Auto Accidents

Welcome to the Rodgers Law Firm

Lives change totally when someone is seriously injured or killed in a motor vehicle accident. No amount of money can compensate for the serious injury or death of a loved one, and no words can describe the heartache.

We at the Rodgers Law Firm in Fort Worth, Texas understand the devastation and losses caused by this type of tragedy. Victims who survive often have no transportation, are unable to work due to the injury, have no health insurance or large savings to pay for medical care, may not know how to find health care providers that will wait for payment until the case settles, and do not have the energy or know how to deal with the insurance company for the wrongdoer.
Grieving relatives may be further burdened by intense feeling of anger and frustration when the death is not from natural causes and could have been easily avoided if the person at fault, the wrongdoer, had only been more careful.

That's why we are here – to do everything we can to help our clients get the answers, the assistance, and the compensation that they are entitled to under the law.

We handle auto accident cases all over the DFW Metroplex and surrounding cities, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Denton, Burleson, Cleburne, Decatur, Weatherford, Haltom City, North Richland Hills, Richland Hills, Azle, Mineral Wells, Sherman, and Denison.

We also have handled motor vehicle accident cases in accidents occurring in other states outside the state of Texas.

If you or someone you know has been harmed in an auto accident, contact us for a free, no obligation consultation.

We will meet with you at our office or any location convenient to you.
In a free, no obligation consultation with us you may evaluate our capabilities to help you and other family members work through the legal, economic and emotional hurdles faced in this kind of calamity.

Examples of Auto Accident Cases Handled By Our Law Firm
The following pages of detailed legal information will give you insights into the depth of our technical capabilities in motor vehicle accident cases.

 

Four teenagers and young adults were joyriding and drinking beer on a weekend trip to the gulf coast. Our clients’ son, a passenger, was killed after being ejected when the car rolled due to excessive speed in a construction zone.

The driver at fault had no assets. The recovery on the case turned on a careful analysis of available auto insurance coverage under the “blood, marriage, or adoption” rule in the Texas Standard Automobile Policy.

Under this rule, if someone, person "A," does not own a policy of auto insurance but person "A" lives with someone, person "B," that does own a policy of auto insurance and person "A" is related to person "B" by blood, marriage or adoption, then person "A" is deemed under Texas law to have the same auto insurance coverage as person "B."

This means that a son or daughter living with a parent, a granddaughter or grandson living with a grandparent, a niece or nephew living with an aunt or uncle, etc. have the same auto insurance as the person they are living with.

The victim's mother and father were divorced. The son alternated living with each of his parents and did not own a car. Each parent had Personal Injury Protection (“PIP”) and Underinsured Motorist Coverage (“UIM”) on their auto insurance policies. The son’s friend, "X," was driving the car and his friend, "Y," owned the car.

The gross recovery on the case included all available policy limits from:
1. car owner Y’s auto liability policy.
2. car driver X’s auto liability policy.
3. victim's mother’s UIM auto policy, because the son was a regular resident of her home and was related to her by blood.
4. victim's father’s UIM auto policy, because the son was a regular resident of his father's home and was related to him by blood.

The case settled before suit was filed. (D85L)

Infant Passenger Killed In Auto Collision
Corpus Christi, Texas

Our client’s infant daughter was killed while traveling as a passenger in a car driven by our client’s ex-husband.

The infant was riding beside her father and was not being held securely in an infant seat. The driver also died in the accident, as did 3 occupants of the other vehicle.

The case was settled before suit was filed. (M10S)

 

The client was 20 weeks pregnant at the time of the motor vehicle accident and the pregnancy was proceeding normally, according to her gynecologist’s records.

The collision caused immediate uterine bleeding at the scene. The client was taken to the hospital and admitted for 2 days, dismissed, then readmitted for 4 days for a recurrence of the bleeding, dismissed, then readmitted a week later with the diagnosis of “preterm labor” that required her to stay in the hospital until the child’s development was far enough along to allow delivery by c-section.

Expert medical opinions were that the collision caused the premature birth of the infant 28 days after the accident, that the infant’s development was premature by 14 weeks, and that there was visible bruising on the infant’s back, hands, and feet consistent with bruising caused by a seat-belt restraint system in the accident and not consistent with c-section forceps-delivery forces. The baby died 12 weeks later without ever leaving the hospital.

The official cause of death was determined to be chronic pulmonary insufficiency arising from long-term artificial pulmonary ventilation due to premature birth.

The Standard Texas Automobile Policy in effect at the time of the accident provided that a person was a “covered person” at the time of the motor vehicle accident if the person was a “family member (injured) … while occupying … a motor vehicle.”

