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...

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...

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...

TxDOT #EndthestreakTX Campaign Highlights Unbroken 16-year Period of Daily Traffic Fatalities

November 7, 2016 marked an anniversary, which the Texas Department of Transportation marked by issuing a release to commemorate a grim Texas milestone: "At least one person has died each and every day on Texas roads since November 7, 2000." Sixteen Years?! Just How Many Fatalities Have There Been? Over the last sixteen years--that's 5,845...

U.S. Safety Agencies Commit to Eliminating Traffic Fatalities in Next 30 Years…But How?

As I recently learned, several regulatory agencies and private safety firms have pledged to try and eliminate traffic fatalities within the next 30 years. The details of the conference and the proposed initiatives haven't been made public yet, but it is likely that they will borrow heavily from similar projects taking place across Europe, particularly...

Crash Statistics Reflect Increased Traffic Fatalities in First Half of 2016

In early October, federal officials released the preliminary estimates of U.S. traffic fatalities during the first six months of 2016. Fatalities have risen by an estimated 10.4 percent since the government's last assessment. This continues an unpleasant trend that began during 2014's economic recovery and hasn't stopped climbing since. For example, 2015's fatalities clocked in...

Tesla Model S Crashes, Battery Cells Ignite in Pyrotechnic Display

Does anybody else like retro-futurism? You may have seen examples of it without knowing its name, but the label applies to what people of previous periods in history thought the future would look like. For instance, concept art generated in the fifties depicts smiling people in silvery jumpsuits strolling across a gleaming Martian city toward...

Wisconsin HS Admin. and Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress

Students were awaiting morning announcements, when over the a Brodhead, Wisconsin school's PA system, they were informed that four of their classmates had been killed in a car accident. Having heard announcements of other student's deaths when I was an high school, I can only imagine the shock, confusion, and strange array of emotions that...

Jurisdiction Measuring: Denton City Council Will Vote on Banning Handheld Device Use in Vehicles

Thanks in large part to increased safety measures in modern vehicles, crash fatalities saw a gradual decline for most of the 2000's. Unfortunately, that positive streak was broken by the increased prevalence and functionality of smartphones, which have become harder and harder to resist for the majority of the populace. We fiddle with them in...

Fiat Chrysler Recalls Late-Model Jeep Wranglers for Airbag Wiring Fault

Another day, another auto recall for airbags that blow up, burst out randomly, or fail entirely. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has announced a recall of approximately 224,000 vehicles with potentially-faulty airbag sensors. The worldwide recall affects certain 2016 and 2017 models of the Jeep Wrangler SUV. In information released to the NHTSA, Fiat Chrysler notes...

Musnuff v. Haeger: Large Companies Hiding Evidence

One of the less discussed cases on the 2016 Supreme Court docket is Musnuff v. Haeger. The case is fascinating on a couple of levels. First, it is more confirmation that in civil litigation, large defendants and their attorneys will often go to great lengths to hide and obscure vital, potentially damaging evidence. Secondly, the...

What Law Governs Guardrail Spearing Injuries in Texas

Just a couple of weeks ago, outside of Amarillo, a passenger was speared by a guardrail in a car accident. According to reports, the passenger suffered a severe leg laceration and it is possible that on-scene first aid saved their life. While being speared by a guardrail isn't the first injury that pops to mind...

This is a Dangerous Way to Transport a Boat

Not even 2 day after a major news report about increase in deaths on our roads due to improperly transported cargo, what does someone at Grossman Law Offices spot driving down the road? This: Improper Cargo Transportation Costs Lives Images like this are both frustrating and infuriating. For most passenger cars, the back of the...

I See Debris: Unsecured Belongings are Killing Motorists

Most motorists have cruised past some kind of abandoned flotsam on the shoulder of the highway. In my own travels I've seen old mattresses, lost tires, suitcases with spilled clothes, and most unusually, a destroyed photocopier. It's kind of sad to see what people left behind, whether they knew it or not at the time,...