Does California Allow a Choice of Tests in a DUI Case?

by Matthew J. Ruff

As a Torrance DUI Lawyer I am very frequently consulted about the various forms of alcohol testing methadology.  In California you have a choice of breath, blood or urine (Urine is allowed only after you complete a breath test). If you choose breath, many jurisdictions permit you to have a second test of blood or urine; this is because a breath sample is not saved and so cannot later be re-analyzed by the defense. In California, most breath tests are administered back at the police station, however more jurisdictions are now conducting point of arrest breath analysis.

Analysis of a blood sample is potentially the most accurate. Breath machines are susceptible to a number of problems rendering them often unreliable. The least accurate by far, however, is urinalysis. Thus, if you are confident that you are sober, a blood sample is the wise choice; urine, being least accurate and most easily impeached, is the best option if you believe your blood-alcohol concentration is above the legal limit.

Whiplash: Neck Injury 101

Car crashes often result to various bodily injuries such as whiplash neck injury. Also known as neck sprain or neck strain, whiplash is an injury of the soft tissues of the neck caused by its sudden extension and flexion. This kind of injury is common in rear end accidents where the neck is rapidly jolted back and forth. It may also manifest in trip or slip and fall cases.
The sudden movement of the neck can cause some of its muscles and ligaments to stretch more than the usual. Severe whiplash injury can damage the spine or spinal cord. It can also injure the cervical muscles, intervertebral joints, ligaments, discs and nerve roots.

Signs of Whiplash

Whiplash neck injuries are very common. Even slight car bumps could result to enough whipping to the neck that may trigger the symptoms.
Symptoms of neck injuries may manifest either immediately after the accident or several days after. Its symptoms may include the following:

• Neck Stiffness and Pain
• Myofascial injuries or injuries to the muscles and ligaments
• Headache, dizziness and blurred vision
• Difficulty swallowing and chewing and hoarseness of voice
• Paresthesias or abnormal sensations such as burning or prickling
• Shoulder and back pains
• Irritability

Treatment for Whiplash Injuries

Luckily, whiplash is curable. Upon treatment, most symptoms are gone completely.
At first, it is treated with a soft cervical collar. This collar could be worn for 2 to 3 weeks.
For major cases, therapy and medications are advised. It may include:

• Warm therapy to reduce muscle tension and pain
• Medications for pain such as analgesics and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
• Muscle relaxants
• Physiotherapy or range of motion exercises and physical therapy on the neck

Severe extension injuries, however, require surgical intervention.

Whiplash Prevention

Head restraints are equally important as seatbelts. They stop the head from making unnecessary movements during the point of impact. They can make the journey uncomfortable but the benefits are enormous. Moreover, correct adjustment of the head restraint could make the journey safer.
Whiplash neck injuries just like any other injuries need medical attention. Expectedly, the victim has to visit a medical provider for examination and tests, if necessary.
To alleviate the pain and suffering of the victim physically and financially, a personal injury case could be filed against the negligent party to compensate him for the damage. The victim may engage the services of a car accident lawyer in pursuing his claim.

Dangerous Defective Drugs

Pharmaceutical companies manufacture and market hundreds of new drugs each year. Each product is regulated and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before it reaches the consumer, yet every year over 200,000 people die from using these drugs. It is estimated that more than 50% of all the drugs marketed to the American consumer have deleterious effects, despite testing and FDA regulation.

Among the recent examples of harmful drugs, most were withdrawn from sale within 12 months of release. However, some were still marketed by drug companies even after evidence of serious side effects or death had been noted. By law, drug manufacturers are strictly liable for injuries if the product they sell is defective or unreasonably dangerous. This can happen in several ways.

The product may be defective because of an error in the manufacturing process. Consumers may not be warned of possible bad effects from the use of the product. The product has a design flaw that makes it dangerous.

In all of these cases, the manufacturer is liable and can be sued for damages even if they were unaware of the danger. It does not matter how carefully the product was produced or labeled.

Many pharmaceutical products have caused such widespread injury that thousands of lawsuits, called mass tort litigation, have been filed against the manufacturers. Some of these drugs include: Vioxx, Bextra, Zyprexa, Plavix and Celebrex. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals has paid billions of dollars for injuries sustained due to use of the weight-loss drug combination known as Fen Phen.

Of additional concern are the dietary supplements which are becoming increasingly popular. The FDA requires that manufacturers assure that such supplements are safe before selling them, but no formal testing or approval requirements exist.

