How Does Proportionate Responsibility Work in Texas Personal Injury Law?
Proportionate responsibility in Texas personal injury law: an overview. As in any conflict, it's not always simple determining who was at fault in a personal injury case. Occasionally, it's pretty black-and-white that the person who hurt you was 100% responsible for the accident. But Texas law understands the reality that there are potentially other parties...
How Do I Recover Out-of-Pocket Expenses in a Texas Personal Injury Lawsuit?
Recovering Out-of-Pocket Expenses in Texas Personal Injury Lawsuits After a substantial accident, there are plenty of costs---lost wages, medical bills, repair costs, you name it. Sometimes, insurance covers some of these costs, but far too often, victims have to pay for what they need out of their own resources. The law allows your attorney to...
How Do I Recover Lost Income After An Injury?
How To Recover Lost Income After An Injury After serious injuries, those involved in the accident usually have to miss time at work. Even if you have the most understanding employer, eventually, you're going to run out of whatever paid vacation time you have---if any---and you won't be able to work. Below, we'll talk about...
How Do I Receive Compensation for Medical Expenses under Texas Law?
Compensation For Medical Bills Under Texas Law After a major accident, the most common---and often the most expensive---loss personal injury victims endure is medical bills. In our continuing series on damages, we'll examine how courts can empower you to sue those responsible for your accident to pay for the care you need. As always, if...
How Do Economic Damages Work in Texas Personal Injury Law?
What are economic damages in a personal injury case? Damages as we talk about them in everyday conversation and the way they are used in the law are not the same thing. While your car can be damaged by a shopping cart, in that it's condition is altered in a way that makes it less...
How Do Physical Impairment Damages Work Under Texas Law?
How Physical Impairment Damages Work Under Texas Law. In our continuing series on damages, we're going to look at how courts examine claims for "physical impairment." Below, we'll discuss how these claims work and how we prove them up in court. What "physical impairment" claims are designed to do. After a serious accident, victims are...
Will a Texas Personal Injury Lawsuit Allow Me to Recover Compensation for Disfigurement?
How To Recover Damages For Disfigurement In Texas Personal Injury Cases. In serious accidents, victims experience all kinds of suffering. Some of this is permanent. In our continuing discussion of damages, we'll examine below how Texas courts and juries award compensation for disfigurement. To better educate the public, our attorneys have created the popular Comprehensive...
What Non-Economic Damages Are Recoverable in Texas?
How Non-economic Damages Work in Texas. After a serious accident, victims have to deal with more than just expensive doctor appointments and missed work. Often, victims suffer from physical pain from the accident, medical treatment, and physical therapy long after the accident is over. And there is always the mental toil of reliving the accident...
Can I Recover Compensation for Pain and Suffering in Texas?
How Pain And Suffering Compensation Works Under Texas Law. When accidents happen, one of the first things people ask is, "Was anyone hurt?" In a sense, the law asks the same question. This is because courts are empowered to not only force negligent defendants to pay damages for property losses and medical bills, but also...
Does Texas Law Allow You to Recover Compensation for Mental Anguish?
Texas Personal Injury Law Allows You To Recover Compensation For Mental Anguish. After a serious accident, victims aren't just physically injured---they experience mental and emotional damage, too. They now have to live with the new reality that involves doctor visits, physical pain, financial losses, and far too often, the death of a loved one in...
How Does The Clear and Convincing Evidence Standard Work in Texas?
How The Clear and Convincing Evidence Standard Works When plaintiffs accuse defendants of committing especially bad acts, courts use a higher standard of proof to evaluate how compelling the evidence is. In this article, Texas personal injury attorney Michael Grossman will explain what the clear and convincing evidence standard is and how it works. Questions...
What are Compensatory Damages in Texas Personal Injury Law?
Personal Injury Law: What are Compensatory Damages? As we've explained in earlier articles, there are many kinds of damages available to you as you file your personal injury claim. Some of those damages might be more intuitive. You have real tangible financial losses as a result of someone else's negligence. And the state of Texas...
Do Texas Courts Use the Preponderance of the Evidence Standard in Personal Injury Lawsuits?
More Likely Than Not: The Burden of Proof in Civil Cases When personal injury and wrongful death cases make it to a jury, one thing is certain: the plaintiffs and defendants will present a lot of evidence. And it's natural that each side will only put on evidence that helps their side. The jury's job...
What Are Questions of Fact in Texas Law?
What Are Questions of Fact in Texas Law, and How Do They Work in Personal Injury Cases? When accidents happen because of someone's mistake, it's very rare for the wrongdoer to admit fault. In part, this is caused by a genuine dispute as to who did what in the accident. However, many, if not most...
What Is the Burden of Proof in a Texas Personal Injury Case?
Burdens of Proof Tell Juries How Much Evidence They'll Need to Decide Who Wins When someone tells us a story, we can have very different reactions about whether it is true or not. We judge the story based on not only who is telling it, but also on whether it's plausible. We always hold people...
What Does Beyond Reasonable Doubt Mean in Texas Law?
Putting someone in jail requires the highest level of proof: Reasonable Doubt If you watch the news or are a fan of courtroom dramas, then you're probably somewhat familiar with the concept of the standard, "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." When a criminal defendant faces charges, the state's prosecutor must prove the defendant is guilty,...
What Are Questions of Law in Texas?
What are Questions of Law? Almost everyone with a TV or library card has seen or read a courtroom drama. The scenes in these works that tend to be most compelling involve lawyers duking it out via questions and arguments in front of the 12 jurors. But contrary to what you might expect, some of...
When Do Texas Courts Apply Sovereign Immunity?
How sovereign immunity works under Texas law: In this article, we'll touch on the basics of sovereign immunity---which is the law that strongly limits when someone can sue the Texas state government for state, county, or local employees or facilities that cause injury or death. This is an incredibly complex and byzantine area of the...
How Does Negligent Training Work in Texas Law?
How "Negligent Training" Works Under Texas Law In our continuing discussion on how negligence arguments work, we'll discuss below the concept of "negligent training" and how we use it to hold employers responsible for accidents their employees cause. First, we'll look at the general principle and then apply it in common scenarios. But if you're...
What Is Vicarious Liability?
An overview of "vicarious liability" under Texas law: In the normal personal injury scenario, person A acts negligently and injures person B. Under those circumstances, it's very clear who the wrongdoer is, and the victim has a very straightforward claim against the wrongdoer and only the wrongdoer. But not every accident is so straight-forward. In...