Four people were injured Tuesday night in a two-car collision on Highway 99 South. Both cars ended upside down.

The collision occurred at about 10:40 p.m. in the 2300 block of 99, just south of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

According to the Seattle Police, a Honda Civic was going southbound at a high rate speed when it collided with a Mitsubishi Mirage, which was also going southbound.

The impact send the Honda veering off the highway; it came to rest upside down on the railroad tracks west of the roadway. The Mitsubishi ended upside down in the road.

The driver of the Honda, who was alone in the car, was taken to Harborview Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries. Three people in the Mitsubishi were taken for treatment at area hospitals; all were said to have non-life threatening injuries.

Southbound 99 was closed for several hours.
Generally speaking, when one is in an accident involving a motor vehicle, there are certain rules of thumb to follow:

• Do not give a recorded or written statement.
• Take photographs of the property damage and have them developed at once. Take photographs at the scene with your cell phone to show the property damage in the street and where the cars end up after the initial impact and collision before you move your car. Do not use a Polaroid.
• Do not sign anything without a lawyer reviewing it first!
• Do not discuss any matters concerning your injuries with the at-fault insurance company. You are under no obligation to give this information and should discuss nothing but the damage to your car and the need for a rental car or “loss of use” compensation. Remember to be on guard for the clever insurance adjuster who may try to trap you into giving an incomplete statement. Simply do not discuss the accident with the claims adjuster.

IF you have been injured in a Lynnwood car accident we welcome you to contact our Lynnwood Car Accident Attorneys for a free consultation.

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The road rage story starts with a man named Speed – Robert Speed.

Pierce County prosecutors say Speed, 61, took a beating last year from Dennis Geyer, an angry neurosurgeon who didn’t appreciate being cut off on Highway 16.

Geyer, 38, is charged with second-degree assault with a deadly weapon enhancement. He is pleading not guilty.

The weapon in question was Speed’s Thermos, a well-used hunk of green metal, glass and plastic.

Prosecutors say Geyer followed Speed over the Narrows Bridge, confronted him at a Gig Harbor-area intersection, dragged Speed out of his car, slugged him, grabbed his Thermos and smashed it into the side of Speed’s face before driving away.

Opening arguments started Tuesday. They were short. Deputy prosecutor Diane Clarkson summarized the circumstances and the charge. Wayne Fricke, Geyer’s attorney, took his turn and offered a two-pronged argument: self-defense and weak evidence.

Geyer didn’t intend to hit Speed, Fricke said; he punched the older man because he was afraid of being kicked.

The Thermos allegation held no water, he argued. The victim couldn’t remember being hit with it and Geyer didn’t touch it, Fricke said. Forensic tests were inconclusive, and the only witness who claimed to see the blow had a shaky memory.

The witness, Leslie Perry, was the first to testify. Clarkson walked her through memories of March 2, 2009. Perry, running an errand, stopped at East Bay Drive Northwest and Wollochet Drive Northwest shortly before sunset.

She noticed something in the rearview mirror: a younger bald man on foot, pounding on the window of the van behind her.

In court, Perry couldn’t identify Geyer, but she remembered what she saw. The man was arguing with someone in the van, and then the van door opened.

“Could you tell who opened the door?” Clarkson asked.

“My best recollection was the man from outside opened the door,” Perry said. “The man from the outside reached in and grabbed the older gentleman and pulled him out. It appeared that he was extremely angry. The man on the inside was kicking to try to keep him away.”

“Did he punch him once?”

“No – multiple times,” Perry said.

The older man didn’t hit back. Perry remembered shouting at the bald man to stop and seeing the older man fall.

She saw the older man starting to get up. The bald man walked away, then stopped at the van and pulled something out of it – “something long, like a cylinder-type thing,” Perry said.

“What did you see him do with that object?” Clarkson asked.

Perry’s voice quavered.

“When the older gentleman got up, he hit the man so hard that he spun around, and I was screaming, ‘No, no, no.’”

