(November 18, 2011 — Fairfax, VA). Virginia Tech University has agreed to revise policies and protocols regarding parental notification of potentially suicidal students as a result of a lawsuit brought by partner Gary Mims over the suicide death of student Daniel Kim of Reston.
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Sickels, Frei & Mims is relocating to 3925 Chain Bridge Road, Suite 402 in Fairfax, VA as of December 28, 2011. Our phone number (703-925-0500) and fax number (703) 925-0501) will remain the same.
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Fairfax attorneys Gary Brooks Mims was named to the list of “Legal Lions” by Northern Virginia Magazine, which recently published a roster of the top personal injury and criminal lawyers in the region.
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The Fairfax, Virginia law firm of Sickels, Frei & Mims has earned a Top Tier, Best Law Firm Ranking by US News and World Report in its first-ever publication of law firm rankings. The firm was ranked Top Tier for Personal Injury and Top Tier for Medical Malpractice among all of the law firms in the Washington Metropolitan Area.
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With the near omnipresent discussion about Tort Reform, one can’t help but begin to think that there are too many “frivolous lawsuits” being filed, and even won. Just about the only law suits the news reports on are the ones where someone got a ridiculous verdict for a tiny accident. Are these true? Maybe some of them. But, by and large, they are exaggerated or have missing facts that the news didn’t bother to include. Most people do not realize that there are methods in place to keep truly frivolous suits from being filed – and certainly from going to a jury and being won. But that’s another blog for another time.
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The waiver. Everyone knows it. We’ve all signed one. If you want to engage in an activity (little league, summer camp, high school sports or triathlon, for example), chances are someone is going to want you to sign away all your rights.
In 1890, the Virginia Supreme Court addressed the issue of waivers in Johnson’s Adm’x v. Richmond and Danville R.R. Co., 86 Va. 975 (1890) and ruled that such waivers were not valid. In quintessential 19th century language, the Court reasoned that “to hold that it was competent for one party to put the other parties to the contract at the mercy of its own misconduct…can never be lawfully done where an enlightened system of jurisprudence prevails. Public policy forbids it, and contracts against public policy are void.
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The parents of a Virginia Tech suicide victim want to know why school officials didn’t tell them about emails the school received detailing their son’s suicidal behaviors. In our lawsuit filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court, the family of Daniel Kim is charging Virginia Tech and its administrators with gross negligence for failing to follow the university’s published protocols for dealing with suicide warnings.
The Reston family is also asking the university to assist in the passage of legislation, to be called The Daniel Kim Act, which will require all public universities in the state to notify parents when a threat to the safety of their children is present.
“Daniel Kim’s death was preventable. If Virginia Tech had followed its own published protocols for dealing with a suicide emergency, Daniel would still be alive today,” said Kim’s attorney Gary Brooks Mims. “Further, if the university had notified Mr. Kim of the emails declaring an emergency, he would have been by his son’s side within hours and sought appropriate and urgent medical care.”
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Washingtonian Magazine’s December 2009 issue lists partner Gary Brooks Mims
as one of the top personal injury lawyers in the metropolitan region. The magazine annually reviews the legal profession and lists “Washington’s best legal minds” in 29 categories. The resulting list represents the top 1 percent of the area’s attorneys. Mims has practiced law since 1980 and is a partner with Sickels, Frei & Mims, one of the top personal injury law firms in Virginia.
All of the partners of Frei and Mims were recently selected by their peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2010 (Copyright 2009 by Woodward/White, Inc., of Aiken, S.C.).
Gary B. Mims was named in the category of Medical Malpractice. Mims and Steven Frei were named in the category of Personal Injury Litigation.
Since its inception in 1983, Best Lawyers has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Because Best Lawyers is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey in which more than 32,000 leading attorneys cast almost two million votes on the legal abilities of other lawyers in their specialties, and because lawyers are not required or allowed to pay a fee to be listed, inclusion in Best Lawyers is considered a singular honor. Corporate Counsel magazine has called Best Lawyers “the most respected referral list of attorneys in practice.”
Today Show reporter Lisa Myers reports that illegal pool drains are still in use in thousands of pools across the country. The drains were outlawed by the Graeme Baker Pool/Spa Safety Act, which grew out of the lawsuit brought by Sickels, Frei and Mims against pool/spa drain manufacturers.
Virginia Injury Lawyer Blog