Scalding Tap Water Can Harm Children in Seconds

Most tap water is regulated such that it never gets above 120 or 125 degrees. But you should be aware that if something goes wrong and the water becomes even a little hotter than it should, it can cause serious injuries – particularly to small children.

Most commonly, this is a problem in apartment buildings where the landlord is careless about maintenance. If the landlord doesn’t set the regulator properly, doesn’t fix a broken regulator, or doesn’t install an anti-scald device on faucets, the temperature can quickly become dangerous…and in some cases, even fatal. A number of lawsuits have been brought against landlords for such carelessness.

Many injuries occur when parents attempt to bathe babies or small children in a sink.

When the water temperature reaches 140 degrees, it takes only one second of exposure for a baby to suffer second- or third-degree burns. If the temperature reaches 149 degrees, it takes only half a second.

By contrast, if the water temperature is 120 degrees, it takes 10 minutes of exposure to cause the same problems.

Small children are not the only ones at risk. Elderly people and people with certain diseases are also particularly susceptible to serious injuries from scalding water.

New Tax Law Will Benefit Some People Who Win Lawsuits

A new federal law will help people who win civil rights and employment-related lawsuits to save on taxes.

In general, if you win a lawsuit based on a physical injury, you don’t have to pay income tax on your award. But if you win a lawsuit based on a non-physical injury… such as discrimination, emotional distress, or harm to your reputation…then the award is taxable.

If your award is taxable, you’ll also face an additional problem. The IRS will treat your entire  award as income… even the part that you use to pay your attorney fees and court costs. The IRS will then let you deduct your attorney fees and costs… but only  if you itemize your deductions, and only  to the extent that this amount (plus your other miscellaneous itemized deductions) exceeds 2% of your adjusted gross income.

Further, in many cases the deduction

will trigger the alternative minimum tax… so the IRS will get an even bigger bite of the pie.

The new tax law fixes these problems for people who go to court and win civil rights and employment-related claims. While they still have to pay tax on their award, they can deduct all their fees and costs, and the deduction will not trigger the alternative minimum tax.

Unfortunately, the law doesn’t apply to other  types of lawsuits involving non-physical injuries. For instance, if you win a lawsuit because you were libeled in a newspaper, or a store wrongly accused you of being a shoplifter, or someone caused you to experience severe emotional distress, you’ll still be behind the IRS eight-ball. But the law is a step in the right direction.

The law went into effect on Oct. 22, and it applies to awards and settlements after that date.

Some Nursing Homes Try to Take Away Your Ability to Sue Them

A growing number of nursing homes are putting clauses in their admissions contracts saying that if the nursing home mistreats your family member, you can’t sue them in court.

These clauses state that if something goes wrong, you have to take your case to a private arbitrator – in many cases, an arbitrator hired by the nursing home industry.

Of course, nursing homes don’t advertise that they’re trying to take away your legal right to a jury trial. Often, the arbitration clause is buried deep in a contract in small print. Nursing homes know that many people are experiencing a great deal of stress when they check a relative into a home, and don’t take the time to carefully read the contract or ask questions about it.

Arbitration contracts are generally legal, although in some cases courts have thrown them out and let people sue anyway. Also, keep in mind that even if you gave up some of your own legal rights when you signed a contract, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you gave up your entire family’s rights. For instance, a California court recently ruled that even though a daughter signed an arbitration agreement when she checked her father into a nursing home, that didn’t prevent her father  from suing for mistreatment.

In general, if you have any concerns that a relative in a nursing home is not receiving proper care, we would be happy to speak with you about it.

Don’t Assume You Have No Rights Just Because a Danger Was ‘Obvious’

Just because someone was hurt doing something “obviously” risky doesn’t mean they have no right to seek compensation in court.

In general, if a danger is obvious and you choose to encounter it anyway, and you get hurt, it may be your own fault. But not always. Whoever created the danger still has certain obligations to you.

For instance, an Illinois man slipped on a wet platform on his motorboat, struck his head and drowned. His family sued the company that made the boat, claiming the company should have used a non-skid surface on the platform. The company responded that it was “obvious” that the platform would become slippery when it was wet, and the man should have known better than to walk on it.

The Illinois Court of Appeals agreed that it was “obvious” that the platform would be more slippery when it was

wet. However, it said it was not  obvious that the company would fail to put a non-skid surface on a platform that could easily get wet and that was meant to be walked on. So the company could still be responsible for the accident.

In another case in Michigan, an 11-year-old went to a “play barn” where one of the games involved climbing a hanging ladder to ring a bell. The child fell and hurt himself, and his family blamed the owners of the barn.

The owners claimed that it was “obvious” that climbing the ladder involved some danger, so they shouldn’t be responsible if someone chose to do it anyway.

But the Michigan Court of Appeals said that while it might be obvious to an adult  that climbing the ladder was dangerous, it wasn’t necessarily obvious to a child, and the owners should have taken that into account.

Defibrillators Have Been Approved by the FDA for Use by Everybody

For the first time, the FDA has approved a defibrillator to be sold over-the-counter and used by ordinary people, rather than trained medical personnel.

A defibrillator is a device that helps people who have a heart attack. It is designed to shock a person’s heart back into a normal rhythm.

The fact that defibrillators can now be bought relatively cheaply and used by people with no medical training raises an interesting question: Should businesses have them on hand, if they can foresee that a customer might need one?

There are several types of business that arguably ought to be required to have defibrillators available:

• Health clubs, which have a high rate of customers suffering cardiac problems.

• Business that regularly handle large crowds, and so can anticipate that someone in a crowd might suffer a heart attack. This includes sports arenas, hotels, theaters, and shopping malls.

• Businesses that put their customers in a situation where it is difficult to leave quickly and seek medical help, such as airlines and golf courses.

O’Hare Airport in Chicago is equipped with defibrillators, and many people’s lives have been saved as a result. Interestingly, most of the people who have successfully used a defibrillator on someone at O’Hare had never used one before the emergency.

In the past, some people who suffered heart attacks have sued sports stadiums and other facilities, claiming that they should have had a defibrillator available. Now that the FDA has made the devices cheaper to get and easier to use, there may be more such lawsuits.

Hopefully, many businesses will get the message and decide to make a small investment that could pay big returns in terms of customers’ safety.