On cross-examination, Fricke shot holes in Perry’s account. Hadn’t she seen Mr. Speed’s arms “flailing around” inside the car before the fight? Hadn’t she seen Speed pounding on the window? Hadn’t Speed opened the door, and not Dr. Geyer?

Perry didn’t think so. Fricke showed her passages from her deposition, given in October, and her statement to police, written the day of the incident. She admitted some details were different, but she had been hurried and nervous that day.

The victim was next. Speed, dressed in a suit and tie, spoke quietly and carefully. On the day in question, he had driven home from Seattle, eased his van onto Highway 16 westbound, and changed lanes. He heard a horn behind him.

“I saw an individual in a small car come up beside me, obviously upset,” he said. The man in the little car was waving at him with both hands, telling Speed to pull over. The two vehicles were near Fircrest, he recalled.

Did he see the man in the courtroom? He did. It was Geyer.

Speed remembered the back-and-forth as the two men rolled down the highway.

“I assumed I had probably cut him off or did something he didn’t like, so I turned and mouthed, ‘I’m sorry,’” he said.

Geyer wasn’t satisfied, Speed recalled. He kept waving.

“I just proceeded to ignore him,” Speed said. “I was not going to pull over.”

Geyer followed him over the bridge, Speed said, followed him to the intersection of East Bay Drive and Wollochet. Speed stopped, heard a car door open and close behind him, and footsteps. Geyer was at his driver’s window, yelling, “Open the door,” he said.

Speed looked down at the latch and realized his door was unlocked. Geyer saw the same thing.

“He immediately opened the door and hit me in the face with his fist,” Speed said.

Speed said he was close to blacking out. He remembered reaching for the only available weapon: the trusty Thermos his wife had given him 10 years earlier.

“I picked it up and I was gonna swing it at him,” Speed recalled. “In my mind I was gonna throw it as hard as I could, swing it as hard as I could. In actuality, my arm had almost no strength, it was almost like in slow motion. (Geyer) looked at the Thermos, saw it was coming at him and basically just took it away from me.”

Speed remembered Geyer pulling him out of the car. He’d kicked at him then, he recalled – all he could do. The rest was a blur. He was on the ground, and his face hurt, and then the hospital, and pain and medication. He started to say he’d been diagnosed with a detached retina. Fricke objected to that testimony, then took on the cross-examination.

And Speed had a cell phone, but didn’t call 911? Why not? Speed said it didn’t occur to him that he should until it was too late.

“I have a pretty clear memory up to the point where I don’t remember anything,” he said.

Contact Lynnwood Personal Injury Attorney Today.

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Divers recovered a body from Lake Padden Saturday afternoon, one day after a canoe tipped over and one of its two occupants disappeared.

The dead man is believed to be Clay Weden, 28, Bellingham police reported. His boating companion, Cole B. Smith, 28, was rescued shortly after the accident and was taken to a hospital for treatment for exposure.

Police went to the lake early Friday afternoon after receiving a cellphone call reporting that a canoe had capsized and its occupants were in the water calling for help. A police officer and an off-duty Bellingham firefighter tried to rescue the men using the firefighter’s two stand-up paddle boats.

They rescued Smith but could not find Weden. A search of the lake, shoreline and nearby trails by two fire departments and other agencies was called off Friday night because of darkness.

Divers from the Whatcom, Skagit and San Juan County rescue teams found the body Saturday.

Approximately 20-30 people die in boating accidents every year in Washington State.

Contact our Washington Boat Accident Lawyers if you or a loved one has been injured in a Maritime Accident in Lynnwood.

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A Palo Alto man who developed an infection after donating blood at Stanford Hospital has filed a lawsuit against the hospital for medical malpractice.

Over the last 10 years, Christopher Bui, 43, had regularly donated his 0-positive type blood for free at the Stanford Blood Center, his attorney Joseph Carcione Jr. said. Then in April 2008, Bui came down with a debilitating infection and, when he could not afford the expenses anymore, Stanford denied him care, Carcione said.
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“I find Stanford to be absolutely disgusting in terms of the way they deal with people like Mr. Bui. It’s just disgusting,” Carcione said.

