Author: Steve Terry

You have put an enormous amount of effort into researching the best schools, daycare facilities, and babysitters for your child. You put your trust in the system. Now you find that trust has been betrayed and your child has been injured, leaving you to deal with the overwhelming feelings of guilt, fear, and anger.

If your child was injured because a caretaker failed to provide adequate safety or supervision, it can be grounds for a lawsuit. Contact a Minnesota personal child injury lawyer at TSR Injury Law by calling 612-TSR-TIME or submit our free consultation form. Our partners are compassionate and diligent, and we will fight for justice in your case.

Responsibility and Accountability

School districts, daycare centers, and other childcare providers are acting “in loco parentis” for the time that the child spends with them. This means that they are legally responsible for the health and safety of your child. At TSR Injury Law, we believe that anyone who works with children has a serious responsibility and should be held accountable for their mistakes. A civil suit can help you regain money lost to medical bills and time off work, as well as compensate you for the suffering your family has experienced.

Our Minnesota personal injury attorneys are prepared to help you with a variety of child injury cases, including:

• School/Playground Injuries
• Daycare Injuries
• Dangerous Toys
• School Bus Accidents

Contact Us

If your child has been injured due to a caretaker’s negligence, do not hesitate to contact TSR Injury Law. We will review your situation, and if you have a case, we will fight for the compensation you deserve. Call today at 612-TSR-TIME or submit our contact form.

(WCCO) After the beating and sexual assault of a 3-year-old boy in the Kids Quest child care center at Grand Casino Mille Lacs, it was discovered that casino centers like this one are not licensed by the state.

Investigators think a 9-year-old boy was responsible for the attack that happened at Kids Quest, a child care center that is run by New Horizon.

“Obviously there wasn’t adequate supervision or this never would have happened,” said the victim’s attorney Richard Ruohonen.

The 3-year-old’s mother said the boy received cuts and bruises during the attack at Kids Quest.

“There should have been police called and there should have been medical personnel there and unfortunately that didn’t happen,” said Ruohonen.

“I can’t speak for Kids Quest. You’d have to inquire of them why they did not contact authorities,” said Mille Lacs Band Of Ojibwe Solicitor General Rjay Brunkow.

WCCO-TV did contact New Horizon, who leases the Kids Quest space from the casino, and they refused to say.

The victim’s attorney said the toddler told his mother that the assault happened inside a pink ball in the play area.

“Our client was told they only check the tubes, the enclosed areas, once an hour,” said Ruohonen. “And to only check them once an hour, if that’s true, and that’s what she was told, is frankly ridiculous.”

Child care center on any tribal land are not licensed by Minnesota’s Human Services Department. The Native American government of each band determines requirements and regulations for day care centers.

“We do have the ability to insist that changes are made or Kids Quest will no longer be associated with the band,” said Brunkow.

As of 8 a.m. Wednesday, Kids Quest’s vendor license was temporarily suspended and the doors closed pending a hearing on Friday. Meantime, the wounded child and his mother are trying to cope with the trauma.

“He’s scared, he’s sleeping at night with his mom. He reaches out for her every night to see if she is there?” said Ruohonen. “She’s angry at the fact it was allowed to happen. The fact that there was no one there watching out for her son.”

The family only came forward to share their tragedy to prevent other children from suffering the same fate. They’re just sorry something as terrible as this had to happen before changes were made at the casino.

Kids Quest at Grand Casino Hinkley is also temporarily shut down. The other child care centers operated by New Horizon at Jackpot Junction and Treasure Island remain open.

If you have sustained a SLAP tear, you need to be proactive in your medical care because that part of the labrum has poor vascular supply which can make healing difficult. If it does not heal well, you could face a lifetime of chronic shoulder pain. We want to help you obtain adequate compensation for your medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Call (612) TSR-TIME or submit our free consultation form. Our partners have been named Super Lawyers many times and have a reputation for getting the job done.

Labral Tear – SLAP Tear Injury Information

When the glenoid labrum is torn, it is called a labral tear. Labral tears are classified by the location of the tear in relation to the glenoid. A SLAP tear is when the glenoid labrum is separated at the tendon of the biceps muscle from front to back. The acronym stands for Superior Labral tear Anterior to Posterior. A SLAP tear occurs frequently in slip and fall accidents when the person falls on an outstretched arm or in car accidents when the arm is outstretched to brace against impact.

A SLAP tear can be difficult to diagnose. The best way to confirm a SLAP tear is with an MRI contrast. There are some risks associated with the contrast injection (gadolinium), including allergic reaction, dizziness, shortness of breath, blood clots, and kidney damage. Because of the risks associated with the MRI contrast, many people let the doctor make the diagnosis at the time of surgery.

