Category Archives : Injury Law

Featured

Serious Injuries, Liability and Landlords

Most of the time, when people think of personal injury law, landlords or tenant law is probably not what comes to mind. There are ways that landlords are liable for their properties, and you may have a personal injury claim on your hands if the negligence of a particular landlord has caused you to come to harm.

Understanding Landlords and their Properties

There are great landlords out there to be sure. They’re the types of landlords that show up to fix things, who inspect their properties if something seems to have fallen out of repair and they keep up with you about the state of their property. Then there are the slumlords, and they sometimes end up causing their tenants real harm.

Landlords do have responsibility when their tenants come to harm, in some cases. A woman in New York City, for example, sued her landlord because she was the victim of a home invasion and an assault after her landlord had failed to repair a faulty lock. The landlord had been told about the problem several times but had failed to act.

If your landlord has shirked their responsibilities to you and you have come to harm, consider speaking with a personal injury attorney.

Corporate Landlords

In large cities like Houston, some corporate landlords may be negligent in their responsibilities. They may own properties all of the city, state or nation and not really take care of any of them. These are the slum lords of the world and unfortunately, it can pay very well. They fail to take care of structural and health hazards in the buildings, and don’t maintain the premises and fail to take care of pest problems. There are health standards that they have to maintain and, when they do not, it’s not rare for someone to be very seriously hurt as a result of their negligence.

Getting Help

Corporate landlords can be very hard to get ahold of, even if they’re located in the same city. Landlords who are just negligent but who don’t work for a corporation can be even worse sometimes. There are many techniques that a lawyer can use to get hold of them.

If you’ve been injured due to a negligent landlord, make sure you speak to an attorney. If they’re a corporate landlord, the attorney will still be able to handle them. Increasingly, people are getting tired of slum lords ruining their cities. City councils, law enforcement, fire departments and, especially, tenants have a lot to gain from holding these people and companies responsible for what they do. A good personal injury lawyer can help you do that.

If you were injured, the attorney will meet with you and try to determine if they can help you out. If they cannot, there’s no obligation. It’s a good idea to ask, however. For most people, the rent they pay is among their highest bills and, unfortunately, it sometimes goes to landlords who don’t maintain the property that everyday people often call home.

Continue Reading

Car Accidents And Lawsuits

Car accidents quite frequently end up in lawsuits. There are several reasons for this. The reasons that people sue are oftentimes very good by most people’s judgment. Consider, for a moment, what a car wreck actually means.

Automobiles Are Expensive Property

Cars are expensive. When you get in a bad wreck, you’re likely taking a huge financial hit, possibly out of no fault of your own.

Cars Are Vital Transportation

Losing your car-or your ability to drive because of injury-can have significant consequences for your life. You cannot get to the store easily, cannot get to work easily and cannot take care of everyday needs. The loss of your car costs you much more in dollars than merely the cost of your car itself.

You May Have Medical Expenses

Medical expenses are among the most significant financial damages that people who are in wrecks suffer. These expenses can range into the tens of thousands of dollars or more. Your car accident attorney can help you get all of this together.

There May Be A Wrongful Death

Wrongful death lawsuits are designed to help the family of the deceased. Unfortunately, car wrecks end up causing far too many deaths every year. Wrongful death lawsuits usually involve pursuing sums for the loss of the deceased’s ability to earn, their contribution to the family and the pain and suffering that the family was put through.

There May Be Pain and Suffering Involved

Suing for pain and suffering is legitimate. The pain and suffering that people who are in car wrecks endure is legitimate and, because of that, it is possible to seek compensation for it. This category is one of the hardest to sue over because it’s hard to quantify this in dollars. Your injury lawyer can help you with this and will make sure that you seek enough.

