Commercial Truck Drivers: Here’s How Not to Get Sued
Among the most easily prevented type of accident where a truck driver is usually at fault are those where passenger vehicles collide with poorly marked trailers. While some may argue that these types of accidents are uncommon, we've seen accidents that involve this fact pattern, not once, not twice, not three, but four times in...
How Trucking Companies Hide Behind Intentional Tort Arguments
By paying a monthly fee to an insurance agency, people essentially place a bet that something bad will happen to them or their property. To "win" on that bet, the insured must first actually lose by incurring serious damages. Depending on the policy in question, that could be anything from a home ruined by a...
What’s the Difference Between Compensation and Restitution?
A common question we receive when someone calls us after they or a loved one has been involved in an accident is, "Won't the courts make the person who hurt me pay restitution?" As with many questions in the law, the answer to that question can be complex, because the law permits two different avenues...
Seeing the Signs: How We Spot Possible Dram Shop Accidents
Drunk driving appears to be a blind spot in our national consciousness. I cannot think of a single person, no matter how contrarian, who could compellingly argue that this practice has positive benefits. It's dangerous, it's illegal, and it flies in the face of common sense. I doubt I need to be worried about some...
Are Wet Road Conditions Grounds for an Act of God Defense?
While crashes due to inclement weather are not uncommon across the United States, I recently learned of an incident here in Texas, which prompted me to write a little more in-depth about the phenomenon. In wet, foggy conditions, a tractor-trailer hydroplaned just outside of Midland. It entered oncoming traffic and collided with a passenger vehicle,...
Intoxicated Driving Study: Harris County, TX and DUI Crashes
The first reported drunk driving accident in the United States happened in 1904. Automobiles were still very new technology when these matters started to arise, and yet similar incidents started to be published with increasing frequency. Further evidence that people love to drink in exotic situations and locales, as though we needed any more confirmation....
A Look at Commercial Truck Emergency Signal Regulations
Just before sunrise, January 9, 2017, Alex A. Ortega was killed in a collision with an 18-wheeler, which was reportedly blocking the intersection of County Road 1160 and Business 20 near Midland, Texas. According to news accounts, the truck stalled, while crossing through the intersection, before being struck by Mr. Ortega's vehicle. Without knowing more...
A Quick Refresher on Texas Dram Shop Law
Texas dram shop cases are seldom cut and dried. It's an important element of tort law; after all, bars and restaurants that over-serve their customers deserve to be held accountable for putting profits before safety. While the intoxicated individual most certainly owns a significant share of the responsibility--failing to observe his or her own limits,...
Is the 2017 Plains Ice Storm an Act of God, Legally Speaking?
This past weekend, an ice storm coated parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri with up to an inch of ice. As a result hundreds of thousands of people lost power, there were massive disruptions, and most tragically, 6 people are known to have lost their lives in storm-related traffic accidents. There is no word...
The Case of Caden Nieneker: How Do Texas Dram Shop Laws Relate to House Parties?
On the surface, house parties tend to seem like a great idea. However, they can have downsides: With less room it's harder to escape a boring conversation, the bathroom line can be ridiculous, some people don't know when to stop drinking (often with disastrous results), and depending on your guest list there's a risk of...
Stopping the Buck: Rose City Tragedy and Truck Accident Liability
President Harry Truman famously had a placard on his desk that read "The Buck Stops Here." The phrase ultimately means that one must take responsibility for his decisions and actions, and can't "pass the buck" to dodge any consequences. That idealism is laudable, of course, but ducking blame has been practiced for millennia and shows...
How Trucking Company Lawyers Shift Blame Following an Accident
Defense Attorneys Say The Darndest Things About a year ago, one of our firm's attorneys, Keith Purdue, was taking the deposition of a trucking company's "safety manager." This deposition was a fairly heated affair, wherein we were essentially accusing the man being deposed of having a largely ceremonious title and/or a job that merely existed...
How Can Human Perception Affect A Motorcycle Accident Case?
Perception is tricky. Two people can parse an image or a situation differently even when receiving identical input. Take this classic example: Or try this: Visual tricks like these have been around for years and illustrate a crucial point known to cognitive scientists and illusionists alike: In some instances, our senses lie to us. This...
The “Bad” Truck Driver in a Chehalis, WA I-5 Truck Accident
On January 6, 2017, there were two accidents on Interstate 5 in Chehalis, WA. According to reports, on the southbound side of the highway, an SUV collided with a pedestrian who was attempting to cross the road. In that accident, the 15-year-old pedestrian was killed. Naturally, this accident slowed traffic in both directions. A short...
Do Trucking Companies Need Safer Delivery Rules In Residential Neighborhoods?
Commercial trucks are serious business. Freight needs to get all over the country, and every year over $9 trillion in freight is hauled to and fro by trucks. We can talk all day about some glimmering future of electronic drones making deliveries (thanks for the raised expectations, Amazon), but our infrastructure right now depends largely...
Liability for Highway Obstructions in Texas Law
We have noticed a lot of news reports lately about motorists who for one reason or another collide with the rear of a tractor-trailer. Fault in these instances is always case-specific. Sometimes it falls on the passenger vehicle's driver; in other instances, fault lies with the trucker. There are even accidents where inclement weather or...
Should Semi-Truck U-Turns Be Illegal?
It's difficult for a truck accident law firm to ask questions about commercial truck safety without those who drive trucks for a living taking offense and thinking we're "anti-trucker." I'd like to dispense that notion right off the bat. We have the utmost respect for 99% of professional truck drivers who drive their whole careers...
iFault: Should Apple Be Implicated in Distracted Driving Injuries?
Most people are passingly familiar with the psychological theory of classical conditioning; it's the process behind the famous "Pavlov's Dog" experiments. In that classic example, the researcher takes an object of strong positive stimulus (food) and an object of neutral stimulus (a ringing bell). Over the course of the experiment, the dog is neurologically conditioned...
Walk the Line: Pedestrians and the Texas Transportation Code
Texas is a pretty driving-intensive state, given its span of almost 270,000 square miles. Texans are used to sort of sprawling out horizontally, which means a lot of vehicular travel to get from living space to work space to activities and leisure destinations. That said, we're not without our share of pedestrians. They're not as...
What Do I Do If I’m in an 18-Wheeler Chain Reaction Accident?
On December 30, 2016, a chain-reaction collision begun by a 2001 Freightliner tractor-trailer led to one fatality and ten injured people on westbound Interstate 40 in St. Francis County, Arkansas. According to the official report filed by the Arkansas state highway patrol, six passenger vehicles were moving slowly in a line as traffic passed by...
