Jacksonville, Florida Driver Crashes on I-95 Near I-10 After Suffering Heart Attack. Whose Fault is This Accident?
A man was driving on I-95 near I-10 in Jacksonville, Florida and crashed after apparently suffering a heart attack, according to a news story I saw recently. No one was seriously injured or killed as a result of the accident. However, this raises a question as to who is at fault when an accident is caused by a sudden medical condition like a heart attack, a blackout or some debilitating reaction to medication. It depends on the circumstances.
In order for a driver to be able to successfully use a medical condition as an excuse for an injury or fatal accident, it truly must be a sudden and unexpected event. For instance, if someone has no idea that he/she has any health problems and suffers a medical event for the first time, he/she could certainly argue that the accident was caused by an unexpected medical event. However, when this issue comes up, we always look into that person's medical history. What we often find is that the person had a previous diagnosis that put him/her on notice that driving is dangerous. There are often warnings in the driver's medical records that directly contradict a defense of a sudden medical event. Sometimes, a defendant driver will argue that he/she took medication that caused an unanticipated reaction that led to the accident. These defenses rarely work. More often than not, the driver had been on the medication for some time and would have been familiar with any side effects. Additionally, everyone is responsible for knowing the side effects of any medication they take and all medications come with information that warn of side effects and tell people when they should not drive or operate heavy machinery. With the information that comes with medication these days and is easily accessible on the Internet, it is hard for anyone to argue that they were not aware of possible reactions and side effects. In our view, for the medication side effect defense to be credible, the driver would have to be taking the medication very early in the prescription and the reaction would have to be something not covered by the warnings that come with the medication, which is unlikely given how thorough prescription medication literature is these days.