Watch Out For Unfair Settlements

There are some cases where the defendant will approach you and want to you take a settlement rather than going after them in court. This is usually a pretty cynical calculation on their part, but it’s sometimes to your benefit, as well. The settlement will be calculated to be enough to get you not to pursue the lawsuit and to satisfy most of your claims but will save the defendant the cost of going to court. Talk to your attorney if you’re offered a settlement. The other party may try to go behind your attorney’s back but you get no benefit from this and the defendant may well end up taking advantage of you in this way.

Talk to an attorney right away if you believe that you could sue over a car wreck. There are limitations on how long you can wait. Your attorney will let you know how long you have to decide whether or not to file the lawsuit. If they take you on as a client, they can do a lot to make sure your case is represented as competently as possible. They may be able to reconstruct the accident and take other measures to get at the truth. There is a chance that you could get substantial compensation.

The Law Offices of Blaine A Tucker offers FREE consultations to victims of car accidents. Call us at 713-771-5453

Continue Reading

How Lawuits Can Get Ruined

If you’re involved in an accident with a commercial trucking or similar company, there are ways that they can make it very difficult for you to win your claim. You need to be aware of this right away. It will be in the company’s interest to make certain that they take every measure possible to lessen your chance of winning a lawsuit against them for negligence. The best way to stop this is to contact an experienced personal injury attorney right away. If you move quickly, you can sometimes stop the trucking company from taking actions that could make it harder for you to win in court.

Supporting Evidence

Remember that, when you go up against the trucking company in a courtroom, you need to have evidence to support your claim. This is why you need to go with an attorney who has experience dealing with vehicle accidents and, specifically, trucking accidents. The trucking company will have legal representation who can reconstruct the accident in a way that makes it seem like it was entirely your fault or, at least, like the driver employed by the trucking company was not specifically at fault or negligent.

If you have a good attorney, they can do the same for you. They can reconstruct the accident and demonstrate to the jury using scientific evidence how the trucking company or the driver under the employ of the trucking company was negligent and how that led to your accident. The most important thing you’ll need, however, is all of the data from the crash. The trucking company may end up destroying valuable documentation that could bolster your case. They don’t do this illegally; they are allowed to destroy records on a regular basis just as is any other business. The problem is that some of those records that they are allowed to destroy may be important to your claim. Your attorney can stop them from doing this.

Multiple Car Wrecks

There are scenarios where it may not be readily apparent whose negligence led to your car wreck. For example, some people drive incredibly negligently around semis. They may, for example, tailgate you to such an egregious degree that they force you to merge into a freeway lane when you should have yielded, causing a wreck with a semi. In these cases, you need an attorney to help you determine who was negligent. Remember that, in these cases, it may be very easy for the trucking company to find a way to pin it on the other driver, ruining your case against them.

Remember that you’re up against a corporation when you take on a trucking company. What that means is that the entity that you are suing and the people who represent it aren’t spending their own money to defend themselves against the claim; they may have their insurance company’s backing as well. They can throw a great deal of money at their defense, which means that you need an attorney who can see through these types of tactics. Talk to a good Houston vehicle injury lawyer and they should be able to let you know whether or not you have a chance of winning a lawsuit and what you need to do to make certain that the trucking company doesn’t lessen your chances of winning.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

The Law Offices of Blaine A Tucker offers FREE consultations to victims of Trucking and Vehicular accidents Call us at 713-771-5453

Continue Reading

Suing Retail Establishments

Suing over injuries sustained at a retail establishment is sometimes the only option the victims have to move on with their lives. These lawsuits are sometimes cast as frivolous in the media; oftentimes by industry advocacy or tort reform groups that have an ulterior motive. The truth about these injuries is that they are sometimes very serious. When you consider how hard the floors are at most retail establishments, it’s easy to see how seriously someone could be injured in a slip and fall accident.

Recent Lawsuits involving retail establishments

There are always lawsuits going on over these situations. A woman in southeast Texas recently sued one of the largest retailers in the nation over such a situation. Her lawsuit alleges that there was a power outlet that was protruding from the floor, that she tripped on it and that she was injured. It is further alleged that the owner of the store knew about the problem, knew that it posed a real threat and failed to do anything about it. This is precisely negligence and that is why the woman is suing.