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Accutane	Dostinex	Plavix	Rezulin	Trovan
Actonel	Duract	PPA Products	Risperdal	Viagra
Arava	Fosamax	Prempro	Ritalin	Vioxx
Avandia	Ketek	Prilosec	Serentil	Zoloft
Baycol	Lamisil	Prevacid	Seroquel	Zyban
Bextra	Meridia	Propulsid	Serzone
Cardura	Nexium	Prozac	Sporanox
Celebrex	Ortho Evra	Raplon	SSRI Drugs
Celexa	Oxycontin	Raxar	Stadol
Comfrey	Paxil	Remicade	Tequin
Crestor	Permax	ReNu	Trasylol

Can Attending a Cheaper Law School Lead to a Big Firm Job?

Posted by Brian Baxter

Times are tough for today's law students. Big law firms are reducing the size of their summer classes and even graduates of top-ranked law schools are having a tough time finding a job.

Given the state of the economy, it seems an appropriate time to compare two recent surveys to consider whether attending a cheaper, less prestigious law school can still land students lucrative jobs at Am Law firms.

The National Jurist this week released its list of Best Value Law Schools, the 65 schools that offer law students the "best bang for their buck" based on the cost of attending those schools and on the percentage of those schools' graduates who passed the bar and got jobs. (Hat Tip: Paul Caron's Tax Prof Blog.)

To determine what makes a law school a "best value," the magazine considered only public schools with in-state tuition of less than $25,000 and private schools with annual tuition of less than $30,000. The magazine for law students then narrowed its list to schools with an employment rate of at least 85 percent and a bar passage rate higher than the state average. It then ranked the schools, giving the greatest weight to tuition, followed by employment statistics. The magazine relied on information from the 2009 edition of the Official Guide to ABA-approved Law Schools; the ABA's data was collected in the fall of 2008. (See The National Jurist's full chart by clicking here.)

So the students passed the bar and landed jobs. But what types of jobs? Are these grads, we wondered, going on to work as associates at Am Law firms? To find out, we compared the list to The National Law Journal's 2008 survey of the 20 schools that send the most graduates to the country's largest 250 firms (the NLJ survey appeared in the paper's annual Law Schools Report).

The results weren't surprising.

None of the schools on the National Jurist's list were among the 20 law schools with the highest-percentage of graduates landing jobs in The NLJ 250. (Predictably, law schools like Columbia, Chicago, Pennsylvania, NYU, and Northwestern topped The NLJ's list with more than 65 percent of the graduates of those schools landing jobs at large firms.) 

Still, for those attending the "best value" schools on the National Jurist's list, there is hope of work (plus a lot less debt when they graduate).

Another NLJ study, this one in the publication's 2008 Law Schools Report, examined a bigger sample law graduates of the class of 2005 and where they found work. Many of the schools ranked this year by the Naitonal Jurist appeared on that list, including North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, BYU, Georgia State, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, LSU, Louisville, Kentucky, and Missouri-Kansas City.

Of course, today's legal job market is a far cry from that of 2005. And as law professors William Henderson and Andrew Morriss wrote in The NLJ last year, lower-ranked schools can provide students with more opportunities in the long run. Less debt lessens the need to pursue a job at a large firms.

Automobile Accidents

Thousands of people are killed and millions are injured in motor vehicle crashes. These crashes frequently are caused by the negligence of other drivers, leading to death or injury for these drivers as well as for innocent victims. Motor vehicle accidents can have many causes, but they most simply can be divided among negligence, intentional misconduct, or product liability. While it is true that accidents can be caused by a so-called "act of nature" such as earthquakes, this is rare.

Negligence is one of the primary causes of automobile accidents. Negligent acts mean that the driver causing the accident did not exercise reasonable care. Examples include driving too fast or too slowly for the conditions, allowing oneself to be distracted, and carelessly ignoring traffic signals or conditions. There are many areas in which negligence can occur, but the common thread is that negligence is a failure to be careful rather than an act intended to cause harm. A person who is distracted and rear-ends another vehicle at a red light is negligent.

Intentional misconduct, on the other hand, is an action committed when the person knew that doing so could cause harm and did not care, or actively desired to harm others. Someone who drives at a high rate of speed, cutting in and out of traffic, is intentionally putting himself and others at risk.

The law of strict liability could apply in some circumstances, and neither negligence nor intent would need to be shown. A third cause of auto accidents is product failure, a prime example of which being the Firestone tire litigation. In those cases, defects in the tires caused accidents beyond drivers' control. The defects were not intentional but under the law, the manufacturer was responsible. A similar situation could exist if a repair to the car was done improperly and resulted in a crash. In some states, in the case of auto accidents caused by drunk drivers, the business or host who supplied the alcohol and allowed the driver to drive in an intoxicated condition could be found to have a secondary liability.