Clark, Perdue, Arnold & Scott's Blog

Press Release--American Heart Association

The American Heart Association recently announced its top individual fundraisers nationwide for the Heart Walk. Local attorney Dale Perdue and son Justin ranked in the top 50, raising more than $20,000 for the Central Ohio Heart Walk this year. Locally, Dale and Justin are the top fundraiser for Columbus and the State of Ohio.

"Thanks to our walkers, donors, volunteers and sponsors, we've raised more than $700,000 for the American Heart Association," said Holly Snyder, president of Nationwide Better Health and 2007 Heart Walk Chair. "I'm honored to see individuals in our community such as Dale come together and give tremendous support, as it's such a strong testament to what the Heart Walk represents. Together, we can make better lifestyle choices to keep ourselves healthy and take a stand against cardiovascular disease and stroke."

Perdue is the founding partner at Clark, Perdue, Arnold & Scott Co, LPA, where he used his relationships with vendors, colleagues, business contacts and friends to raise money for the Heart Walk. Overall, the law firm has raised over $150,000 since beginning their participation in the Heart Walk.

Perdue and his son set an example of what can be achieved with the efforts of just two people giving back to the community. "I'm often asked why our company is involved with the Heart Walk," says Perdue. "The principal reason is that it embraces our mission of helping people and serving the community. Furthermore, a project like this promotes teambuilding, camaraderie and morale. The fun we have at the Heart Walk and the good feeling that comes from serving a worthy cause is just a bonus."

The 2007 Central Ohio Heart Walk took place on August 18th at the Center of Science and Industry (COSI). Survivors of heart disease or stroke wore "Red Caps" during the walk to serve as a reminder why the American Heart Association is fighting back against these deadly diseases. Money raised from the walk goes to the American Heart Association which provides education and research for cardiovascular diseases, including stroke.

It might surprise you to know that those seemingly harmless soft-soled clogs so popular with children and teens are capable of causing serious injury. Known as "Crocs," the name of the most popular brand, the shoes are made of soft, synthetic resin. Their best-selling features, flexibility and grip, apparently make them more prone to being caught in the teeth at the bottom of an escalator, or in the crack between the steps and the side of an escalator.

That is exactly what happened recently to a four-year old boy riding a mall escalator in Northern Virginia. While his mother managed to pull him free, his big toe nail was almost completely ripped off!

Through an subsequent Internet search on "Crocs and elevators," his mother found numerous stories about similar incidents. Reports of such injuries are evidently surfacing not only across the U.S., but as far away as Singapore and Japan.

Crocs, Inc., the Colorado-based manufacturer, has stated that it knows of "very few" accidents involving its shoes. But the Japanese government recently warned consumers that it had received as many as 39 reports of Crocs or similar products getting stuck in escalators in August and early September alone!

The more serious clog-escalator injuries have all involved young children. Children may be more prone to such accidents, because they have a tendency not to stand still or watch where they place their feet while riding an escalator. Experts say that the best way to prevent shoe entrapment while riding an escalator is to face in the direction that the stairs are moving, with feet away from the sides, and to step over the teeth at the bottom. For an interactive educational program about escalator safety, go to the Foundation's website at http://www.eesf.org/.

The Supreme Court's decisions as of late underscore a U.S. President's power to influence the laws of the land, long after leaving office. Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both appointed by President Bush early in his second term, recently joined Justice Anthony Kennedy and their conservatives colleagues, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, to form the Majority in three decisions that clearly evidence the Court's move to the right. In these 5-4 rulings, the Court loosened rules on political contributions by corporate and union interest groups, limited free speech, and prevented a legal challenge to a White House initiative that promotes the obtaining of government funds by religious charities.

In 2003, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the Majority, the Court upheld the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law that barred deep-pocketed interest groups from running ads that mentioned a candidate's name within a certain period of time from an election. But in the Court's most recent campaign-finance decision, Justice Alito, who replaced Justice O'Connor, concurred with Justice Roberts' observation that "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

Apparently taking an inconsistent position in his opinion in the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, however, Justice Roberts supported the limiting of First Amendment rights by holding that schools could regulate student speech that advocates the use of illegal drugs. The case arose from the suspension from high school of an Alaskan student who had displayed the banner. While the Bush administration and school district had wanted a decision that would permit the regulation of any speech that officials found to be counter to the educational mission, Justice Stevens nevertheless noted in his Dissent that the Majority does serious violence to the First Amendment "in upholding - indeed lauding - a school's decision to punish Frederick for expressing a view with which it disagreed."

Justice Alito wrote for the Majority in the Court's third decision, which precluded taxpayers from challenging a White House program that assists religious charities in obtaining federal money. In this latter case, a lawsuit brought by a group of atheists and agnostics who objected to government conferences in which administration officials urged religious charities to apply for federal grants was blocked.
As the Court nears the end of its term, it has yet to decide what can perhaps be viewed as its most important issue of the year: whether public school districts can take race into account when assigning students to schools. Given these recent rulings which signal a definite conservative trend, many observers expect a similar split of opinion, with the Majority limiting the use of race.

