How 5 Cases (Mostly) Made Product Liability Law in the United States
That you can hold a manufacturer accountable for a defective product is as obvious to anyone alive today as the fact that Americans elect their leaders. Modern product liability law is so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget just how new it is. Less than 200 years ago, caveat emptor (buyer beware) was the prevailing...
Are Automakers Liable if a Roof Collapses in a Rollover Crash?
Rollover crashes account for less than 3% of all passenger vehicle accidents, but are responsible for almost 35% of all highway fatalities, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Of course, automakers cannot create vehicles that will never be in a rollover crash; however, most people assume that rollover crashes will be deadly...
Are Vehicle Fires Always Product Liability Cases?
In July 2018, the United States Fire Administration (USFA) published a Fire Report Series that found that the US averages 345 deaths and 1,300 injuries due to vehicle fires every year. Additionally, the report found that 80 percent of these fires occur in our everyday passenger vehicles. What is most startling though, is that "unintentional actions...
Am I Eligible to File a Lawsuit Under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022?
It's a confusing time for those injured by their exposure to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Law firms across the country have flooded practically every website, television station, and radio station with advertisements instructing those injured to contact their firm to pursue compensation against the government. You're being blanketed with ads because Congress...
What Do I Do If My Seatback Failed and Injured Me?
I previously wrote about the dangers of seatback failure and how safety experts believe the current design standards are too lax and severely outdated. Now the pressing question for some people is, "What are my options if I was seriously injured or lost a loved one due to seatback failure?" Manufacturers Have a Duty to...
Is My Vehicle Defective if it Doesn’t Have Crash Avoidance Technology?
Technology can save lives, especially in the auto industry. In today's day and age, many in the vehicle safety community believe there’s really no excuse for vehicles not to include Crash Avoidance Technology (CAT) as a standard feature. According to these experts, it is irresponsible and harmful for automakers to exclude the software and hardware...
What Is the Government Doing to Prevent Vehicle Seatback Failures? Not Much.
For years automakers and vehicle safety organizations have gone back and forth about vehicle seat design and seatback failure. Automakers maintain that “yielding seats” limit injuries in low-speed rear impacts, and that if vehicle seats were stiffer, those low-speed rear accidents would result in more severe injuries. The problem is, that this argument originated in...
What Evidence Do Police Miss When Investigating Commercial Vehicle Crashes?
I've spent a good portion of my decades-long career pushing back against the myth that a police crash report is the final word on any collision. The most obvious reason not to place too much faith in police reports is that they don't conclusively establish fault for a crash. In other words, everyone is free...
Would Autonomous Vehicles Eliminate 94% of All Crashes?
A national study on the causes of crashes found that 94% of all crashes have a critical error assigned to the driver of the vehicle. Various organizations and players in the automotive industry have spread this statistic far and wide through advertisements, social media campaigns, blog posts, new outlets, and government websites. If this statistic...
How Many Crashes Are Caused By Vehicle Defects?
According to the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey (2005-07) between 28,500 and 59,100 crashes per year in the United States are due to a vehicle component failure or degradation. Clearly, this is alarming, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this estimation most likely falls short of the actual number....
Can Automakers Start Making Rollover Crashes Less Dangerous?
Rollover collisions can result in severe outcomes like traumatic brain injuries, spinal trauma, paralysis, amputations, and even death. According to national statistics from 2014 to 2018, only 2 percent of vehicles in all traffic crashes were involved in rollover crashes, but 24 percent of all fatalities resulted from rollover crashes.These statistics demonstrate that rollover crashes...
How Do We Legally Express What Is Wrong?
I recently read a shocking news story about a lawsuit alleging that a Taco Bell employee poured boiling water on two customers. I suspect most people feel that a lawsuit under these circumstances is completely justified. If the allegations are true, then no person in their right mind doesn't want to see the wrongdoer punished....
Is Texas Common Law Marriage Actually “Common Law”?
You have probably heard the term "Common Law Marriage" and vaguely know that after living together for several years two people could be considered legally married. However, it is not that simple. A common law marriage is still a legal union and as such there are three requirements that must be met: However, despite its...
Can You Sue a Bar for Overserving in Texas?
Can a bar be held liable for a drunk driver? Yes, you can sue a bar for overserving a patron under the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code, also known as the Texas Dram Shop Act. To sue a bar for overserving, you must be able to show that the bar either overserved a customer or knew...
A Look Back at How Spectacularly Wrong a 1982 Truck Accident Study Predicted the Future
New data bombards us, regardless of what we do. Given what I do for a living, I see a constant stream of truck accident data and studies. While I read, digest, and comment on this data, federal regulators make new laws based on the same studies, and responsible trucking companies use them to devise new...
Why Is a Trucking Magazine Bragging About Poor Out-of-Service Rates?
Perhaps there isn't a stranger sight than someone bragging about mediocrity. That's what an author in Land Line Magazine did recently when discussing the results of International Roadcheck 2021. For those unfamiliar with International Roadcheck, it's a coordinated enforcement effort between officials in the United States, Mexico, and Canada to ensure that the commercial trucks...
Can We Retire the Myth of the Truck Driver Shortage?
Have you heard that a shortage of truck drivers exists and it's only getting worse? According to the American Trucking Association (ATA), the American trucking industry finds itself in need of 61,000 drivers. To make matters worse, within 7 years, that number could balloon into hundreds of thousands of truck drivers short of what the...
Is There a Downside to Record Alcohol Sales in Texas?
In May 2021, Texas bars, restaurants, and other licensed alcohol vendors sold $742,884,835 worth of beer, wine, and spirits. This eclipsed the previous record of $722 million in monthly sales from March 2019. Coupled with near-record sales in April 2021 ($689 million, the third-highest monthly sales on record), it certainly appears that Texas drank away...
Just Because Police Rarely Enforce Texas’ Texting Ban Doesn’t Mean it Doesn’t Have an Impact
Recently, the Dallas Morning News measured the enforcement of the texting-while-driving ban in Texas. The initial ban went into effect in September of 2017, in the wake of a horrific mass-casualty crash outside of San Antonio. In that incident, a young man was allegedly texting, when he crashed into a church bus, killing 13 people....
TXDOT Report Shows the Fallibility of Experts
I'm not in the business of making mountains out of molehills. However, there are times when I read something that exemplifies many larger trends, and this is one of them. Not a day goes by when someone (usually in a position of authority) laments that people don't trust experts (people like them) like they used...
