I don’t see the big deal about texting and driving. I do it all the time and have not been in a car wreck.
Then you have been lucky. Not only is texting while driving illegal, but it greatly increases your risk of being involved in a car crash.
Studies report that reports that distracted driving is the No. 1 killer of American teens. Sixteen percent of all drivers younger than 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported to have been distracted while driving.
I was driving on a country road late a night. I came around a sharp curve at a reasonable speed and there was a black horse standing in the middle of the road. I swerved to miss it, but hit it and then hit a rock wall on the side of the road. My car was totaled and I was injured. The man that owned the horse lived on the adjoining property. Can I sue him for my injuries? That horse should not have been on the road.
You can sue him, but you will have to prove that he was negligent in controlling the horse. Under the law of Tennessee the horse must be fenced in but if there was a fence the landowner will claim that the fence was adequate and you have to prove the landowner was negligent.
It will be important to hire an experienced personal injury lawyer as soon as possible to investigate this matter. It will be important to document the condition of any fence and to learn how the horse was able to escape. It will also be important to learn with the horse or other farm animals roamed off the property in the past.
I was in a a bad car accident involving a car and a truck. Two people were hurt, and one person was killed. The total liability insurance available is a single limit policy of $300,000 and the at-fault driver does not have any assets. The insurance company has offered the group of us $300,000. How will the money be divided?
Hopefully, the money will be divided by agreement without the need for litigation. Those negotiating the case should be driven by what would happen if no agreement was reached. In other words, people should negotiate with the idea of how a court would divide the money if there was a trial.
A court would divide the $300,000 on a pro rata basis depending on the value of the claim. So, if all three claims had a total value of $3,000,000, each claimant would receive 10 cents on the dollar of his or her claim. For example, if one claim was worth $500,000, that claimant would only receive $50,000 of the total monies available.
I was in a car accident on Interstate 24 near Murfreesboro a few weeks ago. I was in the hospital for a few days and when I got home I had to miss several weeks of work. I was playing around on the Internet to see if there was anything on there about my wreck (traffic was messed up for two hours) and I discovered a lawyer had written about my wreck. My name wasn’t used but all of the other details were there. Why is he doing that?
This lawyer is doing two things. First, he is hoping that you will Google your accident, find his post, and then hire him to help you (or the other driver) with all any potential lawsuit.
Second, this attorney is trying to put something on his blog to keep it current in the hope that it will rank higher in search engines like Google. Google likes new content. So, rather than write something substantive that actually will do readers some good, these lawyers write about accidents. In fact, some of these posts are not written by the lawyer at all. Some lawyers hire ghost-writers to write blog posts to create "content" and make Google think that their blog has some substance.
I was in an automobile wreck with a truck driven by a mail truck. The wreck happened on the interstate in Robertson County, Tennessee. Can I sue the driver and the Post Office for my injuries?
You can sue the Post Office, but there is a special process that must be followed. The Post Office can only be sued in federal court after the failure of a special claims process.
The law that gives you the right to sue the Post Office is the Federal Tort Claims Act. The claim must be filed within two years of the date of the accident. A special claim form must be used to file the case with Post Office. If Post Office rejects the claim or does not act on it within six months you will have to file suit in federal court.
I was hurt in a car wreck and I need a personal injury lawyer. How do I figure out which lawyer to hire?
If you look around it seems like there are thousands of lawyers who say that they handle personal injury and wrongful death cases. In Tennessee and many other states, any lawyer can say that they do personal injury and wrongful death litigation, and it is left to the consumer to figure out what to look for in determining which lawyer to hire for your case.
We have created a Legal Guide that will help you conduct the right research and ask the right questions so that you can hire the best lawyer for your case.
My car was broadsided when another driver ran a red light. He reeked of pot, and the cops gave him a ticket for operating under the influence. I thought you could only get a ticket for operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol?
Marijuana affects one’s ability to operate a vehicle. Recently published research indicates that the when one is using pot that overall odds of a crash are 2.66 times higher than for those who were not using it.
Tennessee Code Annotated Section 55-10-401(a)(1) provides that
I was in a car accident in Clarksville, Tennessee. The guy that hit me ran a red light but the police officer did not give him a ticket. Three people told the officer that the guy ran the light! What’s going on?
Probably nothing is going on other than the officer giving the driver a break. It is not uncommon for police officers not to give tickets in this type of situation.
The failure of the officer to give a ticket will not affect your rights to bring a claim against the driver. In fact, if he received a ticket and paid it you would not be able to introduce that fact as evidence at a personal injury trial.
I was hit by a drunk driver and was seriously hurt. The police officer told me the guy tested .20 – over twice the legal limit. I found out that the guy spent all afternoon in a local bar and was on his way to another bar when he hit me. Can I sue the bar where he got drunk?
Perhaps. Tennessee law permits you to sue a bar that over-served a drunk driver if you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they served alcoholic beverages to a visibly intoxicated person.
If your information is correct and the drunk was only served at one bar, you must then be able to demonstrate that he was visibly intoxicated and therefore the bar should have stopped serving him. You also must be able to demonstrate that the driver’s drunken condition contributed to cause the wreck.
I was driving in Nashville and was broad-sided by a taxi that ran a red light. I was hospitalized for four days and am not yet back to work. What are my rights?
You have a personal injury claim. Our office has published this Legal Guide to answer your questions on the law of automobile accidents in Tennessee. This Legal Guide will help you understand the damages you may be entitled to receive.
The problem you will face is that many taxis are owned by the individual driver and have very limited insurance coverage. If that is true in your case, you will have to rely on uninsured / underinsured motorist coverage to recover damages.
Tennessee Injury Law Center