Liability and Risk

If you take a risk that makes you negligent, you cannot sue the retailer. For example, if you pulled the outlet out of the floor at the above-mentioned retailer’s establishment and tripped over it on your own, that’s really not their fault. If you run down a stairway and slip and fall, it’s likely not their fault, either; stairways are made for walking. You have to have been doing nothing that put you at undue risk to sue someone over one of these cases.

An attorney can help you to determine whether or not a lawsuit is appropriate in your circumstances. If it is, they may want to represent you if they think that they’re the right professional for the job.

What Do You Sue For?

Personal injury claims require that you break down your injuries and other ways that you came to harm, quantify how much they cost you in dollars and offer that amount as your desired jury award. Your attorney will help you do this. You could end up suing for, among other things:

  • Pain and suffering
  • Medical expenses
  • Lost wages
  • Wrongful death

Your personal injury attorney will help you to determine what applies in your case. There are definitely a lot of factors that go into determining how much to seek in a lawsuit. Your attorney will have to give you guidance in this matter.

Getting Started with a slip and fall lawsuit

Contact an attorney right away. This ensures that you act in time and that you don’t miss your opportunity to file a lawsuit because of time limitations. Your injury attorney may want to meet with you right away, but this doesn’t mean that they’re taking your case. They’ll have to get all the facts before they can make this determination.

Remember that your attorney is there to help you. If the retailer offers a settlement to get you not to sue, be sure you contact your attorney and that you don’t take it before you consult with your lawyer.

The Law Offices of Blaine A Tucker offers FREE consultations to victims of slip and fall accidents. Call us at 713-771-5453

Continue Reading

Motorcycles and Negligent Drivers

Motorcyclists are in a great deal of danger when they’re out on the road. Contrary to popular belief, they handle well, are much more agile than a car in many situations and, if the rider wears appropriate safety gear, most motorcycle wrecks do not result in death. What kills motorcyclists is the negligence of other drivers.

Wrongful Death and Negligence of Car Drivers

There are two very common types of wrecks that motorcyclists should be aware of. The first is having a car turn left in front of them, causing the rider to either have to evade the vehicle by crashing their own or causing them to go over the hood of the turning vehicle, potentially killing them. The second type of wreck that motorcyclists tend to get in are ones that involve vehicles not yielding the right-of-way at stop signs or yield signs because the driver didn’t notice the motorcyclist. Either of these scenarios can easily be pinned on the negligence of the driver behind the wheel of the car.

Motorcyclists have as much right to the road as any car. You’ve probably seen the popular bumper stickers that say, “start seeing motorcycles”. Those bumper stickers are designed to remind drivers that they’re not just looking for cars when they pull out into traffic, make a left turn, merge into a right lane or take any other action that could easily crowd a motorcyclist they don’t see off of the road. Not seeing other drivers on the road can easily be construed as negligence. When you are behind the wheel of a car, you are expected to behave in a safe and reasonable fashion to other drivers on the road. Those other drivers include motorcyclists.

Getting hit by a vehicle while you’re on a motorcycle can easily kill you. If you’ve lost somebody in your family or if you have suffered injury because a driver was negligent, contact an attorney.

What Can an Attorney Do?

The first thing that an attorney can do is take a look at the circumstances of the wreck and see what happened. If you’re dealing with a skilled personal injury attorney, they’ve probably seen the same kind of wreck you’ve been involved in before. There are some classic motorcycle/car wrecks that attorneys tend to see over and over and, when they see certain characteristics of the accident represented in the reconstruction, they can sometimes lock right on to where the negligence was a factor.

If somebody hasn’t respected your rights on the road, don’t let them disrespect your rights in court, either. Get an attorney. The medical expenses you’ve suffered, loss of property, potential loss of wages, pain and suffering, impacts upon your quality of life and, if the situation is as bad as it could possibly be, the loss of somebody you love, are all reasons to seek compensation in court. Speak with a good Houston personal injury lawyer right away; there are limitations on how long you have to take action in one of these cases.

