Fort Worth Injury Attorney Blog

The driver of a Fedex delivery truck, Khaled Abushaaban, was tragically killed yesterday when a drunk driver in a pick-up truck hit his truck head-on on Highway 114 in Irving.

The FedEx truck was split open by the impact and packages were strewn across the highway and into the median, where the vehicle came to a stop.

Abushaaban was a father of a young daughter; his wife is pregnant with a second. My thoughts go out to his family and friends. I wish people would realize that the dangers of driving drunk are real and tragic. It seems like every day another North Texan is being killed in collisions with drunk drivers. It makes me sick.

If you or a family member has been the victim of a drunk drivers despicable and dangerous behavior, call me at (817) 885-8000 and I will help you recover every penny available for your injuries or loss.

A charity event ended tragically last week when Andrew Vanderberg and 87 year old Donald Krusemark were killed while taking a lap around the track at the Texas Motor Speedway. Carter BloodCare had rented the track for a donor appreciation even in which avid blood donors had the chance to take driving lessons from professional racing drivers. Krusemark, a Navy veteran of World War II, was among more than 100 people who were participating in the donor even. Vanderberg was a professional racing driver that had donated his time to help support the charity event. As the pair was racing around the track, a tire on their Corvette exploded and caused the car to spin out of control and crash into the retaining wall. Both Krusemark and Vanderberg left behind loving families that were devastated by the accident.

Losing a loved one is one of the hardest things most of us will ever have to endure. This is especially troubling when you know that someone else is to blame. If you have lost a loved one due to the actions of another, an experienced personal injury attorney can help you bring the culprit to justice. Nothing can bring back your loved one, but I can make sure the person responsible is held accountable for their actions.

Rolando Martinez, 28, from Paris, Texas died yesterday afternoon from injuries he received just late Saturday night in a crash on North Main Street in Cleburne.

Police say alcohol may have contributed to the wreck.

Martinez was one of five men from Paris who were inside a Chevrolet Suburban when their SUV drove off onto the shoulder, spun around, and then flew up into the air before falling into the ditch on the other side of the road. All five passengers were ejected.

Three of the men remain in critical condition at John Peter Smith Hospital.

What a horrible and unnecessary story.

I have had to represent many people injured in one vehicle collisions like this one over the last 30 years

One of my clients, whose first collision case was just about to settle, was injured in a second crash when the car he was a passenger spun out and crashed into a concrete median. I am now representing him and a fellow passenger in a lawsuit against the driver. Below is a photograph of the car they were in.

Many people mistakenly believe that they can only collect money from other drivers and if they are a passenger and their driver causes a wreck, they have no recourse. This happens in family settings all the time. If you are hurt because of the negligent driving of any another person, you have the right to be compensated.

For example, I just concluded a case where my client was a passenger in a drunk woman's car. His neck sprain case settled in May for the total available insurance policy of the driver and an additional large sum of money. I was pleased that my client was extremely happy with his settlement.

If you have been hurt because of any other driver's negligence, please call my office today at 817-885-8000 or fill out this form for a free case evaluation. We are here to help get you the settlement you deserve.

Thousands of cyclists around the world joined together on Wednesday for the eighth annual Ride of Silence. This said memorial was started in Dallas in 2003 to honor the endurance cyclist Larry Schwartz who was hit by the mirror of a passing bus and was tragically killed. The event reminds the public to share the road with cyclists.

I think this race is a great way to raise public awareness. I have unfortunately represented my share of cyclists injured due to the carelessness of motorists and is one reason I run more these days than ride.

Friday is National Ride to Work day and I plan to participate. We need more people riding bikes like in other cities. There are plans to increase the number of bike-friendly roads which I applaud.

Next Saturday and Sunday, the Colonial Golf Tournament will store bicycles free of charge near the Log Cabin Village and donate $10.00 to the Streams and Valleys Organization which maintains the wonderful TrinityTrail where we ride and run. The Trail is outside my window and it is nice to look up from my desk and see someone going by during the day.