SLAP Tear Treatment

Surgery is almost always necessary to recover from a severe SLAP tear injury. The surgery options are:

• open incision, where it permits the surgeon more visibility
• arthroscopic, where there is less chance of infection and recovery time is shorter

SLAP Tear Recovery

Whether you opt for open or arthroscopic surgery, physical therapy is mandatory. Physical therapy begins at about four weeks. Full recovery from a SLAP tear injury depends on the extent of damage, how it was treated, and how faithfully physical therapy was performed. It will usually be at least 3-4 months before your shoulder feels close to normal. It can take up to a year for your shoulder to be completely healed after surgery.

Need Some Legal Help?

The personal injury lawyers in Bloomington at TSR Injury Law are skilled, aggressive litigators with years of experience handling complex medical cases. Call (612) TSR-TIME or submit our contact form. Consultations are free. No fees until we win.

Any injury is scary, but a spinal injury is frightening — with very real fears for the future. We care about your injury and want to help. If your spinal injury was from an accident that was not your fault, you deserve compensation for your pain and suffering, medical expenses, and lost wages.

Contact our Minnesota Bulging Disc Lawyers at (612) TSR-TIME. TSR Injury Law has established a reputation for success in the area of personal injury litigation. Our partners have been named Minnesota Super Lawyers many times by their peers.

Bulging Disc Injury

Many bulging disc injuries are from deceleration in a car accident when the spine is restrained and bent over the seat belt, many times at an angle. A bulging disc most often occurs in the lower back, but may occur in the neck.

When the spine is stressed and pulled out of place, it can put uneven pressure on the disc and cause irritation and damage. A bulging disc can protrude into the spinal canal causing pain and potentially long-term repercussions if the disc ruptures or becomes herniated.

The spine is critical to the overall health of the body. The discs keep the spine flexible, allowing twisting, bending, and basically all physical activity. The gel in the discs absorb the stress of all the body movement. When a disc bulges or compresses, it can cause narrowing of the spinal canal leading to limited, painful movement.

A bulging disc is less severe than a ruptured or herniated disc, but if it goes undiagnosed or untreated may lead to the more serious ruptured or herniated disc.

Bulging Disc Diagnosis & Treatment

An x-ray will not reveal anything about the health of the disc, but may be used to verify the health of the bones. A physical exam and MRI are the best ways to diagnose a bulging disc.

A bulging disc may heal with rest and physical therapy. If the bulging disc becomes more serious by rupturing, surgery may be necessary to remove part of the disc or the entire disc. At this point, they may replace the disc with a synthetic disc or fuse the segments to prevent movement and instability.

Contact Us Today

If your injury was due to the negligence of another, you may be able to obtain compensation for past and future medical expenses, pain and suffering, lost wages, and other losses. Call (612) TSR-TIME today. We will schedule an appointment to discuss your case. If you prefer, submit our free consultation form. We will fight for justice in your case.

While motor vehicle airbags have reduced the number of fatalities; unfortunately they have increased other vehicle injuries, including face, eye, chest, and ear injuries. It has been estimated that more than 200,000 airbags are deployed each year. A wide variety of airbag-induced ear injuries occur every year, many of them permanent. These include hearing loss, tinnitus, disequilibrium, and otalgia (ear pain). That number may increase significantly with the addition of lateral airbags as standard equipment on vehicles. In laboratory blast tests, it has been shown that if the ear aligns toward the blast it doubles the pressure experienced.

What Is Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is the perception of sound, or phantom noise, in the ears or head where no external source is present. Tinnitus can be intermittent or constant, in one ear or both ears. The volume can range from subtle to piercing.

Normal Means of Hearing: Sound would normally be a series of pressure waves that move the ear drum in and out. The chain of bones in the middle ear transform that, moving finally, the last bone in the chain called the stapes. Much like when you take a rock and throw it into the water you can see the waves ripple away from it, the stapes bone creates waves in the fluids of the inner ear. The inner ear compartment (cochlea) has small hair cells, called cilia, suspended in this fluid. As they move they discharge an electrical signal onto the hearing nerve and it is sent back to the brain where it is interpreted. So, the purpose of the cilia is to transmit the signal to the nerve and then on to the brain.

Why Is the Noise Created?

With tinnitus, the cilia are damaged or destroyed. In accidents, a head trauma can destroy cilia in the cochlea or the explosion of the air bag deploying can cause hearing loss and tinnitus.