The Law Offices of Blaine A Tucker offers FREE consultations to victims of motorcycle accidents. Call us today at 713-771-5753

Continue Reading

Having An Attorney Help You Before You Decide To Sue

Personal injury attorneys can offer more than just their services in court. When you get into a situation where you’ve been harmed by someone else’s negligence, the first thing you need is an expert opinion on what happened and that is the first thing an attorney can do for you.

Consultations with an injury attorney

Attorneys will usually meet with you the first time for free. This isn’t really charity and attorneys who do this aren’t suffering for work. The reason that they do this is because they have to talk to you about your situation to see whether or not they can really help you. If they don’t think that they can offer you any useful services, they’ll tell you as much and won’t want your case. If they do, however, they’ll let you know that they are interested in representing you. This is where they can sometimes offer you another service.

Deciding to Sue in Court

There’s a lot to consider if you’re in a situation where you could sue someone. You have to consider whether or not you want to go through with the lawsuit. You have to consider whether or not the person you’re suing has any money that you could get in damages. You have to determine if you’re working with the right attorney, of course, as well.

A good personal injury lawyer will be willing to help you with this decision. What they can provide to help are facts. For instance, when people get hurt in some way where the negligence on the part of the party causing the injury was particularly egregious, they will sometimes think that they’re going to sue for millions and make sure the person’s negligence is punished. This isn’t always how lawsuits work. Attorneys can give you a healthy dose of realism about your situation and that’s sometimes the best service of all.

On the other hand, you may have been injured by a commercial trucking firm or another wealthy company and have been convinced by their representatives that taking a check from them and agreeing not to go to court is the best you could possibly due. A good personal injury attorney will let you know whether or not this is actually the case. Simply put, the attorney can help you to understand your situation in greater detail and empower you to make a sensible decision.

Consulting Soon after an accident

There are generally limitations on suing for damages in any situation, so you do need to talk to a good Houston personal injury attorney sooner rather than later. They may be able to give you a lot more information that you expected, so meeting with them to get a handle on what’s going on is always a good idea. They’ll be able to let you know the reality of your situation and, if it happens that you were injured and someone really was negligent in causing it, they might help you to go after that person in court for a jury settlement or help you to negotiate a settlement.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

Call Texas Board Certified Personal Injury Trial Lawyer, Blaine A Tucker at 713-771-5453 for a FREE Case Review

Continue Reading

When Is Medical Malpractice Worth Investigating?

Personal injury attorneys can help you with medical malpractice claims. In Texas, the limitations on these cases are specific and somewhat severe, so you’ll need an attorney who understands how to navigate these laws. There are some basics you can go with to help you decide whether or not you should speak to an attorney.

Breach of Duty

Medical malpractice happens when a doctor breaches their duty to their patient. This can mean giving treatment that was incorrect or that should have been known to be ineffective, not giving treatment when it was obviously required or missing a diagnosis that should have been caught. There are other situations that constitute malpractice, as well, but they all have in common the fact that you must have been injured. You could have been injured physically, financially or otherwise before you can sue.

If you have been injured, you should talk to an attorney. Remember that there’s no risk in just talking with a personal injury attorney about the matter during a free consultation. They may not know after that consultation whether or not they want to take your case, but they can get the basics of it and investigate it further as they need to determine whether they think they could help you.

Wrongful Deaths

Medical malpractice causes far too many deaths. Wrongful death lawsuits are designed to help the family and other survivors of the deceased. They sometimes net large sums of money-into the millions is not uncommon-because of the trauma to the family, the horrible situation that the doctor’s negligence caused and, from a practical standpoint, because the family lost someone that provided support, financial or otherwise. If you’ve lost someone in your family and suspect that medical malpractice may have played a part in that loss, talking to an attorney is highly advisable.