Cyclists, please be careful out there!

A 33-year-old mother died in a rollover crash in her recalled 2010 Toyota Highlander. Police said speed was a contributing factor to the crash that killed Dawn Casey. Although police are still investigating, family members are not sure if her recalled SUV is to blame. Her two toddlers managed to survive the accident.

The wreck happened Thursday in the 3300 block of North Tarrant Parkway in far north Fort Worth.

Witnesses and family members told investigators that Casey was on her way to teach daycare at a local church when her Toyota Highlander swerved into the center median, then swereved back into the lanes of traffic. She then swerved into a ditch before hitting a concrete barrier.

Casey's 1-year-old son Liam and 3-year-old daughter Adia were in the back row of the SUV in car seats. Both survived with minor injuries.

The 2010 Toyota Highlander is under recall for problems with floor mats that can interfere with the accelerator. I previously reported about the Toyota accelerator problems HERE and HERE. Police are focusing on why the SUV was going so fast, but they don't yet know if vehicle malfunction or driver error is to blame.

If you or a loved one has been injured as a result of a defective vehicle, call my office today at 817-885-8000 to discuss your case. In order to make a successful claim against the vehicle manufacturer, a thorough investigation of the vehicle is needed to preserve the evidence.

A 2008 crash caused by an 18-wheeler that left three people dead, led to a guilty plea from the driver facing second-degree manslaughter. The truck driver admitted that he was reaching for cell phone when he slammed into several cars in front of him.

As a result of the plea bargain the truck driver, Jeffrey Knight, will not spend additional time in jail. The truck driver was given one year in jail but was given credit for time served prior to the plea bargain and therefore will not serve any additional time.

In Texas and across the county, people are rightfully becoming more demanding of commercial drivers and less tolerant of their dangerous behavior.

Not only are criminal sanctions being sought but in a truck collision when conduct endangers others, punitive damages are appropriate. When some one takes control of an 80,000 pound vehicle, he needs to be paying complete attention to the small defenseless vehicles around him. I have seen the tragic results of distracted 18-wheeler drivers all too often.

Many people believe that if a driver is charged criminally, it will hurt their chances for civil recoveries. This is not the case. In fact, convictions or guilty pleas like this can strengthen your injury case against the driver and the company that hired them.

If you or a loved one has been in a wreck involving an 18-wheeler, please call me at 817-885-8000 to discuss your case. My firm only handles car and truck wrecks, and I know how to handle these difficult cases. The sooner you call, the sooner I can start helping you get the help and the money you deserve. I have recovered millions of dollars for my clients hurt in wrecks caused by 18-wheeler drivers. Click here to read about the $5.5 million dollar recovery I got for two of my clients.

Toyota routinely deceives the court and opposing counsel when it has been sued in connection with sudden acceleration and other defect cases, according to a detailed investigation by the Associated Press that was released yesterday.

Toyota has withheld requested documents, hidden test results, and refused to release data that is stored electronically in its vehicles.

"Toyota has no peer" in disclosing this required information, according to Texas attorney Ernest Cannon, who represented the family of a 35 year old woman, Lisa Evans, who died in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land in 2002.

Another Texas woman was killed when her Land Cruiser suddenly went into reverse and pinned her against her garage wall. However, Toyota claimed in court documents that it knew of no other such incidents, when it had recently settled a nearly identical case.

Continue reading "Toyota Uses Deceptive Legal Tactics to Defend Lawsuits" »

TWO drivers were apparently DWI early Saturday morning when they crashed into each other in Fort Worth. Wow, what is going on out there?

Jared Clark, a 20 year old from Crowley, was driving in his Dodge pickup truck north on the service road of Martin Luther King Freeway when he collided with a Ford Taurus driven by 18 year old David Whitworth traveling east on Mitchell Boulevard.

Due to this conduct, two children, four year old Breanna Muniz, and her sister, two year old Deanna Mata, who was not properly secured in a car seat, were tragically killed in this horrible crash.

