If South Carolina Can Mandate Liquor Liability Insurance, Why Can’t Texas?
Good news, South Carolinians! Legislators in your state passed a law in June requiring bars and restaurants that sell alcohol past 5 p.m. to have liability insurance policies of at least $1 million. Under the new law, these businesses will need to show proof of such a policy before they are able to obtain or...
Strong Winds: Acts of God and “Acts of God”
Hurricane Harvey may have dissipated, his awful work complete, but no sooner did the vicious storm subside than his girlfriend Irma turned up to continue in his absence. My heart goes out to those suffering through the intense rains and flooding, the gale-force winds, and the cumulative threat to life and property. Sadly, the Gulf...
NBC News Gives Its Trusting Readers a Wrong Interpretation of the Law.
A news piece I recently encountered tried to summarize Texas policy about certain kinds of auto accidents, but the piece itself shows a highly flawed understanding of the very laws it attempts to explain. It's wrong of them to spread that faulty information, considering how many readers will likely accept their version as gospel truth--after...
The Lesser of Two Evils in the Law: Alabama Edition
It's often a throwaway line when people write that "we have the best justice system on earth, even though it's not perfect." While those of us who write about the law for a living often extol the virtues of our legal system, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that sometimes the law is...
The Real Takeaway From the Matal v. Tam Decision
The Supreme Court of the U.S. recently ruled that individuals have the right to trademark offensive words and phrases for the sake of using them as company or product names. This unanimous decision is absolutely a victory for proponents of free speech (even if it seems like the mean-spirited kind), but it actually has a...
Click It Or Ticket 2017 Has Begun, But Just Buckle Up So You Don’t Get Obliterated
Monday, May 22 marks the beginning of the Texas Department of Transportation's two-week "Click It Or Ticket" campaign. Until June 4, Texas law enforcement officers will actively ticket drivers and passengers who are not wearing seatbelts. People whose young children are not riding in appropriate child-safety seats or booster seats will also be subject to...
How Do I Discover the Other Driver’s Insurance Policy Limits?
I've learned over the years that the quickest way to make people's eyes glaze over is to either discuss evidentiary rules in Texas courts or to talk about insurance. Despite being a topic that doesn't make people scream, "Oh, tell me more," following a fatal accident, knowing how insurance works is crucial to the surviving...
The Legal Landscape Can Be Murky For Injured Cell Tower Workers
Work-injury law is already more complicated in Texas than in any other state. That's because Texas operates two parallel systems that help those who are injured on the job. The traditional workers' compensation system pays benefits to workers or their families when a worker is injured or killed on the job, regardless of whether or...
Are Passengers “Assuming the Risk” When They Ride with Drunk Drivers?
Everyone can probably agree that riding with a drunk driver is dangerous. However a passenger may have ended up in the vehicle (not knowing that the driver was intoxicated, or maybe even just drunk themselves) there's a significant measure of danger in sharing it with a drunk person behind the wheel. If we were to...
Atlanta Tragedy Shows Why We Have Attractive Nuisance Doctrine
It's no secret that any time a law firm discusses a tragic event in the news, people will invariably accuse that firm of attempting to profit from a tragedy. However, when the reaction of most people is that "the victim's family is going to make a ton of money," it illustrates a lack of knowledge...
Does Not Wearing a Seatbelt Bar Someone From Getting Compensation?
One of the questions that I get asked all the time by people is, "If someone isn't wearing a seabelt in a crash, can they still recover compensation for their injuries?" I learned of a recent trucking accident in the Texas Panhandle that makes answering this question particularly timely. Deaf Smith County, TX: April 4,...
Texans Fighting Wrong-Way Driving With Smarter Signs
One such set of lines is the ones that divide the lanes of the road. Motor vehicles are obviously extremely dangerous, especially when operated incorrectly. The law does what it can to make sure people more or less understand this fact and keep it in mind when operating a vehicle, but drivers still make bad...
When an Accident Implies Negligence: The Principle of Res Ipsa Loquitur
One can't look at any controversy in the courts without hearing someone getting worked up about "judges making laws." While judges shouldn't rewrite laws from the bench in the face of a clearly defined statute, our common law legal system actually encourages them to speak on issues where the law is silent. These well-established principles...
Are “Not Responsible for Broken Windshield” Signs Legally Enforceable? Not a Chance
As long as the law has existed, there have been the twin impulses to find legal ways to get around it and to use the protections of law as a shield against other legal actions. This could rightly be termed a quest for technicalities. A great example of this is that it is well-known that...
How The Reasonably Prudent Professional Standard of Care Works
In the vast majority of personal injury cases, whether a defendant was negligent is determined by whether they acted as a reasonably prudent person would have in a similar situation. The perfect example of this would be your typical car accident, where one passenger car strikes another. Neither of the drivers has commercial license, or...
Texas Dram Shop Law Helps the Victims of Drunk Driving
For many people, an understanding of dram shop law begins and ends with the phrase "person sues bar." Many people have made it a point to object to this idea, considering it unfair that an establishment that serves alcohol should be held accountable for doing what they're paid to do--serving a patron. Without looking any...
How Drunk is a .32 BAC and How Dangerous Is It?
The news is often full of people who seem to have disregarded the maximum legal blood-alcohol content (BAC) of .08, drinking so much they violate not just the law, but common sense itself. Their tox-screen results suggest that many people arrested for intoxication have a BAC in the range of .15 to .30--well over the...
How Does a Texas Jury Apportion Responsibility Between a Bar and a Drunk Driver?
I talk a lot about Texas dram shop law, wherein an establishment that serves alcohol may be held liable if a drunk person causes injury to himself or others, but it's definitely important to keep individual accountability in the equation. Dram shop laws don't excuse the drivers themselves; it only acknowledges that the bars who...
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...