It may surprise you to know that a rear-end motor vehicle crash occurs very 17 seconds in this country. Yet few vehicles have the type of head restraint and seatback that could minimize or even prevent the head and neck injuries resulting from common crashes.

Because such accidents are seldom life-threatening, they are not the focus of safety advocates. But the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports that nearly 2 million whiplash ("whiplash" is the common term for a flexion-extension injury to the cervical spin--neck) claims are filed each year, 200,000 of which are reported to be severe enough to cause long-term medical problems. These problems include persistent pain and lack of mobility. These injuries--caused by the rapid snapping back of the head, which hyper-extends the neck and damages nerves and ligaments--can even occur at speeds as low as 10 mph.

The IIHS is the only organization that tests and rates front seats and head restraints for rear-end crash protection. Of the nearly 175 vehicles for which it provides data, only one-third have been rated "good" or "acceptable." Another third was given a "marginal" score, while the remaining third was rated "poor."

Head restraints on front seats of passenger vehicles have been mandated since 1969, but even when properly positioned, they do not always provide adequate protection. One problem is that a vehicle's seatbacks are often too stiff and cause the head and shoulders to rebound during a crash. Another is that not everyone's posture is the same. A head restraint that sits too close will interfere with a person's head position, while one that is too far from the person's head will lose its effectiveness.

Consumer Reports evaluates rear seat head restraints and has found that many seats use integral restraints that it characterizes as little more than bumps on the top of seatbacks. Of the vehicles that it has thus far tested in 2007, not many more than half were found to have restraints in the rear positions that were tall enough without adjustment. It considers a head restraint that cannot stay fixed at least 29.5 inches above the seat cushion as being ineffective in preventing whiplash.

And even when a car offers an adequate restraint, most people either do not know how, or simply do not take the time to properly position them. For maximum protection, the top of the restraint should reach at least as high as the top of the person's ears and be three or less inches away from the back of the individual's head. While adjustable restraints can be raised, lowered or tilted forward and backward, a 2002 survey conducted by Progressive Insurance found that 40% of the drivers did not adjust their head restraint when driving a newly-purchased car and that only 14% of them knew the optimal positioning.

Some vehicles now have "active" head restraints that automatically move up and forward during a rear-end crash. But in recent IIHS tests, only two-thirds of the 37 vehicles with active restraints received a "good" or "acceptable" score. Its president has commented that this underscores that it is not only the head restraint, but the seat design that determines what occurs during an accident. For adequate protection, the seat and head restraint combination should be designed so that a person's torso, neck and head move in the same plane during a crash.

So what does the future hold for rear-end crash protection? An upgrade to the federal government's head restraint rule becomes mandatory in 2009 for all cars built on or after September 1, 2008. It requires that front outboard head restraints reach a minimum height of 29.5 inches from an occupant's hip and be able to sit within 2.2 inches behind a person's head. While an improvement to the current law, Consumers Union does not believe that it goes far enough. For example, it notes that the law does not currently mandate rear seat head restraints.

However, all of us can still take measures to minimize the risk of injury in a rear-end accident by learning more about a vehicle's crash ratings. The IIHS' front seat head restraint ratings are available on its website, http://www.iihs.org/, while rear seat restraint evaluations can be found by consulting Consumer Reports' monthly test reports. Moreover, all of us can take the time to adjust the head restraints in our cars and make certain that we are seated upright and belted in when driving.

The heat of the summer poses a danger to more than the elderly and infirm. We hear of pets dying after having been left in a hot, unventilated car, but did you know that as many as 36 children die every year in this country for that very reason? A decade ago, there was less than half that number of infant fatalities. But, ironically, the advent of auto safety restraint laws--requiring infants and small children to ride in the back seat--brought with it an increased risk of deadly adult inattention--walking off and leaving a child behind as a result of a distraction, or just plain forgetfulness.

In this day of car alarms sounding when keys have been left in the ignition or a safety belt has not been fastened, it is tragic that there is no regulation requiring audible alerts when a child is left unattended in an automobile. While some argue that the price for such technology would be exorbitant, the Kids and Cars organization (http://www.kidsandcars.org/) believes that the auto industry has the opportunity to eradicate this danger at a relatively low cost.

The Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers maintains that it is not cost, but rather feasibility of design that is the issue. It claims that safety is the industry's top priority and that it continuously seeks improvements in that regard. However, it contends, no one has developed a system that is immune to false alarms.

Still, it is encouraging to know that a few products that could prevent hyperthermia injuries have already been developed:

• The Child Minder is a system that replaces an auto's harness clip with a clip that is synchronized to a key alarm. It activates when a child is buckled in and will cause an alarm to sound when the adult walks more than 10 feet away;
  
• NASA is about to license the Child Presence Sensor. Its weight-sensitive pad will set off an alarm that sounds 10 warning beeps, if the driver moves too far from the vehicle, or that beeps continuously, if the driver does not return within one minute; and,
  
• Volvo's S80 sedan now includes a Personal Car Communicator that is able to detect heartbeats inside of a vehicle and to send a warning to the driver's wireless key fob.

These devices hopefully signal that such systems will be available and affordable to all consumers with young children in the very near future.