In addition, four adults, including the girls' 19 year old mother, Erika Leija, Arthur Siller, 37.and Clark, who is in critical condition at JPS Hospital, were rushed to area hospitals.

Neither driver was legally old enough to be drinking, and obviously neither were allowed to be driving while intoxicated.

Further, the mother of the girls was not old enough to be drinking and apparently thought nothing of driving around with a drunk driver with her two little girls in the back seat -- one not secured in a car seat - after midnight.

Clark faces two charges of intoxication manslaughter and three of intoxication assault. He was hospitalized but released, and is in the Mansfield Jail on a $250,000 bond.

Whitworth will be charged with felony DWI, since he was driving a child who was less than 15 years old at the time of his crime. He is still in critical condition at JPS Hospital.

I hate that this brutal and senseless tragedy happened, and my prayers go out to not just here but to all of the families of those killed and injured due to DWIs.

I am making a donation to a fund that has been set up to help with the medical and funeral bills of the mother and her two poor children and encourage my readers to do the same. Donations can be made at any Frost Bank, payable to the Leija Family Benefit Fund. Donations can be mailed to the: Leija Family Benefit Fund, Frost Bank/Summit Branch, P.O. Box 16509, Fort Worth, Texas, 76162.

But how long will we keep seeing this criminal behavior from people who drive while they are intoxicated? As you can tell, I hate these drivers and sue them with a vengeance.

FACT: Texas leads the U.S. in the number of people killed in wrecks caused by drunk drivers - 1,473 in 2008 alone.

FACT: Texas has one of the highest number of people serving time for DWI - 6,200.

FACT: Ralph Lynn Foltz Jr. was arrested for his 11th DWI after leading police on a dangerous high-speed chase through the streets of Galveston and Brazoria counties several months ago.

FACT: John Barton killed two people and injured three other family members in the DFW area Sunday night. He should have been locked up in the state penitentary serving his jail sentence and treated for his alcoholism after being convicted of his third DWI.

FACT: Barton was driving his wife's car which did not have the required engine interlock.
Even so, Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, told the Dallas Morning News that "he couldn't operate a motor vehicle unless it had it had an ignition interlock."

FACT: Barton had a valid driver's license.

FACT: The governor has ordered the Department of Criminal Justice to cut five percent from its budget, including $7.8 million from its treatment programs, which will eliminate help for 1,346 DWI offenders.

FACT: The state, knowing that we have a serious DWI problem, recently almost tripled spending on state prison treatment for DWI offenders from $36 million in 2007 to $97 million in 2010.

According to the TDCJ spokeswoman, the extra money has been worth it, with 6,000 new treatment slots being created with the money, including a 500 bed DWI treatment ward in East Texas.

"We've seen it have a positive impact not just on the individuals, but overall on the inmate population, Lyons said. Furthermore, the treatment has treatment has greatly reduced the number of offenders who return to prison.

However, the treatment programs are apparently not working. "We've had him (Barton) in prison twice and done nothing to treat his alcoholism. And now we have a tragedy," said State Senator John Whitmire, the chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

While I understand that our state is facing an enormous potential budget deficit of $18 billion and must cut back services, this is clearly not the place to do so.

"DWI will kill you, just like a gun will. It's one of our most serious crimes," Senator Whitmire said.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is working hard to get more car ignition locks, police sobriety checkpoints, and treatment to stop these tragedies from reoccurring.

The U. S. government announced yesterday that it would seek the maximum fine possible against Toyota because it had failed to promptly disclose its problems with accelerator pedals.

The amount? A whopping $16.3 million.

By comparison,Toyota earned $1.6 BILLION just in its third quarter, in the middle of decreased sales resulting from the recall and negative publicity

And the penalty, which is the largest allowed per recall under the Tread Act, which was enacted after accidents involving Firestone tires on Ford Explorers, pales in comparison with the $2.3 billion settlement last September with Pfizer over fraudulent marketing issues that did not cause countless deaths and bodily injuries.

Toyota has two weeks to contest the fine, which it presumably will.