Dentistal Malpractice

Dentists can commit acts of medical malpractice. If you’ve suffered because a dentist breached their duties to you, you should speak with an attorney. They may be able to help you go after the dentist for damages. Breach of Duty could include faulty surgery, excessive medication, permanent damage caused by dental surgery etc.

Alternative Practitioners

Alternative practitioners-including chiropractors-have been sued successfully for malpractice. There are limits to who can legitimately be called a healthcare professional and upon who can actually say that they’ve taken on a patient, of course, but you should speak with your attorney about any situation involving an alternative practitioner and possible malpractice.

A Texas personal injury attorney will be able to give you good advice. They’re not just going to tell you to sue in every situation. What they’ll do is take a look at your situation, get advice from experts and see if they think that they can render you effective legal services and help you get compensated. There’s no reason that patients should have to suffer when doctors are incompetent or negligent. Talk to an attorney and see if they can help you bring a lawsuit against a doctor who wronged you by incompetent action or inaction and that left you paying the cost of that negligence.

Call Texas Board Certified Personal Injury Trial Lawyer, Blaine A Tucker at 713-771-5453 for a FREE Case Review

Continue Reading

Suing For Personal Injuries In Houston

The law provides lawsuits as remedies to those who have been physically, financially or otherwise harmed by the negligence of another. This ability to accommodate lawsuits on the part of our court system is one of our most vital legal rights. It allows us to pursue those who take actions that cause harm or that fail to take actions that could have prevented it when any other reasonable person could have been expected to act effectively.

Talking to a Personal Injury Lawyer

Suing over a personal injury claim can be done for many different reasons. It may be that a driver struck you in traffic in a way that was the result of their negligence and you need a way to get compensated for the damage and injuries they caused. You may have slipped and fallen on a floor at a retail establishment that was negligent in not cleaning up a spill or in flagging a wet and dangerous floor. You may have been injured by a physician that breached their duty to you as a doctor by providing you with the wrong treatment. A personal injury lawyer may be able to help.

How Can Injury Attorneys Help?

An Attorney can rely on their own expertise and the expertise of others to represent you and your rights. They may end up hiring medical experts to bolster your testimony in a medical malpractice case. They may reconstruct a car wreck and find out just how the other driver was negligent and how you came to harm. They utilize their experience and their creativity to find solutions for you and they use their ability to construct effective arguments and to demonstrate the truth of a situ ation to a jury to go after the other party in court.

When you’re offered a settlement that is nothing more than a cheap attempt to buy you off, your attorney will know and will either help you negotiate it to an acceptable level or at least recommend that you turn it down. When you’re getting ready to go to court your attorney will prepare you for what the other side’s attorney is likely to throw at you and make sure you’re not taken off guard. Attorneys provide an array of services to their clients. Getting you ready to deal with the other side is among those services and you can be sure that they’ll have you ready for anything by the time you go to court.

Personal Injury in Texas

Texas has its own structure where personal injury and liability law is concerned. Having an attorney who understands it inside and out is paramount toward maximizing your chances of success. If you’re not sure whether you have a lawsuit that’s worth pursuing or not, an attorney can help you make that determination, as well. Talk to a Houston personal injury attorney and see what they think about your claim. No matter what happened to you, they’ve probably seen similar situations before and can help you to start getting underway with seeking damages for what you’ve been through.

Fro FREE Case Review, call Houston Injury Lawyer Blaine Tucker at 713-771-5453

Continue Reading

Settlements: Good Reasons To Trust Your Attorney

One of the options that wealthy individuals and businesses have when they’re facing a lawsuit is offering the party that wants to sue them a settlement. The settlement will be calculated to be enough to entice the suing party to take it but not so much that it would end up being more than the defendant would be found liable for in court. This calculation is something that does not take the person filing the lawsuit or their interests into account, of course, and you need a personal injury attorney if you’re given such an offer.

