New Jersey Personal Injury Law Blog

Hours before a wrongful death lawsuit against the College of New Jersey in connection with the mysterious death of an 18-year-old student was set to begin, the college and the student's parents announced they have settled the case. The parents had accused TCNJ of failing to provide proper security at the victim's dorm early in the morning of March 25, 2006, which allegedly allowed someone to enter his room, murder him and put his body into a garbage chute without being caught.

The wrongful death trial was scheduled to begin on May 7, but the parties reached the settlement in March and the court authorized it March 30. As part of the settlement, New Jersey will pay the victim's parents $425,000. In exchange, neither the state nor TCNJ was required to admit liability in the man's killing. The parents said in a statement that they hoped the case would be a wake-up call for universities to improve their dorm security. The settlement would not reduce the impact of their son's death, they said.

It has been nearly two years since two students were killed in a collision between a tour boat and a barge on the Delaware River near Camden, New Jersey. Now the families of the victims are suing the companies that own the boats, including an East Brunswick business, along with the city of Philadelphia, for wrongful death in connection with the fatal accident. They say that the tour boat operators failed to do enough to protect the victims from drowning.

In July 2010, the victims, who were exchange students from Hungary, were riding on a duck boat that provided tours of the river, which separates Philadelphia from New Jersey. The boat's engine became overheated, but the captain believed the steam from the radiator was a fire. He anchored the boat in a channel that was full of other river traffic, but did not tell passengers to put on life vests until a barge being pushed by a tugboat was nearly on top of them, the plaintiffs' attorneys said.

In the 1960s, high school football in the U.S. was so dangerous that 128 players died from brain injuries incurred on the field. Beginning in the next decade, and continuing to today, high school coaches, officials and parents have taken serious brain injuries among football players more seriously, and the number of player deaths has dropped.

But despite efforts in New Jersey and elsewhere to increase player safety, the number of severe brain injuries among high school athletes has crept back up in recent years. An annual survey on catastrophic football injuries noted that 14 boys suffered long-term head injuries sustained playing high school or youth football in 2011. That is the highest annual rate in more than 25 years, according to a news report about the survey.

A man's life was tragically altered forever on Feb. 12, 2006 when he suffered traumatic brain injuries. These debilitating injuries came as a result of a car accident which occurred when he veered his car to try to prevent a collision with an oncoming car which was improperly moving into his lane. Unfortunately, this caused his vehicle to fall off an embankment and splash into a creek.

He remained unconscious in the water for approximately 8.5 hours until rescue workers managed to find him. It was only when he regained consciousness and called 911 on a cell phone that emergency responders were able to retrieve him and rush him by helicopter to a nearby hospital.