Also, it was just revealed that just five days before Toyota announced its massive recall on January 21st, one of its top executives wrote that "we need to come clean" about the acceleration problems. Irv Miller, VP of public affairs, wrote in an email that "We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. The time to hide on this one is over." Miller is now "retired."

And it gets worse: the government has just released documents proving that Toyota knew that floor mats could entrap gas pedals on February 7, 2006 and that those pedals were sticking five months later, even though it did not finally recall its defective vehicles for another 3 1/2 to 4 years.

Regulators have finally decided acknowledged that Toyota deliberately concealed safety information after ignoring the problem for years.

Continue reading "Toyota Defects Only Result in a Fine of $16 Million" »

I am angry that a man withTHREE PREVIOUS DWI CONVICTIONS caused a devasting crash on Interstate 35 in Lewisville early on Easter Sunday morning, killing Kandace Hull, a wonderful 33 year old medical scribe, and her 13 year old daughter Autumn. Tony Hull is still in the Intensive Care Unit at Parkland Hospital in Dallas and his two surviving children, ages 16 and 12, are being treated in Childrens Hospital.

John Barton, 29 will be arrested on two counts of murder when he is released from the county hospital, where he is being treated for some internal injuries.

If you want to feel scared while you are driving on the streets of DFW, this was Barton's fourth DWI ! He had previously been convicted on three different dates but was allowed to be driving on our streets with a valid driver's license!

Barton's first conviction was in 1997, when he was only 17 years old, in Denton. He was convicted again in 2001 in Denton and was sentenced to 300 days in jail. He was convicted of felony DWI in Grapevine in 2006, was sentenced to three years in state prison, but was somehow paroled on Jan. 22, 2009 after serving only 10 months.

 
Barton was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic when he rear ended the Argyle family's Nissan Sentra with his Mazda. The trunk of the Nissan was hit so hard that it ended up in the passenger compartment.

I have some serious questions about what happened: Why was this habitual drunk even allowed to drive wih the "three strikes" against him? Why was he released from jail after serving less than one year of a maximum 10 year sentence? What medical treatment was provided to him while he was in jail so that when he was released, he would not keep drinking? Why did he still have a driver's license? What was his blood alcohol content? Did his car have an interlock device? What is going on with our "criminal justice" system?!

As Mary Kardell, executive director of the North Texas affiliate of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) said, our judges and juries need to give the maximum sentence to drunken drivers. "If these people aren't taken off the road, this will present itself again."

Ms. Kardell pointed out that in the 2009 legislative session, lawmakers rejected proposals to require ignition-lock devices for first-time DWI offenders and to allow sobriety checkpoints.

My sincerest condolences go out to the Hull family.

An Arlington woman was sentenced to 16 years in prison Thursday for a drunk driving wreck that killed one young man and maimed another on Green Oaks Boulevard last year.

Michele Hartmann, the Tarrant County prosecutor, called the sentence a "deterrence verdict and a punishment verdict." I hope she is right.

The woman, Erica Kolanowski (seen in the photograph in this post), 31, had asked the jury in to assess her punishment after pleading guilty to charges of intoxication manslaughter and and intoxication assault in the January 11, 2009, collision in southwest Arlington. Kolanowski's blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit.

The passenger, 20 year old Joshua Carter, was killed instantly. The driver, Matthew Lundy, is permanently crippled.

I am happy that criminal justice is finally being served, but the civil justice system can never begin to help out these two poor men. I hope long jail sentences like this one will stop drunks from getting behind the wheel and running into us. My heart goes out to the family of Mr. Carter and to Mr. Lundy and his family for all they have had to go through.

I have handled many DWI cases and go after drunk drivers with a vengeance. There is absolutely no excuse for getting behind the wheel if you had consumed any alcohol or drugs that will obviously impair your driving ability.

If you've been injured in a wreck involving a drunk driver, you need a civil attorney with experience handing cases involving DUI's. If you've been hurt in a wreck, call or e-mail my office today at 817-885-8000 so I can help you get all the money you deserve.