On these facts the insurance company for the driver at fault was persuaded to pay policy limits even though the child was not born at the time of the accident and even though, under Texas law at the time, the unborn child would not have been a covered person had the child been killed in the accident while still in his mother’s womb.

The case was settled prior to suit being filed. (G40H)

Intersection Collision Causes Partial Paralysis and Loss of Bodily Functions
Delayed Onset of Symptoms for10 Months
Surgery 18 Months Later
Bank Employee
Fort Worth, Texas

Witnesses said the other driver was traveling at least 50 mph when he ran a red light and collided with our client’s car. The force of the impact was so great that it spun her car completely around several times. Her car was a total loss.

She initially thought she was lucky to have only relatively minor bruises, soreness, and stiffness. Ten months later she visited her gynecologist complaining of continuing low back pain for the past week. The pain soon subsided, then returned, and began recurring on an intermittent basis. Eight months later the symptoms had progressed to the point that she was experiencing numbness in her buttocks and perineum and acute urinary retention and constipation. The expert medical disagnosis was disc herniation in her low back resulting from the car accident 18 months before.

Back surgery was not able to repair the damage, and she was left permanently disabled, unable to continue working as a bank officer, with loss of feeling in her pelvic area that greatly affecting her marriage, and having to self-administer enemas and catheters as a part of her daily routine.

The major medical issue in the case was to prove that the ten-month delay in onset of pain symptoms followed by the further delay in onset of numbness and loss of body functions triggering the surgery eight months later was causally related to the car wreck.

The case settled prior to trial for policy limits. (C40B)

“Road Rage” Rear End Collision
Defendant Driver an Insurance Company Adjuster Visiting His Girlfriend
Arlington, Texas

Our client’s car was rear ended by a company car driven by an insurance adjuster while the adjuster was trying to force his way into crowded rush hour traffic. The adjuster, succumbing to “road rage,” suddenly accelerated his car to exit an apartment complex after waiting at least five minutes for a clear path into traffic.

In written documents explaining the accident he gave to his employer, he claimed (1) that he had been at the apartment working to examine a wrecked car insured by his employer, and (2) that the accident happened an hour later than it really did. Investigation and depositions after lawsuit was filed revealed he was not telling his employer the truth.

He had been visiting a female friend at the apartment, not examining a wrecked car (the female friend at her deposition admitted that he visited her frequently). The collision happened a few minutes after the client had made a bank deposit, and the bank manager by affidavit proved that the client’s stated time for the accident was correct based on bank deposit records.

Our client was permanently disabled from working after back and neck surgery.

The case was settled prior to trial despite the defense this was a “low speed impact” that could not have caused this much injury to our client. (T160V)

Elderly Driver Rear Ended and Knocked Into Path
of Oncoming 18 Wheeler Truck
Tolar, Texas

Our client, aged 74, was rear-ended and knocked into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler truck. Treatment for his injuries included an extensive three months hospitalization with facial surgery and hip replacement surgery.

The driver at fault, the 18-year-old son of a hardware store franchise owner, was driving a company truck but was not an employee of the company and was not driving the truck on company business. The teenager had a history of moving traffic violations and should not have been entrusted with driving a motor vehicle based on his prior bad driving history.

The case was settled prior to filing a lawsuit. (W582S)

MVA Causes Traumatic Brain Injury
and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome
Fort Worth, Texas

Our client, a physically active, tall, healthy owner of a construction company in business just a few months, was in a motor vehicle accident. Even though wearing a seat belt, his head hit the top of his pickup during the head-on collision because the collision buckled the floor of his pickup, pushing his head in an upward direction.

He directed traffic after the accident and declined medical care when offered it at the scene by emergency medical personnel. He assumed his injuries were minor “whiplash” injuries and would heal on their own.

Within a few days he began suffering short-term memory loss, anxiety attacks, severe depression, and recurring accident event flashbacks. He began to dread going to sleep and avoided it as long as possible each night.

His construction company failed financially because he could not remember job schedules and verbal commitments made to customers and suppliers, simple tasks that he had done successfully for years as the general manager of a large corporations’ remodeling division. This short-term memory loss caused job cost overruns, lost profits, and dissatisfied customers.

Expert neurological, psychiatric, and neuropsychological evaluations determined that he had sustained traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress syndrome requiring extensive psychiatric care and medication for more than two years. At one time he was reduced to painting houses by himself because his company no longer had any employees.

Defense lawyers were confident that a local jury would not award compensation in line with his losses because he was never admitted to a hospital and “there was never a band aid on him,” thus he could not have been seriously injured in the accident.

The trial judge refused to allow evidence of the financial losses he sustained while trying to keep his company going after the accident because, since the company was new and therefore without a history of profitability, it was “too speculative” to allow a jury to decide what his construction company would have earned had he not been in the accident. The Jury was only allowed to consider his medical bills and physical impairment.

