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What Makes A Death “Wrongful?”

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“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so…”

In John Donne’s famous sonnet that begins with the words above he argues that death is not as powerful as we might imagine. It must bend to the will of “fate, chance, kings, and desperate men.” Nowhere is this more clear than when a death is a wrongful death.

Although every death of a loved one feels wrong, “wrongful death” is a legal term. Under Texas law, a wrongful death is a death caused by the “wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or default” of another. The loved ones of someone who has suffered a wrongful death can seek compensation.

Who can file a wrongful death lawsuit?

In Texas, a wrongful death lawsuit can be filed by the spouse, children, or parents of the person who has died. Each of these people may file their own lawsuit, or they may file in groups.

To be successful, one or more of these people must have suffered a financial loss as a result of their loved one’s death. This is harsh, but our lawmakers have decided that allowing people to file a lawsuit just because they are grieving is not the best use of the court system.

If a lawsuit is not filed by one of the people above within 3 months of the date of death, the personal representative of the deceased person’s estate may file a lawsuit so long as the family members above do not object.

Why file a wrongful death lawsuit?

A lot of families struggle to decide whether or not to file a wrongful death lawsuit. Filing a lawsuit is never going to bring your loved one back from the grave. And it can be traumatic to relive the circumstances of his or her death, particularly in a wrongful death situation. So why bother?

In our experience, the biggest benefit of filing a wrongful death lawsuit is that it provides closure. When your loved one’s life has been cut short, you want answers. You want someone to be held responsible. You want your loved one’s death to have meaning. A lawsuit may give you these things.

You may also need financial assistance to help your family recover from your loved one’s passing. By filing a lawsuit, you may be able to get money to compensate you for:

  • You loved one’s lost earning capacity
  • The value of support, services, and guidance your loved one would have provided to surviving family members
  • Lost love, companionship and comfort
  • Your loved one’s pain and suffering
  • Any inheritance surviving family members may have lost
  • Medical expenses
  • Funeral and burial expenses

Depending on the circumstances, “exemplary” or “punitive” damages may also be available if the wrongful death was caused by a willful act or omission or by gross negligence. Such damages are intended to punish the responsible party and to deter others from engaging in similar conduct.

You Don’t Have To Grieve Alone

If you are grieving the death of a loved one who was suddenly taken from you, our heart goes out to you. When you are ready, pick up the phone and schedule an appointment with our experienced Houston-based team. Our attorneys may be able to help you process what has happened and determine if a filing a wrongful death lawsuit would be an appropriate next step.

3 Reasons Why Hit-And-Run Accidents Happen

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A couple of weeks ago, a 40-year-old Houston man died in the street after the driver of an SUV veered onto the sidewalk while making a turn and struck him. The victim was dragged several feet before the car sped off.

As far as we can tell, this hit-and-run driver has not yet been identified, but we can probably guess why the scumbag drove off.

Although it is unlawful to flee the scene of an accident, hit and run accidents are more likely to occur when the other driver:

  • Does not have automobile insurance;
  • Has a suspended license or a prior record traffic violations; or
  • Is under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

There is no good reason for a responsible person to leave the scene of an accident.

The most common excuse hit-and-run drivers give is that they “didn’t know they hit anyone.” If you buy that, I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona you might be interested in purchasing.

Don’t Wait And See

If you are the victim of a hit-and-run accident it can be tempting to wait and see if the irresponsible driver can be caught, but waiting may not be the best idea. Even in the modern world, where technology makes it easier to figure out who was in a particular location at a specific time, hit-and-run drivers can be impossible to track down.

It is often wise to go ahead and file an Uninsured Motorist (UM) claim with your automobile insurance company. All insurance companies in Texas are required to offer such coverage to policyholders, and UM covers hit-and-run situations. However, not everyone buys UM insurance, so the first thing to do if you want to file a claim is check your insurance policy to see if you purchased UM coverage.