Fort Worth police officer Jesus Cisneros, who was DWI and killed the mother of two small children was indicted for intoxication manslaughter. I previously wrote about this horrible crash HERE and HERE. Let's hope Cisneros spends many years in jail. Incredibly, he has appealed his termination by the FWPD.

Also yesterday, an Arlington woman was sentenced to 26 years in prison for intoxication manslaughter and assault and wrote a separate blog about this terrible tragedy.

My friends at Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) report that 40% of fatal crashes involved alcohol. And for fatal crashes occurring from midnight to 3 a.m., almost all of them (77%) involved alcohol.

State laws in 31 states still allow someone to operate a motor vehicle and consume alcohol until his blood alcohol concentration is 0.10 g/dl. Texas lowered the limit to .08, but I believe it should be lower.

I sue drunk drivers for the pain and injuries they cause to my innocent clients. Not only does alcohol make people more likely to swerve out of their lane or to ignore traffic signals, drunk drivers also drive faster and take more risks. A crash caused by a drunk driver may cause severe injuries or death.

You should not have to suffer because someone was too stupid or cheap to take a taxi home or get a ride. You need an attorney with experience handing cases against drunk drivers. If you've been hurt in a wreck, call or e-mail my office today at 817-885-8000 so I can help you get all the money you deserve.

I am proud of the work MADD does helping victims of drunk drivers and their families and I donate a portion of my fee from drunk driving verdicts and settlements to MADD.

Today I received a large recovery of money for another wonderful client who was unfortunately injured by a drunk driver This is what she had to say about my services

and was delighted to read the article in the today's Dallas Morning News about how Dallas police may start requiring blood tests from DWI suspects. That is, if the city can come up with $360,000.00.

How can Dallas not find this money? Think about its extra police, fire department, Parkland Hospital ER, medical expenses, criminal courts, and other costs that will be avoided -- not to mention the carnage to innocent people like you and me.

Just last year, 38 people were killed in Dallas due to drunk/stoned drivers and a startling 3,600 people were arrested on these charges.

Many cities already require these more reliable blood tests, with tiny Dalworthington Gardens near Arlington being the first city in Texas to require them. (However, a Bedford woman had her conviction thrown out because those police officers were not properly qualified to draw blood; the case is on appeal.)

New laws have made it harder for drivers pulled over for drunken driving to refuse blood tests. Police no longer have to obtain time consuming search warrants for felony DWIs, where a person is hospitalized, a child is in the vehicle, or the suspect has a prior related conviction. And if the suspects refuse, their licenses are suspended for six months.

A whopping 11,773 people died in collisions caused by drunk drivers in 2008 -- a shocking one-third of the 37,261 of Americans killed in all crashes.

In Fort Worth, police mounted two recent crackdowns that resulted in 125 arrests -- 163% more than last year's.

The woman who crashed into Bertha is still awaiting trial.

I will donate a portion of my attorney's fee from every case where I represent a victim of drunk driving to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), a wonderful organization. I also will volunteer at their walk in Fort Worth on March 27th in Trinity Park.

A two-vehicle crash on Sunday in southwest South Dakota has unfortunately killed a resident of Fort Worth.

The man was driving a pickup that collided head-on with a car driven by a Nebraska woman.

Proving who was at fault in a head-on collision is often difficult. Final position of the cars can help, but they are often so badly damaged, that proving which driver was negligent can be very hard. Cases where one of the drivers dies can be even more complicated because they are unable to give their description of the collision and the police may write their reports based on only one driver's testimony.

Last year, I handled a similar case where my client broke both her legs when another driver moved into her lane and caused an enormous head-on collision. Tragically, the Defendant was killed, but I was able to get my client a substantial settlement for her injuries, lost wages and pain.

If you have been involved in an automobile collision, you need an experienced, Board Certified Personal Injury lawyer who has experience handling these types of cases and who can help you get all the money you deserve. Please contact my office at 817-885-8000 or fill out this form for a free no-obligation case evaluation.