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The cause of a fatal Minnesota bus crash may be due to the fact that the bus driver suffered from an aneurysm bursting in his chest while he was driving.

The AP reports that the crash occurred on the Strain Bus Line which was operating a tour bus to an Iowa casino.

The bus driver, Ed Erickson was driving the bus on a clear Wednesday afternoon on Interstate 90 near Austin, Minn. when he lost consciousness due to the chest aneurysm before the crash occurred. The bus actually crossed over the median dividing the highway from the eastbound lane it was traveling in. The bus made it all the way into westbound lanes before it ended up in a ditch.

A video that details the crash can be viewed here:

The United States Dept. of Transportation has released its Motorcoach Safety Action Plan last Monday. This comes at the heels of an investigation into a fatal crash in Texas and another crash this week in Minnesota. The fatal bus crash in Texas occurred in the summer of 2008 because of a tire puncture. We covered both crashes on the Injured blog here and here.

Many would be surprised to know that currently, buses are not required to have seat belts installed.

The bus safety action plan proposes the installation of seat belts on all buses. This is important because DOT's 2009 action plan outlines how data shows that passengers being ejected from their seats due to a rollover crash causes the greatest number of deaths: "[D]ata indicates that ejection due to a rollover crash causes the highest percentage of motorcoach passenger fatalities. NHTSA determined that installing seat belts would be the most direct method of retaining passengers within the seating compartment and preventing ejection."

The action plan put forth by the DOT strives to prevent fatalities like this from happening. The DOT expects that this action plan will result in a reduction in the number of bus crashes as well as a reduction in the number of fatalities and injuries.

Bicyclist Lisa Granert was wearing a reflective vest and a helmet while she was riding her bike along Route 70 in New Jersey but it was of little help when she got struck by a car operated by a man distracted because he was texting.

Philly.com  reports that Robert Sharrer told police that he was texting while he was driving. The worst part? It was a text about a drug deal. While he texting about the drug deal, his car drifted to the shoulder and struck Ms. Granert.

He was allegedly texting about the sale of prescription drugs that he was in possession of at the time of the crash. The unauthorized prescription drugs were found in the car. As a result, Mr. Sharrer has been charged with possession with an intent to distribute.

Portland Oregon attorney, Kelly Clark, filed suits in Washington, Oregon and California on Monday, charging the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America with liability for the molestation of his clients when they were children.  The cases, against both organizations in San Francisco and Seattle and against the Church alone in Portland, all concern allegations of molestation that took place in the 1970's and '80's. Clark has a long standing practice specializing in representing victims of abuse.

A Bronx school was hit with a lawsuit because a 12 year old was injured during a school dodgeball game while he was sitting on the sidelines.

According to the New York Daily News, 12 year old Shane Reese of the Bronx was hit in the face with a soccer ball and suffered a mouth injury during a game of dodgeball at public school IS 219. The City of New York has offered Reese $20,000 in order to settle the lawsuit.

His lawyer Mark Weinberger is quoted by the New York Daily News  as saying: "Soccer balls were flying all over the place. There was an issue of lack of supervision." According to the lawsuit, gym teachers gathered over a 100 students into a gymnasium and gave them soccer balls to play dodgeball with instead of the more gentle red dodgeballs that are typically used in the schoolyard activity. Soccer balls are typically harder and hurt more when an individual is hit with it.

The family of an Arizona man who was shot by police while he was holding his baby daughter has filed a lawsuit against the city of Scottsdale. The lawsuit is for $40 million dollars.

According to The Examiner, the scuffle between Scottsdale police and Mr. David Hulstedt occurred on November 7, 2008. The police department received a telephone call from a man who identified himself as David Hulstedt. He told the dispatcher who received his call that there was a crisis. When the dispatcher heard a baby crying in the background, she asked if Mr. Hulstedt was hurting the child.

Mr. Hulstedt responded to her query with: "I'm not going to tell you. I want you to send her to my house. I want to meet with her. I'm done talking here." Mr. Hulstedt was talking about his desire to meet with Arizona's governor Janet Napolitano. He wanted the governor to come to his house. No one knows why he was upset or wanted to the governor to come to his house. He hung up the phone on the dispatcher.

When the dispatcher called back, the man's mother told the dispatcher that her son was "mentally distressed".

Sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise. The AP reports that chlamydia has hit a new record in 2008 with 1.2 million new cases of the disease. The sexually spread disease is often symptomless, but one of its devastating effects is that it renders women infertile. It was the most STD cases ever reported to date for the disease.

Other STD cases have been on the rise too. Approximately 13,500 cases of syphilis have been reported in 2008. It was on the verge of being an extinct disease in the United States ten years ago. This means that there is a surge in new cases for this particular STD. Syphilis can be fatal.

The other two STDs that have seen a steady rise are HPV (Human Papillomavirus) and herpes. The STD cases for both of those reach in the millions. There is currently no cure for herpes.

If there are so many new cases of these STDs, it seems like there will soon be a rise in lawsuits about STD transmissions.

Jared Kopeloff of Flushing, Queens was just minding his business while skateboarding when he was slashed in the throat by a stray kite wire that was encrusted with glass shards.

The kite wire is used in a sport made popular by the book The Kite Runner. It is a South Asian sport that is particularly popular in the Afghani community in Flushing and is commonly played in Flushing Meadow Park. It uses strings encrusted with shards of glass in order to cut opponents' kites in what is known as "kite fighting." The fighting kite that gets cut falls from the sky until there is only one fighting kite left. That kite flier is declared the winner of the kite fight.

The lawsuit that Travis Barker and DJ AM (also known as Adam Goldstein) filed against Learjet for the crash that they suffered injuries from September 2008 was amended to include a claim of wrongful death by the late DJ AM's mother Andrea Gross.

The lawsuit now claims that DJ AM's death from an accidental drug overdose was directly related to the Learjet crash he and Travis Barker were in. According to Rolling Stone, DJ AM's family claims that the medication that DJ AM took during his hospital stay as well as the mental toll the crash took on him were the reasons that DJ AM resumed his drug use after ten years of sobriety.

A racially mixed couple from Connecticut are shocked because they recently found out that a complete stranger is the biological father of their twin girls. Now before this turns into a Maury Povich show special questioning the wife's fidelity, it seems like the father could be the fertility doctor that the couple went to for artificial insemination.

In a lawsuit filed back in 2005, the couple argued that Dr. Ben Ramaley used his own sperm to artificially inseminate the woman. The lawsuit was settled this week.

CBS News reports that the case was settled for an undisclosed amount of money and a confidentiality agreement was signed. As a result, the family and the doctor refuse to comment on the case. The question of the twin girls' paternity still hangs in the air.