If you purchased UM coverage, the minimum amount of coverage, which is required by state law, is:

  • $30,000 for each injured person
  • $60,000 for injuries per incident
  • $25,000 for property damage

You, of course, may have purchased much more than this.

No matter how much coverage you have, your claim may be denied if you wait to long to file. This is why it is important to get in touch with your insurance company right away rather than waiting to see if the cops can track down the hit-and-run driver.

Why You Might Want To Hire An Attorney

If you find the insurance claims process overwhelming, or you want to make sure you aren’t low-balled, you may want to hire an experienced attorney to manage your paperwork and negotiate your claim. This also puts you in a good position to file a personal injury lawsuit if the hit-and-run driver is ever found.

The Sherman Law Firm has handled many hit-and-run cases in the Houston area over the years. If you are looking for help with your case, you should contact us immediately to schedule an appointment.

Traumatic Brain Injuries Must Be Taken Seriously

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The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that traumatic brain injuries (TBI) cause 2.8 million ER visits, deaths, and hospitalizations each year. This is a staggering statistic when you consider how serious TBIs are.

According to the Mayo Clinic, “Mild traumatic brain injury may affect your brain cells temporarily. More-serious traumatic brain injury can result in bruising, torn tissues, bleeding and other physical damage to the brain. These injuries can result in long-term complications or death.”

At the Sherman Law Firm, we encourage all of our personal injury clients to learn to recognize the symptoms of TBI because they are so common and so serious, and do not always occur immediately after an accident. To once again quote the Mayo Clinic, “traumatic brain injury can have wide-ranging physical and psychological effects. Some signs or symptoms may appear immediately after the traumatic event, while others may appear days or weeks later.”

The signs and symptoms of mild traumatic brain injury may include:

  • Headache
  • Loss of consciousness
  • Feeling dazed, confused or disoriented
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Fatigue or drowsiness
  • Problems with speech
  • Difficulty sleeping
  • Sleeping more than usual
  • Dizziness or loss of balance
  • Sensory problems, such as blurred vision, ringing in the ears, a bad taste in the mouth or changes in the ability to smell
  • Sensitivity to light or sound
  • Memory or concentration problems
  • Mood changes or mood swings
  • Feeling depressed or anxious

Moderate to severe TBIs may also cause:

  • Convulsions or seizures
  • Dilation of one or both pupils of the eyes
  • Clear fluids draining from the nose or ears
  • Inability to awaken from sleep
  • Weakness or numbness in fingers and toes
  • Loss of coordination
  • Profound confusion
  • Agitation, combativeness or other unusual behavior
  • Slurred speech
  • Coma and other disorders of consciousness

Infants and young children who are not able to tell you how they are feeling may show their illness in other ways:

  • Change in eating or nursing habits
  • Unusual or easy irritability
  • Persistent crying and inability to be consoled
  • Change in ability to pay attention
  • Change in sleep habits
  • Seizures
  • Sad or depressed mood
  • Drowsiness
  • Loss of interest in favorite toys or activities

It is critical to recognize these symptoms because an undiagnosed TBI will only cause more problems over time. Even “mild” TBIs should be taken very seriously and treated with care by an experienced physician. While people who got concussions used to just “walk it off” we now know that is a very dangerous attitude, and could result in serious long-term damage to the brain.

Unfortunately, many of our firm’s personal injury clients have suffered a TBI. Slip and fall accidents and car accidents are common causes of TBIs because they result in a violent blow or jolt to the head or neck. Anyone who is injured in a slip and fall accident or a car accident should be screened for TBIs.

If you or someone you love has suffered a TBI, and you are struggling to get treatment, or even have your injury be taken seriously, the Sherman Law Firm is here to help. Please contact our office in Houston to schedule a free initial consultation.  

5 Things To Bring With You The First Time You Meet With An Attorney

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If you or a loved one has suffered an injury, and you are interested in meeting with an attorney, you are probably seeing a lot of firms in the Houston area offering a “free initial consultation.” But what does this really mean?

