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...
Highway Hypnosis and Fatal Truck Accidents
We've written many times, and will write many more, about how alcohol and distractions can cause serious accidents, but sometimes these are not factors in a crash. A dangerous lapse in concentration can be caused by highway hypnosis--the phenomenon when a motorist's brain "checks out" and mindfulness of the present is lost. Put another way,...
Do I Need An Accident Reconstructionist for My Truck Accident?
It's a common misconception that a driver who rear-ends another vehicle is always at fault. The popular belief is that the driver in the back is expected to exercise greater caution, given that they can more easily monitor the activity of the car ahead of them. This idea suggests that a collision shows the rear...
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...
Cherchez La Trucker: Sometimes, It Really Is That Obvious.
Grossman Law has worked hundreds of truck-accident cases, and seen reports of thousands more. While they're not the only kind of case the firm handles, it's still a category in which far too many collisions occur. A runaway truck is a 40-ton, 60-foot projectile, and the laws of physics are very unkind to just about...
It’s Not the Devices–It’s the Batteries
I am optimistic about the progress of technology and its increasing usefulness for modern living. I'm not blind to its more sinister applications, of course, but generally, when I think of the future I try to see less Blade Runner and more Jetsons. Of course, part of the Jetsons future is a world that is...
Recognizing The Very Human Victims of Texas Drunk Driving Accidents
I wish I wasn't able to say this, but Texas endures far too many drunk driving accidents for us to be able to write about them all. In 2015, TxDOT reported 960 fatalities related to driving while intoxicated (almost 3 every single day), which unfortunately is too many to fully chronicle and examine. Furthermore, that...
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...
What Can Be Done to Protect People from Going Under Tractor-Trailers During a Crash?
Many people suffer from anxiety when driving in close proximity to tractor-trailers and while they may not realize it, there's a good reason for this fear. The space under an 18-wheeler's trailer actually has a dangerous, even lethal, legacy. This problem is illustrated by a recent crash in Houston between a motorcycle and an 18-wheeler,...
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...
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 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,...
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...
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...
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...
