You may have heard doctors and nurses talking about getting your “informed consent” before a treatment is delivered. Informed consent is the legal term for your permission for treatment or testing. Your permission has to be obtained in writing before the treatment takes place. The consent form explains the risks and side effects involved and asks you to sign in acknowledgement that you have read it and you understand the risks.

Failure to obtain informed consent is considered battery and is against the law. If a you are not given the opportunity to sign an informed consent form, or if you’re mislead about any of the conditions of treatment, and you sustain any injury because of the treatment, you may have a valid claim of medical malpractice.

The signing of an informed consent form does not release medical professionals from their duty to give you excellent medical care that conforms to the accepted standard.

Types of informed consent lawsuits

• The informed consent signature is on file, yet the patient was given false information by the doctor, nurse or support staff.
• The medical professionals followed protocol but failed to acknowledge a patient’s mental or psychological condition that prevented him or her from fully understanding what was said. In such cases, informed consent should be obtained by a caregiver or legal guardian.

You can learn more about informed consent and your rights if you email us at Snyder & Wenner, P.C.

If you think of a standard passenger vehicle and an 18-wheeler next to each other, it’s clear which vehicle has the advantage if an accident were to occur. Trucks can weigh 80,000 pounds or even more, which has specific consequences:

• They take longer to stop
• They take longer to gather speed
• They can lose control more easily on a downgrade
• They need far more room to make a turn
• With their extra height, they can run right over a small passenger car
• They have a more and larger blind spots

Drive defensively
By far the most effective way to avoid any trouble with a big rig is to keep a safe distance from it. Give it the extra road space it needs for maneuvering and stopping.

Here are some Don'ts if you are driving anything smaller than a big rig:

• Don’t drive in the driver’s blind spots. If you are driving in the next lane over from a big rig and can’t see the driver, you know he can’t see you either. So drop back or speed up until you can see him and you’ll be safer.
• Don’t forget that a big truck has a larger blind spot on his right side than his left, and another one directly in front of him.
• Don’t drive close up behind an 18-wheeler because again you’ll be invisible to the driver - in another blind spot. Fall back so that he can see you in his rear-view mirror.
• Don’t dart in front of a big truck. Leave extra road space in front of it for safety. The law requires 400 feet between a truck and the vehicle in front of it, which is a large, tempting space to dart into.
• Don’t try to get in front of a big rig that’s entering the freeway. That driver cannot suddenly brake for you.
• Don’t forget to check all your lights for night driving visibility

If you have been injured in a truck accident, and are wondering whether you have a valid legal claim, please contact us. We will be glad to consult with you at no charge, even if the accident did not occur in or around Phoenix, Arizona. We can talk over the phone, or if necessary, can come to where you are.

According to findings released October 11, 2007 by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, many midsize SUVs perform no better and sometimes even worse than automobiles in crashes, especially side impacts.

The models tested include the Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Chevrolet Trailblazer, the Nissan Pathfinder, the Toyota 4Runner, the Nissan Xterra, and the Ford Explorer, and showed that many of the vehicles were defective in their passenger protection measures.

The tests show that frontal safety has improved, so that most vehicles received "Good" safety ratings, but side and rear collisions are another matter.

For side collisions, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Nissan Pathfinder and Xterra (without optional side curtain airbags), and the Chevrolet Trailblazer, all performed only marginally, despite the fact that many were equipped with standard side-curtain airbags. In rear crashes, the vehicles performed even worse, with only the Cherokee receiving a good rating, and all others than the Pathfinder received poor ratings.

There is no reason why vehicles of this size, with the engineering heritage of over a hundred years of assembly-line production, should continue to perform so poorly on crash tests. If you or someone you love was injured as a result of a defective automobile, contact the experienced product liability lawyers at Snyder & Wenner, P.C. serving accident victims in the Phoenix, Arizona area.

The dedicated injury lawyers of Snyder & Wenner, P.C. believe that people who have been wronged deserve the utmost compassion and highest level of legal representation available.

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