Alabama Injury Attorneys Blog

An Alabama auto accident on U.S. Hwy 82 near Echola Road has left four people dead. The car accident killed two sisters, LeWanna Nettles, 59 years-old, and Stephanie Nettles Barnes, 54 years-old and two children on Wednesday night. Both sisters taught at Aliceville High School before retiring at the end of the 2009-2010 school year. LeWanna Nettles taught social studies for over 30 years, while her sister Stephanie Barnes taught consumer science for 23 years.

The Alabama sisters along with their two children, ages 8 and 2, were traveling in a Mitsubishi Mirage at the time of the accident. According to an eye witness, it appeared an 18-wheeler tried to avoid hitting another car that ran a stop sign, and thus struck the teacher's car.

The driver of the 18-wheeler, Brian Dreasher, 43 of Kissimmee, Florida and a 16-year-old from Gordo, Alabama were also injured in the trucking accident.

The Alabama car accident occurred around 9:20 p.m. on Wednesday. It is unclear where the family had been traveling from at the time of the accident. But according to friends of the deceased, they were driving from Tuscaloosa to Pickens County at the time of the accident.

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The Federal Drug and Safety Administration recently announced they will significantly restrict and limit the use of Avandia for use in diabetic patients. The FDA's announcement follows a recent July 2010 recommendation of completely pulling the diabetes drug of the market.

Avandia, an insulin-controlling prescription drug manufactured and marketed by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for patients with diabetes, quickly became the "world's best selling drug for Type 2 diabetes." Avandia is one of a class of three drugs with similar mechanisms that help control blood sugar levels in diabetic patients by regulating their bodies own insulin levels. When Avandia initially launched in the market (1999) it was intended to replace Rezulin, an insulin-controlling drug that was later pulled from the market because it caused liver damage. The third drug in the class, Actos, manufactured by Takeda Pharmaceuticals, has so far appeared safe with few side effects.

In a 2007 study by Dr. Steven E. Nissen, Avandia was found to increase the risk of heart attacks by 43%. An FDA advisory board later voted to keep the drug on the market but attached a black box warning (a label indicating the significant drugs risk to patients). After Dr. Nissen's study was reported and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, sales of Avandia rapidly declined. And after the FDA's recent announcement limiting the use of the drug, sales are likely to rapidly diminish.

Europe has entirely suspended the use of Avandia, while patients in the United States will only be allowed access to the drug if they have failed all other options. According to an article in the New York Times, this "marks a new era in the treatment diabetes." It is estimated that 23.6 million Americans suffer from diabetes in the United States and every year 1.6 million new cases are diagnosed.

Interesting enough, GlaxoSmithKline has already settled several Avandia lawsuits prior to the FDA's announcement regarding limited used of the drug. In July, 2010, Avandia agreed to pay about $460 million to 10,000 patients affected by taking the insulin-controlling drug. It was reported in March that GSK had over $3.5 billion set aside fore "legal disputes."

A family of three was burned to death in an apartment fire in Birmingham, Alabama early Sunday morning. Claudia Dukes, 25-years-old, and her two children, 8-year-old Jordan Dukes, and 3-year-old Jakayla Gamble all died in the Beacon View Apartments Fire. The victims were trapped in the bathroom when the fire spread through their apartment.

Dukes' husband was away from the apartment with their infant when the fire began. He later told police that Dukes called him when the fire started and "he told them to bust a window and get out." However, the three victims went into their bathroom and huddled there- that is where the three were found after the fire. Smoke inhalation has been determined as the cause of death.

According to reports, the fire was reported around 5:20 A.M. Sunday morning and took nearly 50 firefighters over an hour to put out the flames. A total of 10 units were destroyed in the fire and several injuries reported after the fire.

Two people were taken to a nearby hospital for ankle injuries sustained from jumping from the burning building, while three other people were hospitalized due to smoke inhalation.

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A California Nursing Home has agreed to a $50 Million settlement for a nursing home neglect lawsuit that threatened to bankrupt the Orange County based company, Skilled Healthcare Group, Inc. In July, 2010, jurors awarded named plaintiff, Cindy Cool, and the 32,000 patients she represented, an enormous punitive damage award in the amount of $677 Million.

Cool claimed the short-handed staff at Eureka Healthcare and Rehabilitation, a facility owned and operated by Skilled Healthcare Group, Inc., routinely neglected her Alzheimer-suffering father. During testimony, Cool stated that in her daily visits to her father she routinely found him wearing urine soaked clothes. And that it would take the understaffed nursing home some 20 minutes to respond and help Cool clean and change her father. According to Cool, many patients fared a lot worse than her father.

On July 6th, 2010, the jury found Skilled Healthcare violated numerous state regulations requiring a minimum number of nurses on duty at their facilities at all times. The initial $677 million jury verdict was said to be the largest verdict awarded in the country this year and sent "shock waves" through the industry." The jury returned their verdict after a six month trail that was originally filed in 2006. However, the huge verdict would ultimately bankrupt Skilled Healthcare Group, Inc., the 10th largest nursing home company in the United States, so a settlement agreement was offered. Skilled Healthcare operates in 5 states and employes some 14,500 people throughout the country.

Skilled Healthcare, along with many of 16,100 nursing homes nationwide, is a public company and traded on the New York Stock Exchange. After the July jury verdict, the stock price plummeted to around $3.50 a share. Since the final settlement agreement of $50 Million, the company's stock price has risen 25 percent and closed yesterday at $4.38.

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A Montgomery, Alabama woman was killed in a Boating Accident over the weekend on Lake Martin. The woman, tragically killed over Labor Day weekend, was 26-year-old Ashley Williams, a Virginia native that moved to Montgomery only two months ago. According to local authorities, Williams fell off the front of a pontoon boat and died after the boat propeller ran over her. Along with Williams, 8-10 other people were on the boat at the time of the accident.

It is unknown at this point whether Williams died from drowning or from injuries related to the accident.

No arrests have been made at this time, but alcohol is believed to have been a factor.

Sgt. Gary Buchanan of the Alabama Marine Police said the Alabama Boating Accident occurred in the Tallassee Slough just off Kowaliga Bay in the southern part of the lake. The accident occurred around 11:00 p.m.

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