After a seven day trial, the jury returned a verdict in our client’s favor in an amount that was more than eight times the best pre-trial settlement offer from the defendant.

The jury verdict was upheld by the appellate courts after the defendant appealed the results two times – once on the issue that the amount of the jury award for physical impairment was excessive and once on the issue that the prejudgment and postjudgment interest awarded by the trial judge was excessive. The two appeals were handled by an attorney with another law firm who was an appellate specialist. (JP130R)

Grocery Store Customer Struck By Car While Walking In Grocery Store Parking Lot
Bedford, Texas

Our client parked her car in the parking lot of her local grocery store. While walking in the parking lot toward the grocery store entrance doors, a driver who had completed shopping at the grocery store suddenly backed her car out of a parking space and into the client, with the bumper striking our client on the right thigh, knocking her down and causing serious injuries that ultimately required the surgical removal of her coccyx, or tailbone.

The driver then left the parking lot without rendering any aid to our client. Our client, while lying on the ground and watching the driver leave the scene, was able to see and memorize the car’s license plate.

She called the police as soon as she could and reported the accident as a hit and run. The police, after determining the driver’s address from the license plate number, went to the driver’s house, interviewed the driver, and completed a police report of the accident.

The driver, based on the answers she gave at her deposition and based on the deposition testimony of the investigating police officer, was an elderly female with poor vision and seemingly in an early stage of dementia. Many of her answers were not responsive to the questions or were not comprehensible.

The case settled before trial (K41P).

Overview of Auto Accident Cases in Texas

According to Bureau of Transportation statistics, there were 6,606,000 car accidents in the United States in 2002. Of these car accidents, there were 1,804,788 injuries and 20,416 fatalities.

There were an estimated 3.6 million motor vehicle-related injuries in the United States in 2003, according to data reported to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. An estimated 3.3 million of these injuries involved motor vehicle occupants. The rest involved about 133,000 motorcyclists, 127,000 pedestrians, and 59,000 pedalcyclists.

Victims of car accidents that are the result of another driver’s negligence or reckless behavior may be entitled to compensation from the wrongdoer. Compensation may include lost income or wages, medical expenses, repair costs, physical impairment, and pain and suffering.

Losing the Right to Make the Claim
You must file your Texas motor vehicle accident suit within a certain time period or else you will lose your right to pursue your claim. In many accidents, the suit must be filed within two years from the date of the accident.

Simply contacting the business whose employee caused the death or contacting the businesses’ insurance company about the accident is not enough to stop the running of the two year period.

Cases involving federal and state governmental entities as defendants are governed by a different limitations procedures and periods. Claims against federal government entities are controlled by the Federal Tort Claims Act. The Federal Tort Claims Act provides:

“A tort claim against the United States shall be forever barred unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate Federal agency within two years after such claim accrues or unless action is begun six months after the date of mailing, by certified or registered mail, of notice of final denial of the claim by the agency to which it was presented.”

Texas governmental entities are controlled by the Texas Tort Claims Act. The claim procedures in this Act must be followed. It requires that written notice, often using mandatory forms supplied by the agency involved, be given to the agency against whom the claim is being made within time periods shorter than a year after the accident. Certain exceptions do exist in unique circumstances, but they require the analysis of a qualified attorney to determine if they are applicable.

There are other reasons to act quickly. Key witnesses may disappear, witnesses’ memories may fade, and vital documents may be lost. Sometimes it takes months of investigation to determine who the true defendants are that are legally responsible for the accident. It is crucially important that you do not delay in consulting with an attorney.

Contact us for a free no-obligation consultation as soon as possible to ensure that you retain your right to pursue your claim.

Contact Us for a Second Opinion If Another Attorney Has Declined To Represent You
Attorneys regularly decide whether the case that they are reviewing does or does not meet all the requirements to be a viable, sound case. Making this determination is not an exact science. Based on different experiences and analytic abilities, one attorney may turn down the opportunity to represent a client and another attorney may shortly thereafter decide to take the case.

The second reviewing attorney saw something the first reviewing attorney may have overlooked. The first attorney may have decided that liability was not clear, that you were not the type of relative that would be entitled to make a wrongful death claim, that there was not available insurance coverage or other sources to pay the money damages, or that there were other problems in seeking a recovery.

We would welcome the opportunity to review your family’s wrongful death claim even if another attorney has turned the case down. There is no charge or obligation for our review.
You may contact us at the following phone numbers at any time:

Office: toll free: 1-866-560-1075

local: 817-717-4080
Copyright 1994 - 2007 Clifford B. Rodgers.
Last Modified July 6, 2007.