Minneapolis Personal Injury Blog

Dimitrious Biller of Pacific Palisades, the former litigation manager for Toyota Sales USA, Inc. has filed a lawsuit in United States District Court claiming that Toyota forced him to hide damaging information to Toyota in court cases and made him quit his position with the company in September 2007.

In the lawsuit dated July 24, 2009, filed in Los Angeles, Biller alleges that Toyota destroyed data showing that their vehicles had substandard roofs in over 300 accidents.  Other documents supposedly illegally withheld included emails and other computer saved information.

Biller worked for Toyota from 2003 to 2007 in a position that included defending the company in personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits involving sport utility vehicles and trucks involved in rollover accidents.  Victims of these accidents believed that the problem was Toyota’s weak roof design and construction.  Since Biller’s lawsuit has been filed, Toyota has tried to keep the Complaint from public exposure because the allegations supposedly included confidential information that Biller agreed not to publish as part of his 2007 severance agreement.

Biller states in his lawsuit that he was harassed by Toyota employees both before and after he left his legal position at Toyota.  At the time he left Toyota, he received a severance payment of 3.7 million dollars and he agreed to not discuss internal Toyota information.  Toyota is claiming that Biller has violated this condition of his severance agreement and that his lawsuit is merely the baseless allegations of a disgruntled ex-employee.

Legal experts agree that if Toyota loses the Biller lawsuit, that it could result in past cases being re-opened that Toyota won or settled over the last two decades.

An August 2009, report published by the American Association of Justice based on data obtained from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has concluded that as of April 2007, there were at least 28,000 trucking businesses, owning over 200,000 trucks that were operating in violation of safety standards.  These violations included overloading trucks, unmaintained tires and brakes, unqualified or untrained truck drivers and truck driver compensation formulas that encouraged drivers to drive faster than posted speed limits and to exceed maximum driving hours.  Over one-half of the violations were for defective brakes.  Companies in Minnesota that have received either conditional or unsatisfactory safety ratings can be found at www.justice.org/trucksafetyviolations.

Current statistics reveal that over 4,000 people are killed on US roads every year in truck accidents and 80,000 people suffer serious injuries.  In Minnesota alone, there were 84 deaths involving large trucks in 2007.  The large majority of people killed in these collisions with trucks are drivers

On August 27, 2009, Lisa Ann Roden of Excelsior, Minnesota was hit on by another cyclist in a tunnel located at the Hyland Lake Park Reserve in Bloomington, Minnesota. Ms. Roden was transported by ambulance to Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis where she died the next day because of her head injury. This fatal head injury occurred in spite of the fact that Ms. Roden was wearing a protective helmet at the time of the crash.

The tunnel in which the accident occurred had been a point of concern before the fatal accident because of a combination of a curve on the trail and a downhill run that creates bad sightlines for bicyclist using the tunnel. Park users warned Three Rivers Park District that there were bicyclist accidents happening at this point resulting in serious injuries prior to the fatal accident. These past warnings, combined with Ms. Roden’s fatal bike accident, have Park Officials now considering whether to add new safety precautions, including more signs warning bicyclists about the dangerous area or better markings dividing the bike path lanes.

On July 26, 2009, the State of Minnesota sued URS Corporation, the engineering firm that provided consulting work for the I-35W Bridge that collapsed on August 2, 2007, that resulted in 13 people being killed and 145 people being injured. Last year the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the likely cause of the bridge collapse was the failure of dangerously thin gusset plates supporting the structure and heavy loads on the bridge.

In litigation pleadings filed in Hennepin County District, URS claims that they were not hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation for a re-evaluation of the bridge’s original design and should not be responsible for design defects that lead to the motorists and passengers falling off the collapsed bridge into the Mississippi River.

The State of Minnesota’s lawsuit against URS seeks $37,000,000.00 in payments already made by the State through the Special Victims Fund and to reimburse the State for possible future payments to Progressive Contractors, Inc. employees who were working on the bridge on the day that the structure collapsed.

On August 16, 2009, Timothy Allen Rausch of Cushing, Minnesota swerved over the centerline of County Road 17, near Ople, Minnesota, and crashed into a car driven by Ryan DeZurik, a recent graduate of St. Cloud Christian School and a current student at Rasmussen College. Mr. DeZurik was pronounced at the scene of the car accident.

