- Defective products
- Trucking and motor
vehicle collisions - Insurance claims and
disputes - Nursing home neglect
- Medical negligence,
drugs, and medical
products - Aircraft, railroad, and
boating accidents - Construction and
industrial accidents - Fire, toxic, and
chemical injuries - Public interest and
environmental work
Your Case
Representative Cases
- Defective tractor design: Brain injury
- Defective automobile tire: Wrongful death
- Defective child car restraint seat: Quadriplegia
- Defective Generic Pharmaceutical Medication
- Defective pharmaceutical drugs: Death
Defective tractor design: Brain injury
A 19 year old employee of a Lane County grass seed farm was part of a team bringing in the grass seed crop, using specialized tractors that cut the grass and pushed it through augers to form windrows. A co-worker, whose machine became jammed, had placed an unplugging wrench on the machine before the 19 year old was sent over to help get that tractor running again. A supervisor soon arrived and sent the young man back to his own tractor. The supervisor did not realize that a wrench was on the jammed machine and started it up, causing the wrench to fly up into the air and down into the young man's head, resulting in severe brain injury.
We brought a product liability claim in behalf of this man, and eventually tried his case against the manufacturer of the specialized grass seed harvesting machinery because of the machine's dangerously defective design. Most of the design deficiencies could have been taken care of by a $2.88 interlock switch, the kind that is used throughout industry and in innumerable consumer products, and indeed elsewhere on the same grass seed harvesting machine.
The trial involved testimony by experts in mechanical engineering, product design, brain injury medicine, physical therapy, life care planning, vocational consulting, economics, farming, and human factors, in addition to numerous witnesses. The jury found that the manufacturer was negligent and that its machine design was defective and unreasonably dangerous. It assessed the employee's losses in the amount of $4,040,000.00. The case is currently on appeal
Defective automobile tire: Wrongful death
Don Corson represented an Oregon widow and her four children in a $1.87 million federal wrongful death case. The jury returned a unanimous verdict against the manufacturer of a defective tire that exploded, causing a fatal collision. Prosecution of the case involved extensive investigation, working with law enforcement agencies, mechanical engineers, experts in tire design, materials, and manufacturing, and an internationally-recognized tire failure analysis expert. The trial team was able to show that there was a manufacturing defect which created a separation between the tire body and tread that was allowed to grow over time until the tire failed catastrophically in a sudden explosive event. Compensation was later reduced by the court to $1.4 million in order to comply with Oregon's cap on damages in wrongful death cases.
Defective child car restraint seat: Quadriplegia
Don Corson represented a three-year old Central Oregon girl who was restrained in a booster-style child car seat in the back seat of her family's car. An oncoming car lost control on the volcanic grit left by the highway maintenance trucks, crossed the centerline, and struck the family's car nearly head-on. The child suffered a terrible injury to the spinal cord near the top of her neck, causing her to be permanently paralyzed below the head. The booster style car seat lacked straps or other means of restraining a child's upper body, allowing the head to be thrown forward forcefully during a collision, while the lower body is restrained. This combination can tend to pull or snap the spinal cord just below the base of the head. The adverse driver settled for her liability insurance policy limits. The case against the child car seat manufacturer resolved under a confidential arrangement.
Defective Generic Pharmaceutical Medication
Too often, a prescription medication is made into a generic version without updating information about adverse reactions. We represented a teenager who had a severe, life-threatening adverse reaction to a generic broad-spectrum antibiotic, minocycline, which had been prescribed for her acne. The manufacturer of the generic drug knew of problems with the medication that were not listed on the drug's brand-name label. The generic manufacturer contended that FDA rules required only that it match the brand-name label, even when it was aware of problems greater or other than those mentioned in the brand-name label. We worked with experts in warnings, pharmaceutical marketing, FDA regulatory compliance, and medicine on the case. After extensive discovery, the generic manufacturer moved for summary judgment based on the federal preemption doctrine, arguing that given the FDA rules the young woman was not entitled to present her case at trial. The judge hearing the motion disagreed, and shortly afterwards the case settled for $635,000.00.
Defective pharmaceutical drugs: Death
Don Corson represented the family of a forty-five year old woman who had no history of heart disease but who died suddenly and unexpectedly from cardiac arrhythmia. The Medical Examiner determined that the cause of her death was a toxic build-up of a medication. The case against the drug company was mediated through the federal court, resulting in a strict confidentiality agreement which unfortunately prevents us from sharing any additional information.
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