It’s not a trick or gimmick. Almost all attorneys will meet with you and evaluate your case free of charge. You should view this meeting like a job interview. You a trying to decide if the attorney you are meeting with is someone you want to work with, and they are trying to figure out if they want to take on your case and have you as a client. In order to make this meeting as productive as possible, you should prepare for it.

Below are five things you should bring to a free initial consultation in order to maximize the value you get from the meeting.

  1. Your contact information.

Any attorney you meet with is going to want to follow up with you if they agree to take your case. Be prepared to share the following information with each attorney you meet with.

  • Full legal name and any nicknames or aliases
  • Home address
  • Home phone number
  • Mobile phone number
  • Email address
  • Employer’s name and address
  • Work phone number
  1. A summary of the key facts of your case.

The first thing most attorneys want to know is why the person sitting in front of them reached out. What happened? Why do they want to hire an attorney? What do they need help with?

This is your chance to tell your story, so think about what you are going to say ahead of time. Jot down some notes that will help you remember who the people involved are, and in what order things happened.

It can be helpful to pretend like you are an old timey newspaper journalist and sketch out the “Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How” of the accident or situation that inspired you to contact an attorney.

  1. Some idea of what winning looks like to you.

If you have no done so already, start to think about what you hope to get out of filing a lawsuit. Are you looking for financial compensation? Revenge? Validation?

If you don’t know what you are looking for, you are not going to find it. So, figure out what your goals are and what winning the case would look like to you.

  1. Evidence.

A legal case is only as strong as the evidence it is built upon. So, bring a summary of the evidence you have, or the actual evidence itself to your meeting. This could include medical, financial and insurance records, photos and video of the incident, correspondence between you and the other parties involved in the case, police reports, etc. Anything that helps you tell the story of what happened is useful.

  1. A list of questions you have for the attorney.

Finally, you should prepare a list of questions you have for the attorney you are meeting with. Remember, you are interviewing them for a job at the same time they are evaluating your case to see if they want to take it, so don’t hesitate to ask any question that will help you decide if they are the right attorney for you.

You may want to ask about the attorney’s prior experience, rates, or opinion of the case. You will not offend your attorney by asking them questions that anyone else might consider rude.

Be Prepared

If you keep these tips in mind, you will be able to take full advantage of the free initial consultation most personal injury attorneys offer. If you would like to schedule one of these meetings with the Sherman Law Firm team, please contact us today.

There’s Nothing Funny About A Slip & Fall Lawsuit

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Pratfalls are a staple of the comedy world. We love to see others trip, slip, or fall — preferably on a banana peel. Sitcoms and stand-up comedians regularly rely on this trope to tickle our funny bones. Researchers suggest it is because our brain is caught off guard and it enjoys seeing something that is unexpected happen.

But when it is you doing the slipping and sliding around, it is anything but funny. People who slip, trip, or fall down are often seriously injured, and they often deserve compensation.

Falling down and hurting yourself is not just bad luck, and your injuries are not something you simply need to learn to deal with. If another person or organization’s negligence caused your fall, you deserve to get help paying for your medical expenses. You may want to file a personal injury lawsuit to seek compensation for medical bills, lost wages, and paid and suffering.

Under Texas law, another party may be held liable for your injuries if their negligent or reckless actions — or inaction — caused you to slip, trip, or fall. If a property owner or employee knew or should have known that someone might slip and fall because the floor was slick, or there was a hole, or there was some other danger, and they did nothing about it, they may be held accountable. If the property owner or employee created the danger they may also be held responsible.

Unfortunately, many people who deserve compensation for their slip and fall injuries will not seek it. We regularly hear from clients who say that they are so embarrassed about what happened they did not want to tell anyone about it, let alone file a lawsuit. We know there are people out there who let that embarrassment get the best of them, and never seek help. There are others that think they deserved what happened, or that injuries are simply another thing that you have to learn to live with. This is heartbreaking.

