Broussard Knoll Law Firm

Katie Carmouche was stopped on Highway 1 waiting to turn into her children's daycare with her three children in the back seat. A cement truck rear-ended her at high speed, crushing the back of the car and shoving it into oncoming traffic. Her 8-year-old daughter was killed; her two sons were badly injured.

Paul Galland was a deckhand doing repairs aboard an LNG-powered supply vessel at Port Fourchon. LNG vapor had accumulated near a vent on the fly deck. He lit a cigarette and it flashed. He escaped by jumping between decks, breaking his leg on the way down, and suffered severe burns.

Derek Hebert, 22, was thrown from a boat when its Teleflex hydraulic steering failed at speed. With the kill switch not engaged, the boat kept circling under power and its propeller struck him nineteen times. Teleflex had known since 1989 that losing two or three teaspoons of fluid causes total steering failure.

DeQuincy police corporal Randy James Henry was badly burned by a power line in November 2000 while investigating a truck crash that had left live CLECO lines sagging over the scene. He sued the utility, the driver and the driver's insurer, and nearly eight years after the accident settled with CLECO at mediation on October 23, 2008 for $4,350,000. The settlement stood; the later fight was over his employer's workers' compensation credit.

A Calcasieu Parish deputy blocked both eastbound lanes of Interstate 210 in Lake Charles to let a funeral procession merge, and a van rear-ended Wayne and Jean Ann LaGrappe's stopped car. Mrs. LaGrappe had to be cut out of the car and had both shoulders broken. A jury put 65 percent of the fault on the Sheriff and 35 percent on the van's driver, against whom the claims had been resolved before trial. The Third Circuit affirmed, and the Louisiana Supreme Court declined to review the case.