This Month On Our Main Site

For the new readers, we’ve been trying to transition our traffic to the blog our main firm website. In the past month, we’ve had a series of posts on a Texas Supreme Court decision that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for a successful litigant to recover attorneys’ fees in uninsured/underinsured motorist litigation. The posts can be read here, here and here.

On the heels of that decision, we also have a post about a Texas Supreme Court justice who is asking the legislature to reimburse him for his own attorneys’ fees he incurred in defending an ethics charge.

There is also an interesting report from a local news station that Austin women are more likely to be injured in car wrecks than men, and a review of a luncheon with Stephanie Mencimer, a noted author on tort reform topics.

We hope one of these topics will interest you, and that you will take a look.

On Our Main Blog

As you may know, we’ve been trying to transition our traffic to our blog at our firm site.   Our two recent postings, not reflected here, are The Vanishing Jury Trial, part 2 (detailing various law professors’ attempts to get the Texas Supreme Court to reign in some of their opinions) and Some Texas Car Wreck Claims Get Tougher,   discussing a December Texas Supreme Court opinion’s effect on uninsured/underinsured motorist insurance claims.

Car Wrecks: Insurers Playing Hard Ball

As we transition our blog, we have a post on our new blog regarding CNN’s report of insurance companies playing hard ball on car wreck cases.  The special report was quite revealing, including conclusions that part of the goal of the plan was to pay so little that attorneys would stop representing those injured.  To read more, click here.

Car Wreck: Property Damage Advice

Brooks was featured in a short interview on News 8 Austin about resolving car wreck property damage claims.  Click here for a short article and the video.

 And, not to be repetitive, but we are still continuing to transition our blog to our website.  So please visit us there and sign up for our feed. 

Truckers: “We violate the law”

A recent confidential industry survey of truck drivers revealed some startling facts. In the survey, 77 percent of the responding truck drivers admitted that they had deliberately broken trucking regulations in the past, and 55 percent said they were still breaking the rules. The drivers said that the most common violations were logging time as off-duty while actually on duty (78 percent), using more than one logbook (21 percent), and indicating that a team driver is operating the vehicle when they really are not (11 percent).

Frankly, we’re not sure how to respond. Trucking cases are always subject to questions about the driver’s hours and the legitimacy of their logbooks. This type of data only confirms all of our fears.

And, this is particularly disheartening to those of us in Austin and Central Texas. With the passage of NAFTA, truck traffic continues to make up a bigger and bigger percentage of traffic in Central Texas.

 At Perlmutter & Schuelke, LLP, we continue to handle claims arising from trucking accidents, not only in Austin, but all over Texas.  For additional information on trucking accidents, please visit our website. 

And as always, we are migrating our blog to our firm website.  Please visit us and subscribe to our new feed. 

Austin Auto Accidents & Driver Inattention

It has long been known that driver inattention is a leading cause of wrecks.  These distractions can take any number of forms, including talking on cell phones and eating in the car.  Now, the Austin Police Department and University of Texas advertising students have partnered up to try and do something about it.  To read about the action and to see a Fox 7 news story about the partnership, click here.

Also, we are slowly transitioning our blog to our firm website.  You can find our new blog here.  We hope you visit and subscribe to the feed.

Wrong Side, Wrong Procedure, Wrong Patient

“If you are having surgery, make sure your doctor marks the proper surgical site clearly — and initials it.” That’s a recommendation from a recent Washington Post article titled HEADED FOR THE HOSPITAL? HERE’S HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF.

That sounds a little extreme doesn’t it? While the hospitals may screw something up, surely they’ll get the right area, won’t they? Maybe not. The Archives of Surgery, the official medical journal of surgical associations across the country, has a recent report that studies surgeries (1) where the procedure was performed on the wrong-side or site of the body; (2) where the wrong procedures are performed; or (3) where the doctors operate on the wrong patients. There are no formal methods to report these type of surgeries, but the article’s authors surveyed several separate databases and estimated that there are between 1,300 and 2,700 of these events in the US each year. That means that each day, on average, there are 3-7 operations around the country where a doctor operates on the wrong side, performs the wrong procedure, or operates on the wrong patient. Those numbers would be almost unbelievable if they didn’t come from physicians themselves.

So maybe the advice isn’t so radical, and next time you go in the hospital, remember to protect yourself.

For more information on personal injury and medical malpractice claims, check out our firm’s site. Also, thanks to Virginia attorney Ben Glass for pointing us to the study.

Personal Injury Lawyers: A Few Bad Apples

It’s no secret that trial lawyers, in general, and personal injury lawyers, in particular, have a bad name. We like to believe that this reputation is caused by a few bad apples that really do deserve the name “ambulance chasers.” An undercover story yesterday by WOAI television in San Antonio revealed a situation where one attorney allegedly attempted to circumvent the rules regarding client solicitation.

In Texas, attorneys are prevented from contacting accident victims immediately after a car wreck. This law is designed to limit the “ambulance chasing” that is going on. According to the story, to get around this law, the attorney and chiropractors engaged in a scheme where chiropractors would purchase accident reports and contact accident victims, who were offered free medical treatment. Once at the chiropractors’ offices, the chiropractic staff would have attorneys’ “representatives” in the office ready to sign up the clients. We have heard from others that similar schemes are going on here in Austin and other cities around the state.

To help prevent this loophole, many entities, including many trial lawyers and insurance companies, are requesting legislation that prevents anyone other than parties to wrecks, their insurance companies, and the media from purchasing accident reports until sixty days after the wreck. You can let your legislators know your thoughts on such a proposed law by clicking here.

For more information about personal injury claims, feel free to visit our website.

Texas Personal Injury: Resolving Property Damage Claims

We find that most of our personal injury clients from automobile wrecks can handle their own property damage claims.  To help our clients and potential clients, we have posted a new article on our website entitled Resolving Your Property Damage Claim.  If you are looking for other information about personal injury claims, please refer to our website.

Texas Personal Injury: Remember the Two Second Rule

No, we’re not talking about cookies dropped on the floor. Think back to driver’s ed when you learned that you should follow two seconds behind the vehicle in front of you. Tailgating and aggressive driving are two of the leading causes of automobile wrecks. And now, police departments across the country have started taking action. A story on NPR this morning talked about Oregon and other states’ attempts to enforce the two second rule using new laser technology. Aiming the lasers at two vehicles, the police officers are able to calculate the time between the vehicles. The officers have found drivers following as little as ½ second behind another car — not enough time to even react, much less stop, if the lead car brakes. Don’t let that person be you. Remember the two second rule and protect yourself and fellow motorists.