You would think with the cilia destroyed, there would simply be hearing loss. That is not always the case. Most undamaged ears perceive that a signal is being created by the cilia. The cilium itself also creates a signal periodically which basically tells the brain there is silence. If that signal is lost, you get what is called disinhibition — the loss of the signal for silence.

When there is no signal telling the brain there is silence, the brain then interprets that as a noise or an abnormal perception — which can be described as ringing, buzzing, roaring, clicking, whistling, or hissing.

Treatment for Tinnitus

Cilia are similar to brain cells in that once they are destroyed they are gone forever. They do not heal or regenerate. People have tried different things to minimize the effects or improve the severity of tinnitus, including:

• Taking supplements such as magnesium, zinc, Ginkgo biloba, or B vitamins
• Acupuncture, cranio-sacral therapy, magnets, hyperbaric oxygen, or hypnosis
• Avoidance of alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, foods with a high sugar content, use of tonic water

Treatment options:

• There is one drug that is commercially available in the United States that has been used for the treatment of tinnitus, but it has a number of unacceptable side effects. Most people choose not to take it.
• Hearing aids are an option, but can have a boom quality — they amplify frequencies that the patient does not want amplified.
• Masking devices can be purchased that can create another noise at another frequency that is less objectionable or at a frequency with which there is less interference.

Tinnitus Injury? Contact Us Today

A personal injury attorney in Minneapolis from TSR Injury Law can work on your behalf to validate your injury to the insurance company. We have argued and won many cases of tinnitus. We know it is a debilitating condition and we know you need compensation for your loss. All of our attorneys are skilled, aggressive litigators with years of experience handling personal injury cases. To speak to a lawyer today, call (612) TSR-TIME or submit our contact form and a member from our team will be in contact with you shortly.

Free Consultation. Ph: (612) TSR-TIME.

TSR Injury Law cares about your discomfort, pain, and fear of the future — and we want to help. If your Bell’s palsy was sustained in a motor vehicle accident due to the negligence of another, you deserve compensation for medical expenses, therapy, lost wages, disfigurement, and pain and suffering. Contact a Minneapolis Bell’s Palsy Lawyer at (612) TSR-TIME. Our lawyers have years of experience. We will work tirelessly to achieve a fair settlement.

Bell’s Palsy

Bell’s palsy is the paralysis of the facial nerve, called the seventh cranial nerve. An injury to the head or neck may lead to inflammation and swelling of the seventh cranial nerve — which may inhibit, damage, or kill the nerve. Bell’s palsy is usually a temporary paralysis; but if the nerve is killed, there is the possibility for some permanent damage.

The facial nerve has six- to seven-thousand nerve fibers that conduct electrical signals from the brain to the facial muscles, controlling contraction. Nerves have the capability to regenerate. If the facial nerve dies, the problem with regeneration is that there is no mechanism that reconnects the nerve fibers to the same muscle. The nerve fibers may actually implant into the wrong muscles of the face. This is referred to as synkinesis.

With synkinesis, the brain will send a signal for a muscle to contract, but since the nerve fiber is connected to a different part of the face, the wrong area will respond. So, if the eye was supposed to close, the eyebrow may raise instead. This may sound insignificant or even humorous, but in reality, it is frustrating, debilitating, and dangerous (in the example, the eye could suffer damage because it did not get protection from the eyelid).

Bell’s Palsy Symptoms

There are many symptoms of Bell’s palsy. Very few cases exhibit all of the symptoms.

• Eye-related symptoms: cannot close eye completely, drooping eyelid, excessive tears, inability to produce tears, tears fail to coat and protect cornea, sensitivity to light
• Mouth-related symptoms: drooping of one side of the mouth, drooling, sense of taste impaired or lost, difficulty eating, drinking and swallowing, difficulty speaking, asymmetrical smile
• Ear-related symptoms: sensitivity to sound, pain in/near ear, balance problems
• Nasal-related symptoms: nose either constantly runny or stuffy, sinus problems
• General symptoms: forehead wrinkles disappear, muscle weakness or paralysis, overall droopy facial appearance, facial swelling, headaches, neck pains, memory problems, facial spasms

There is controversy in how to treat Bell’s palsy. With incomplete paralysis, treatment is usually unnecessary, because spontaneous recovery is common. When the paralysis is more severe, anti-inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids, and therapy are prescribed.

Minneapolis Bell’s Palsy Attorney

Any impairment to the face is very difficult, stressful, and can affect one’s self-esteem and lead to issues with socialization and depression. If this impairment was due to negligence, legal representation could improve the possibility of fair compensation. Call (612) TSR-TIME or submit our free consultation form. Our partners have years of experience handling complex medical cases.