A preliminary breath test that police officers took of Mr. Rausch showed that he had a blood alcohol concentration of .346, which is more than four times the legal limit of .08. Mr. Rausch explained to police he was trying to avoid a deer in the road at the time he smashed into Mr. DeZurik’s car.

The Stearns County Attorney’s Office is waiting for the results of blood tests to determine whether to charge Mr. Rausch with Criminal Vehicular Homicide.

Keith Heimer, 56, of Golden Valley, Minnesota was killed on June 22, 2009, in an one-car accident near Squaw Lake in Itasca County. Keith Heimer was a passenger in a car driving by Mark Heimer of White Bear Lake, Minnesota at which time their vehicle crossed over the northbound lane of Highway 46, landed in a ditch and struck trees. Both Mark Heimer and another passenger, Rhett Witschen of Eagan, Minnesota were treated for injuries, including cuts and bruises. The Minnesota State Patrol investigated this one car collision and reported that the cause of the car crash was the driver falling asleep.

An increasing amount of scientific research concludes that drivers who use cellphones while operating their cars are four times as likely to be in a car accidents then other drivers. This increased risk of being in a car collision is similar to when an automobile driver has a blood alcohol concentration of over.08, which is considered intoxicated in Minnesota. One of the surprising research results is that hands free devices might actually increase the risk of accidents because of the false suggestion that this behavior is safer.

Since there seems to be a wide recognition among drivers that use of cell phones, navigation devices, and computer laptops make it more likely that a driver could be involved in a car collision, then if raises the question as to why drivers willingly put themselves at increased harm? Researchers indicate that social pressure of staying in touch with friends and business colleagues outweighs the concern of being in an accident. Furthermore, scientific research suggests that cellphone use results in a neurological response of an adrenaline rush that cannot be reached from basic driving.

In 2008, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published a study that during daylight hours in 2007, there is an estimated 1.9 million drivers actively using cell phones.

On July 24, 2009, Minneapolis car dealer, Denny Hecker, plead guilty in Hennepin County District Court to Careless Driving. The factual basis of the plea negotiation was that Mr. Hecker was texting on his cellular telephone and was not watching the road when he lost control of his vehicle and caused a one-car accident. Mr. Hecker’s criminal defense lawyer claimed that the car accident was not caused by the effect of Mr. Hecker’s six prescription drugs found in his blood system when he was injured in the December 3, 2008, collision in Plymouth, Minnesota. Nevertheless, Mr. Hecker was order to serve a sentence similar other first time DWI offenders in Hennepin County.

In the fourth annual survey published on June 16, 2009, AutoVantage ranked the least and worst cities for road rage in America. Minneapolis /St. Paul ranked the fifth worst city for road rage in our country. The worst city for road rage is New York, followed by Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta, and Minneapolis/St. Paul. The most courteous city for is Portland, followed by Cleveland, Baltimore, Sacramento and Pittsburg. www.affiniongroupmedia.com/themes/site_themes/affinionassets/releases/autovantage/Road_Rage_09

The survey asked consumers about the major cause for road rage. The most frequent responses included speeding, tailgating, talking on cell phones, accidents, traffic problems, and drivers who act like they own the road.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that aggressive driving is the cause of approximately one-third of all car accident and about two-thirds of car accident, truck accident fatalities.

If you or your family members have been injured in a car or truck accident, contact a car accident or truck accident lawyer at Howard W. Sussman & Associates. You cant contact us at 612-332-4830 by contacting us through our website at www.sussmanlaw.com.

Howard W. Sussman & Associates have offices in Plymouth, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Burnsville, Minnesota. Arrangements can be made for hospital, home or office visits for a free consultation.

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute released a new study on July 27, 2009, based on equipping trucks with video cameras and tracking approximately three million miles of hauling goods across the country. The study highlights the time that drivers were not looking at the road while sending and receiving texts. In situations where an accident occurred, or a near collision happened, drivers focused on their device for approximately five seconds, which at highway speeds equals the length of a football field. Rick Hanowski, who was in charge of the study stated that, “texting is in its own universe of risks” of contributing to car accidents and trucks accidents.

One area of surprise in the study was that research contradicts previously reported risks of talking and listening to cellphones. This study concludes that listening and talking on a cellphone does not increase the risk of an accident nearly as much as the previously report comparison to a driver operating their vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.