In June 2009, Bui filed a suit in Santa Clara County Superior Court against Stanford Blood Center, Stanford Hospital and Clinics, Stanford University and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, school of medicine and medical center.

The suit alleges that Stanford injured Bui on April 10, 2008, when they took his blood and that they backed out of a promise to take care of him if anything happened to him by virtue of his donations, Carcione said. The suit furthermore accuses the hospital of being unjustly enriched by taking his blood under false pretenses and selling it, Carcione said.

He said the sum of the suit will be determined once he verifies how much Stanford earns from selling donated blood.

Gary Migdol, director of communications at Stanford Hospital and Clinics released a statement in response.

“Due to the privacy interests of its patients, Stanford University Medical Center cannot comment on the allegations raised by the blood donor’s attorney. The Stanford Blood Center has long-standing and safe procedures in place for the donation of blood by its many volunteers,” Migdol stated.

Migdol asserted that the occurrence of a complication from a blood donation is rare and usually limited to temporary bruising. He noted that blood draws are done by way of a single-use needle that is pre-packaged in a sterile container obtained from a non-affiliated manufacturer and that the needle is discarded after it has been used for a single donation.

There is a possibility, he stated, that donors may get infections from sources unrelated to the blood donation.

Over the years Rob has handled many cases involving medical negligence of both adults and children, involving hospitals, doctors, lower tier health care providers and nursing home/elder abuse. More on Washington Medical Malpractice.

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Nestlé USA said Wednesday that two samples of its Toll House refrigerated cookie dough made at a Virginia factory tested positive for E. coli bacteria this week despite rigorous safety measures put in place after a recall of the product last summer.

Nestlé also said the tainted dough had not left the factory and no recall was necessary.

The company said on Wednesday that it would shut the plant in Danville, Va., for nearly two weeks while it changes its recipe and production processes. When it reopens, the company will begin using flour that has been heated to kill dangerous bacteria, including E. coli, salmonella and listeria.

Nestlé said that all cookie dough currently in stores is safe and that it was not recalling any of the product.

It said that after last summer’s recall, it began testing samples of every batch of dough for E. coli O157:H7, the toxic strain behind last year’s outbreak.

“Everything that’s in the marketplace is fine and has passed our testing,” said Roz O’Hearn, a Nestlé spokeswoman.

Nestlé issued a huge recall of the bake-at-home cookie dough in June after it was linked to an outbreak in which at least 72 people in 30 states became ill. Public health officials suspected people got sick after eating the raw dough.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it was investigating and working with Nestlé to pinpoint the source of the latest E. coli contamination.

People who consume even minuscule amounts of a toxic strain of E. coli can become severely ill. In the worst cases, it can lead to kidney failure and death. The bacteria, which is more commonly the cause of recalls of raw ground beef, can be killed by cooking.

The company said that after last year’s recall it began testing all the ingredients entering its Danville plant, which is where most of the refrigerated dough is made. It also began testing every batch of dough and holding the product in the plant until the results were known.

The two batches that tested positive this month were made on a single day last week but final testing confirming the presence of the harmful bacteria was not completed until Monday, the company said. It informed the F.D.A. of the positive tests on Monday.

Ms. O’Hearn said that the tainted cookie dough and all dough made at the plant since would be destroyed. She added that dough made the day before the tainted batches were produced would also be destroyed.

“It sounds to me that they’re really taken aback by the fact that they’ve run into the problem again,” said Carol L. Tucker-Foreman, a food safety advocate of the Consumer Federation of America. “And so they’ve decided they cannot control their supply well enough to be confident that they won’t have E. coli contamination again and they’re going to cook their flour to prevent it.”

She was not overly concerned that the company was not planning to recall the cookie dough already on store shelves.

“Given the bad publicity they have had and the quick action they have taken to change their system now that they’ve had another contamination, it sounds to me like they’ve been pretty responsible,” she said.

“I think if they thought their brand name was at risk right now they’d be out there cleaning it off the shelves.”

Nestlé repeated warnings on Wednesday that consumers should not eat raw Toll House dough and should bake the product before eating it.