Our firm is ready to help you get the help you need to recover from your slip and fall injury, no matter how strange or embarrassing the circumstances. We can discreetly attempt to negotiate a settlement if you do not want your case to be a public record. Or we can trumpet your claims to the world so others know what happened to you was unfair, and emphasize that the dangerous conditions that caused your accident must be fixed so nobody else is hurt.

If you are ready to share your slip and fall story, we are ready to listen. We have an experienced team of attorneys that will take your claim seriously, no matter how minor it seems, or how bizarre the circumstances. You deserve to be heard, and the people and organizations responsible for your injuries deserve to be brought to justice.

How Much Is My Case Worth?

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Have you ever watched Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Antiques Roadshow, Storage Wars, or something similar? You learn a little bit of history, and then you learn how much the piece of junk the person is holding is worth. The history and the appraisals are often equally surprising, so it’s very entertaining.

One of the reasons we find it so hard to look away when these shows are on is because we all have some stuff sitting in our attics or out in the garage that we dream may be worth millions. If we didn’t have these shows, we wouldn’t care that the closet in the spare bedroom is getting too full to close the door — it would just be clutter. But with the knowledge we gain from these shows, we realize we could be sitting on a pile of “rusty gold.”

We see a similar mindset among our personal injury clients. Until someone tfold them otherwise, they thought the pain they were dealing with was simply bad luck, or just something they had to learn to live with.

Realizing you might be able to seek compensation for an injury you have suffered is an eye-opening experience. You immediately have a million questions on your mind. One of which is “how much is my case worth?” And that’s a tricky question. How much a case is worth depends on a number of factors.

First and foremost, is the seriousness of the injury. Personal injury lawsuits are designed to compensate people who have been injured and put them back in the position they would have been if they had never been injured — or at least as close as possible since none of us have access to a time machine. The system is not set up to punish the person or organization that caused the injury. Rather, it holds them accountable. So, the worse the injury, the more it is worth.

To complicate matters, similar injuries are often not worth similar amounts of money. One person’s broken arm may be worth much more than another person’s. The healthcare costs may be similar for similar injuries, but that is about it. The other factors that are taken into consideration vary wildly. For example, if I slip and fall in the grocery store and break my arm I will miss some work while I recover, and I can try to recover the income I lost from the store. If the same thing happens to Justin Verlander, the Houston Astros’ ace pitcher, the store may have to pay out a lot more. Justin Verlander’s arm is worth way more money than mine.

A case may also be worth more or less based on the evidence available to prove the case. Taking pictures of the scene of the accident and visiting the doctor as soon as possible after an injury occurs are the best way to preserve important evidence.

There are so many factors that go into determining how much you may get by filing a personal injury case that the only way to get a good estimate is to speak with an experienced attorney. If you would like to make an appointment to speak with one of the attorneys in our office, please contact us today to schedule a free initial consultation.

Bad Dog, No Biscuit: The In’s And Out’s Of Dog Bite Lawsuits

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In the newspaper world “Man Bites Dog” is an expression used when something noteworthy or downright weird is happening. This phrase came into use because it’s the mirror image of something that happens so often it’s not news at all — Dog Bites Man. Unfortunately, dog bites are incredibly common.

According to a study from the Center For Disease Control (CDC), approximately 4.7 million dog bites occur in the United States each year. 800,000 of those bites require medical care. We all know medical costs add up quickly, which is why our firm regularly helps people who have been bitten by a dog — or another animal kept as a pet — seek compensation by filing a personal injury lawsuit.

Unlike many other states, Texas does not have a dog bite statute that spells out exactly who is at fault and what happens next after a dog bites someone. Instead, our state relies on traditional rules of tort law. This means that in order to recover damages you have to show that the dog’s owner was negligent, or that the dog who bit you was known to be dangerous.

