stated that they would not have purchased products -- such as baby bottles and sports bottles -- if the purported effects of BPA were well-known or indicated on the product.

According to the coroner for Livingston County, Missouri, a former respiratory therapist at the Hedrick Medical Center in Chillicothe, Missouri, may have been administering lethal doses of drugs to several patients, causing them to lose their lives while in the care of the hospital. Eight wrongful death suits have been filed in the Livingston County Circuit Court since 2008. They are associated with seven suspicious deaths and a resuscitation that occurred between January and May 2002.

The civil suits suggest that the respiratory therapist at the time was purposefully injecting patients with insulin, succinylcholine and other drugs. According to an attorney with the former therapist, she denies the claims and was not aware of the suits until last month.

Earlier this month, a school bus with 35 students and a driver overturned on Highway C near Belgrade, Missouri, in what can only be described as a parent's worst nightmare. Eleven of the students were hospitalized after the bus slid off a two-lane road and into a ditch. The automobile accident occurred approximately 60 miles southwest of St. Louis.

Students on the bus ranged from kindergarten to 12th grade. They were riding on a bus from the Valley R-6 School District in the afternoon when the crash occurred. According to the district superintendent, a student may have been distracting the driver when the accident happened. If that is the case, any parents looking to hold someone accountable for the accident may want to speak with the parents of that child.