Pittsburgh Personal Injury Law Blog

Sometimes, car accidents in Pennsylvania leave occupants with catastrophic injuries that affect their lives for the rest of their days. If you were left with a spinal injury after a crash, you might find coping with the consequences easier if you understood the structure and functions of the different parts of the spinal cord. The area in which damage to your spinal cord occurred will determine the level of disability it caused.

Your spinal cord connects your body and your brain, and it carries messages to the brain and instructions back to the body. The stretch between your brain and your neck is the cervical spine, and the portion of your spine from the neck to the mid-back is the thoracic spine. The spinal cord runs through those sections, and the lumbar spine, or lower back, is where the nerve roots branch out to your legs.

In a nursing home, there are requirements that the staff must meet in order to keep patients safe. Some of those requirements include providing:

• Adequate shelter
• Appropriate food and enough food
• Appropriate clothing for the season
• Medical care in a timely fashion
• Supervision
• Bathing services
• Assistance with dressing or getting to and from the restroom
• Failing to do these simple tasks can hurt an elderly person's ability to survive in the facility without injuries or illnesses. No elder should have to struggle to get by without the necessities, and it is illegal for nursing homes not to provide patients with what they need to remain comfortable as much as possible.

How does the Nursing Home Reform Act help?

Pittsburgh is known for its advanced manufacturing industry, and if this is the industry in which you earn your income, you will face multiple hazards during each shift you work. Although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration prescribes a long list of safety regulations and guidelines, accidents can happen at any time. Relying entirely on your employer to protect you from injuries might not be enough, and taking your own precautions might be smart.

You will not likely be able to anticipate all the circumstances that might arise to threaten your safety, but gathering knowledge on the most common occupational hazards, and how to mitigate them, might keep you out of the hospital. The best place to start might be to make sure you always wear appropriate personal protective equipment and comply with safety standards.

Sometimes, when there are problems with the verdict of a case, a defendant's legal team will appeal it. That happened in a case that went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but the court has decided not to hear arguments about the case.

The case involves the family of a 6-year-old child who was killed in an auto accident. The case was filed after an incident where the victim's vehicle had malfunctioned, resulted in him stopping it in the middle of a Route 28. Inside, his vehicle contained his two sons and wife.