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Jury awards $1.5 M to 2 men injured in crash

October 3, 2008

A Texas jury has awarded $1.5 million to two men injured when an Indiana-based tractor-trailer veered into their lane and hit their car, lawyers said.

Ronny Martinez, 37, and Kenneth O’Neal, 50, were traveling on a highway in Waxahachie, Texas, in 2006 when their car was struck by a truck operated by Celadon Trucking Services, Inc.

They filed a personal injury lawsuit against the Indianapolis-based company, saying it was negligent in hiring the truck driver and that the driver was negligent in causing the crash.

The jury award includes $750,000 for medical bills and another $750,000 for other actual damages such as pain and suffering or physical impairment, attorneys for Martinez and O’Neal said in a news release.

Celadon Trucking said in a statement Thursday that the injuries were regrettable, but noted that the jury also found Martinez, who was driving, partly responsible for causing the accident.

Read Article Chicago Tribune

RPV couple awarded $11.6M in crash

An elderly Rancho Palos Verdes couple has been awarded $11.6 million by a jury that found a lack of safety measures on a remote highway caused the husband to crash into an embankment.

Cletus Schmidt, 79, was left a paraplegic and reliant on a ventilator as a result of the Jan. 16, 2006, accident.

On Monday, a Riverside Superior Court jury ordered the state Department of Transportation to pay Schmidt and his wife, Marlene Schmidt, 77, for the agency’s negligence. The jury found the agency 90 percent responsible for the crash and Schmidt 10 percent responsible.

Schmidt, a retired attorney, was on his way to Lake Havasu, Ariz., where he often went to spend time with his four children and 10 grandchildren.
He was driving east in his Ford Crown Victoria along Highway 62 near Joshua Tree National Park when he crashed where the road intersects with Highway 177.

Read Article Daily Breeze

Tips lawsuit could serve up big pay for Luby’s wait staff

Waitstaff at Luby’s restaurants around Texas may have a chance to collect one big ol’ tip if a federal class action case succeeds.U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent on Wednesday denied a request from the restaurant that a 2007 lawsuit over tip sharing be dropped. Kent also conditionally approved that the lawsuit be a class action for the waiters and waitresses at Luby’s.

Bob Debes, a Houston attorney representing 10 waitstaff workers from around the state, said if they win the lawsuit, his clients could potentially collect, on a sliding scale, up to $4.42 an hour for each hour they worked in the last two to three years. The amount will depend in part on the prevailing minimum wage.

The lawsuit is over mandatory tip sharing between the waitstaff — the folks who ask diners if they need such things as more tea or dessert — and the service attendants who clean off dishes after the waitstaff removes them from the tables.

Key to the lawsuit will be the definition of duties and how much the service attendants are like busboys, who can legally share in tips.If the judge or a jury decides they are more like kitchen staff, who can’t share in tips, the waitstaff could have a big payday.

Read Article Houston Chronicle

Green card applicants must get HPV vaccine

The Associated Press

Young, female immigrants must now get shot to prevent cervical cancer

DALLAS – An expensive cervical cancer vaccine is now needed by young female immigrants before they can become legal U.S. residents, a requirement that immigration advocates say is unfair.

Read Full Article MSNBC

A close look at the Sheriff’s Office record

by JJ Hensley

The goal is straightforward: Get to crimes in progress in five minutes or less and solve two-thirds of crimes that detectives investigate.

But Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office is taking at least two minutes longer than its five-minute median goal in responding to priority-one calls in the towns and unincorporated areas where it is the main law-enforcement agency.

Read Full Article AZCentral

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