It said there could be some shortages of the cookie dough in stores in coming weeks before production resumes and inventory can be replenished.

Injured in Lynnwood? Let us help. Contact our Lynnwood personal injury attorneys today.

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Following Tribune reports of violent attacks by felons living in nursing homes, some facilities are scrambling to comply with a 4-year-old disclosure law requiring them to notify state public health officials when they admit offenders, state officials say.

As a result, the number of felons reported to be living in the facilities increased last month, according to state records and interviews. Illinois nursing homes disclosed that they held 3,326 offenders as of Dec. 10, up from 3,224 on Nov. 5.

Some had been living in the facilities undeclared for as long as a year, records show.

“If they have not been reporting individuals in the past, they’ve begun reporting them,” said Richard Dees, chief of the state Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Long-Term Care.

Statewide, the rate at which facilities reported new felons has doubled from about 50 a month to 100 last month.

Since 2006, Illinois has required nursing facilities to conduct criminal background checks on all new residents and immediately notify state health authorities when they admit anyone with a serious felony conviction. But some homes failed to conduct the background checks within the required time period, made serious errors on the checks, or simply failed to report felons to public health officials, the Tribune found in an October investigation. Some of these offenders went on to commit assaults and other serious crimes inside the homes.

On Friday, for example, a 22-year-old mentally ill felon pleaded guilty to the brutal January rape of a 69-year-old woman who lived in the same Elgin nursing home. Christopher Shelton’s background screening had been improperly handled by Elgin’s Maplewood Care nursing home because they used the wrong birth date, records show. Shelton will serve 12 years under his plea agreement.

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A 19-year-old man died in New Orleans early this morning after he lost control of his vehicle and struck a guardrail, police said.

The accident occurred just before 3 a.m. near the intersection of Washington Avenue and Short Street, according to New Orleans Police Department spokeswoman Officer Shereese Harper.

Emergency medical technicians were summoned to the scene, where the man was pronounced dead. Police are investigating whether alcohol was a factor in the crash.

His name is being withheld pending notification of family members, Harper said.

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A Monroe fire official says a 76-year-old man has died of burns suffered when his clothes caught fire after he backed his wheelchair into an open flame propane heater during last week’s cold snap. Family members put out the flames and called for help last Friday. The King County medical examiner’s office says the man suffered burns to 40 percent of his body.

He died at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Monroe Fire Department spokeswoman Richelle Risdon says it’s not uncommon to use alternative heat sources during cold winter months but notes that heating equipment is a leading cause of home fire deaths. She says it’s important to keep any flammable material at least three feet away from a heat source. If clothing does catch fire, stop, drop and roll or smother the flames with a towel or blanket.

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Maybe that ribbon of pavement connecting River Road to the city of Tacoma should be renamed “Pay Street.”

A radar-triggered camera erected on the Bay Street curve near the Emerald Queen Casino snapped photos of close to 2,100 speeders during its first week of operation, city officials said Thursday.

Nearly 830 tickets – at $101 a pop – already have been mailed and another nearly 1,260 are being prepared for the registered owners of cars caught speeding between Dec. 2 and Wednesday, Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum said Thursday.

The infractions are treated like a parking ticket and do not go on a driver’s record.

If that rate holds, the camera could generate up to $11 million a year in citations.

“Those numbers surprised us,” Fulghum said. “It’s a fairly sharp corner and people take it too fast coming from River Road.”

By contrast, another speed camera erected recently near Downing Elementary School in the city’s North End has yet to record a speeder, Fulghum said.

“We expected some violators,” he said. “We knew there were some concerns there.”

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WASHINGTON – A Metro spokesman says four people were transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries after a Metro bus collided with a pickup truck.

The accident happened about 1:30 p.m. Thursday at 15th and I in northwest Washington. There were fifteen people on the bus at the time.

Metro said it did not have any information about the driver of either vehicle.

If you have been injured or perhaps someone close to you has been injured in a Washington truck accident you should be financially compensated. However, this is ALWAYS easier said then done. You are welcome to contact our office of experienced WA trial attorneys for a free initial consultation at a time and place of your convenience.

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