Negligent Owners

If you have been bitten by a dog, you may be able to seek compensation from the dog’s owner if you can show that the owner did not try hard enough to prevent their dog from injuring you. Reasonable people will train their pets, and keep them on a leash or fenced up.

If the dog owner failed to act reasonably, and their failures lead to your injury, you may be able to seek compensation for your injuries. If there are leash or fencing laws in your community, and the dog owner was not following them, that may automatically be considered a failure to act reasonably.

This rule also applies in situations where a dog injures someone without biting them, like when an elderly person is knocked over by a friendly dog that jumped up to say hello.

One Bite Rule

If the dog that bit you was known to be vicious, dangerous, or mischievous, your case may be easier to prove because the courts will often apply what is known as the “one bite rule.” The “one bite rule” is a strict liability rule. Under this rule, the dog’s owners will be held automatically liable if their dog has bitten someone before, or is known to be vicious, dangerous, or mischievous.

A Bitter Battle

Dog bite lawsuits are often incredibly contentious because we all love our pets. Nobody wants to believe that their dog is dangerous, so dog owners will often dispute that a bite occurred or downplay serious injuries. It is therefore critical to seek medical attention for all dog bites so evidence of the true extent of the injury is available.

It is also important to work with an experienced personal injury attorney if you want to seek compensation for a dog bite injury.

How To Pick An Attorney

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A hundred years ago, every doctor was the same. The same guy (and they were pretty much all guys) would see if you had a broken arm or a brain aneurysm. Today, doctors specialize in one area of medicine. Training is specialized and technology has advanced to the point where you wouldn’t want a brain surgeon to perform open heart surgery, or even set a broken arm. They might be able to muddle through, but I would much rather have a doctor that knows what he or she is doing care for me.

The legal world is similar. You shouldn’t expect the same attorney who helped you close on a home or handled your divorce to know what to do if you have suffered an injury and want to seek compensation by filing a personal injury lawsuit. So how do you find an attorney that can help meet your individual needs?

Ask Around

The first thing you can do is talk to attorneys you know or people you know who may know an attorney. Attorneys frequently refer cases to one another, so talking to any attorney you trust is a good first step, even if that attorney is not a personal injury attorney.

Ask Jeeves, Or Google

Maybe you don’t know anyone who can give you a referral, or you have gotten a few names and you want to start checking them out — head online! Most attorneys have a website like this one where they advertise what sort of law they practice.

The State Bar of Texas also has an online lawyer referral service that you may find useful.

Free Consultations Really Are Free, So Take Advantage Of Them

Once you have a few firms to check out, call them and make an appointment for a free consultation. Free consultations really are free. In fact, most personal injury cases are litigated on a contingency fee basis, which means the lawyer will take a portion of whatever amount they are able to win for you as payment. If you don’t win your case, you will not owe your attorney a dime.

Make the most of your free consultations by treating them like what they are — a job interview where you are the boss.

Ask questions about what it will be like to work with the attorney you are considering hiring.

  • Are you the attorney that will be handling my case? Or will someone I never actually meet be working on my case?
  • How can I get in touch with you if I have a question?
  • Will we need to meet often? Or can I hand you the information I have and wait to hear back?

Ask questions about your case.

  • Have you handled a case like this before?
  • What would your strategy be?
  • Do you think it is win-able?
  • How much do you think my claim is worth?
  • How long do you estimate it will take to resolve my case?

There are no questions you should be afraid or ashamed to ask.

Trust Your Gut

Think about how you feel about the answers you receive, and about the questions that the attorney asks you. Are you feeling more at ease the longer you talk? If so, that’s a good sign. The attorney you choose to work with is going to end up knowing some very intimate details about your life. You must feel comfortable with them and be able to trust them completely.

If something feels off, trust your gut and walk away. There are plenty of fish in the sea, and plenty of attorneys in Houston.