Washington updates tagged with 'Construction Accidents'

The state of California Insurance Commissioner, Steve Poizner, announced on March 19, 2008, that his agency was ordering Allstate Insurance Corporation to reduce insurance rates in California by 15.9%. So what's the reason Allstate's rates are so high? So high that the California Insurance Commissioner has to order the company to reduce prices? Confirming what personal injury attorneys have...

Continue article

Capitalism is good. Profit is good. Free enterprise is good. It seems we all want to make money and we all want to pay less for the things we buy. If a company can sell the same quality item cheaper than their competitor, why shouldn't they? Especially if it means the competitor loses sales and they end up profiting as a result by selling even more of the discounted item. That's the way...

Continue article

Buried back on the 2nd page of the Metro section, the above story title appeared in the March 12, 2008 Oregonian Newspaper. Note it says fatalities, not injuries. Injuries, whether serious life threatening ones or merely something from which you recover, are separate numbers. So what type of hospital errors caused 24 deaths? All ones that were easily preventable. The article described some...

Continue article

Oregon is about to put an Initiative on the ballot that would limit contingent fees charged by attorneys. At first glance you'd think this is a good idea. Don't lawyers make lots of money? Why shouldn't we pass laws that limit what they can charge? Once again the usual urban myths are trotted out by the people who have the most to gain by proclaiming them. Do lawyers make a lot of money? ...

Continue article

A not entirely new practice by insurance companies is being used more and more lately. Oral releases. Calling up an injured consumer after an accident and asking if they want to settle over the phone. Insurance companies train adjusters to make immediate contact after an accident. Often before the injured party has called a lawyer or has any idea about their rights or the value of their...

Continue article

You get hurt at work. You file a workers compensation claim. But that shouldn't be the end of the story. Workers compensations claims yield significantly less money for injured workers than third-party personal injury claims. A good example appeared in the paper recently. Rolondo Dudley, 32, suffered a compound fracture on his right leg during a construction accident this past Friday. Dudley...

Continue article

Last spring Hiawatha Elementary School in Othello was conducting their annual science experiment where students make protective egg cases that they test by dropping eggs from various heights.The experiment took a tragic turn when the boom lift truck holding a line worker and a teacher broke, causing both to fall 20 to 30 feet to the ground. Robert D. Smith, 50, died and a teacher, Melissa...

Continue article

A construction worker, 40, of Plainfield, was killed in a construction accident after falling eleven stories down an elevator shaft at a Loop construction site, Saturday morning.The worker was working on renovations of a downtown office located on the 11th floor of the building, according to Chicago police. He stepped into the dimly lit rear freight elevator attempting to go down, but the...

Continue article

A construction worker died on Monday after falling 60 feet from a tower crane in Belltown. While working on condominiums located on Third Avenue and Battery Street the worker, a man in his 40s, slipped and fell while climbing a ladder to the crane's cab. After landing on concrete below, the worker was taken to Harborview Medical Center, where he later died.The Department of Labor and...

Continue article

A Seattle construction worker was injured on the job early Wednesday. The worker, a man in 20s, was about 50 feet down in a hole when he was hit with an air hose. The air hose hit the worker hard enough to cause cuts and bruising to his abdominal area. The injured man was rescued by firefighters who lowered a stretcher in to the hole and then used a crane to lift the man out. He was then...

Continue article

A 21-year old man from Bellevue was hit and killed by a dump truck Friday. The Bellevue man was attempting to cross Northeast 36th Street at the same time that the dump truck was turning onto Northeast 36th Street. At this time the police do not believe that the driver was at fault in this accident. With all the construction going on around Seattle injuries to both construction workers and even...

Continue article

On October 9th a construction worker at Microsoft in Redmond was injured when a boom truck tipped over. The Department of Labor & Industries, an agency designed to protect and advocate for workers, will do an investigation as to the cause of the accident. It will focus on the cause of the accident and what the general contractor could have done to make the construction site safer for not only...

Continue article

Last week L&I employee Bill Harmon fell and suffered fatal injuries at the Department's headquarters. Mr. Harmon was 87."Although there were no witnesses to this unfortunate situation, L&I employees heard the sounds of a fall and responded immediately. They called 9-1-1, notified building security, and took action to block the area. In addition, a number of L&I staff went to the hospital to...

Continue article

A 28 year old Tenino man died last week when he slipped at an Olympia construction site, hit his head on a backhoe and fell 15 feet into a ditch. The construction site was operated by Olson Brothers Excavating, Inc. This was the second construction-related death in a week in Thurston County. Washington's Industrial Insurance Act allows for fault-free "worker's compensation" benefits to...

Continue article

A construction worker was killed in an accident on Highway 20 in LaConner yesterday.The worker was killed in a construction zone near Milepost 53 near LaConner at about 8:15 a.m.Transportation Department spokesman Dustin Terpening said the worker was hit by a street sweeper that was backing up. Washington law provides for worker's compensation, a fault-free system of recovery for people injured...

Continue article