What Your Attorney Understands

If you know anything about law, you probably know that past cases establish precedents that guide future applications of the law. Where personal injury attorneys are concerned, what has happened in the past is very important. It provides one of the guidelines that they can use to determine how much you should seek in damages.

The attorney will take a look at these past cases, your situation and any other information that is relevant and come up with a figure. This figure will be chosen for being realistic, fair and because it provides you and your family with adequate relief from your suffering and your financial damages to an acceptable extent.

Your attorney will be able to take a look at the figure you were offered and see if it’s a sincere offer to make things right and to save you and the other party the costs of going to court or if it’s an insult being offered to you because the other party decided that you probably wouldn’t know any better. Your attorney will know the reality of this situation. If they see a good offer in front of you, they’ll tell you that it may be a good idea for you to take it. If the other party is offering you something less that you deserve, you’ll know.

How Settlements Work

You can be offered a settlement almost up to the second that your trial begins. If the other party comes forward with one directly to you, you need to talk to your attorney about it. If you have an attorney, it’s in the defendant’s interest to go around your attorney and to negotiate directly with you and you can be sure that they know as much.

Your personal injury attorney will help to negotiate the sum. They will not take a settlement without your consent and any attorney who did so would open themselves up to being sued by their former client. The ultimate decision will be your own. The attorney will tell you what your best options are and what they think your odds of winning more in court actually are.

Trust your attorney if you’re in a situation where you’re being offered a settlement and if you’re not sure whether it’s worth taking or not. A good personal injury attorney can make sure that you at least know the reality of the situation and whether or not it’s a respectful offer.

Continue Reading

Dishonest Doctors And Medical Malpractice Claims

According to a survey of approximately 2,000 doctors in the United States by Health Affairs, patients may not be getting the whole truth when they deal with their physicians. The survey found that, for various reasons, doctors may lie to their patients about their prognoses, the severity of their conditions and about other, more disturbing issues. Doctors have a duty to provide their patients with competent care under the law but, according to this survey, providing that care sometimes involves stretching the truth or lies of omission.

Just the Facts

According to a press release regarding the survey, approximately 55 percent of the doctors surveyed said that they’d told patients that the patient’s health was better than was actually the case. The survey also found that doctors sometimes took the opposite route and lied about the dangers of bad habits to get patients to stop their behavior. Using fear to scare patients out of unhealthy behaviors may or may not be justified, but it’s certainly not honest.

Doctors generally justified their lies by saying that they were good for the patient in some regard. Patients, of course, are not given all of the information they need when their doctors lie to them and, therefore, are divorced from the opportunity to make intelligent decisions about their health.

Even More Disturbing

Pharmaceutical companies sometimes have relationships with doctors that are financially or otherwise beneficial to both parties. Out of the physicians surveyed, nearly 40 percent of the said that there is no need for them to tell patients if they have a vested interested in any of the pharmaceuticals they recommend. Of course, patients may be more hesitant to begin a round of treatment with a particular pharmaceutical if they knew that the doctor had a financial interest in prescribing it or, at least, they might be more suspicious of the motives involved.

Malpractice and Patient Rights

When you visit a doctor, you have the right to expect that the doctor is going to be honest about your conditions with you. In fact, making sure that you stay healthy oftentimes depends upon the doctor being honest with you so that you can make intelligent decisions about your body and your habits. If you’re not given the chance to get real information about your health, you have the opportunity to work toward better health on your own taken from you and, as the study suggests, are sometimes manipulated into taking actions that the doctor feels are best for you.

Being recommended a pharmaceutical because the doctor has a financial interest involved is particularly rife with ethical questions.

If you believe that you have come to harm because a doctor was dishonest with you about your care, consider contacting a medical malpractice attorney. There are limitations on how long you have to act, so taking with a personal injury attorney right away is the best way to determine how you should proceed and how long you have left to decide what you want to do with your case.

Houston Personal Injury lawyer offers FREE Case reviews for medical malpractice claims

Continue Reading