Articles Posted in Car Accidents

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Whether it’s on the internet or on TV, chances are you’ve seen one or more videos of the wild scenes that sometimes unfold when drivers decide to try to outrun the police in their vehicles. While these videos can be entertaining to watch, they are, as law enforcement officers will attest, incredibly dangerous to anyone in the chase’s path. So, what happens if you’re harmed by a driver who’s trying to escape officers? The range of people (and insurance companies) you can sue depends on many facts, including the way that the relevant insurance policies are written. In a recent Louisiana Court of Appeal decision arising from a Jefferson Parish incident, an injured woman could not pursue an auto owner’s insurer because of the exception language in that insurance policy.

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A woman injured in a New Orleans wreck with a dumpster truck recently recovered more than $640,000 in damages. But it could have been more. If the jury that decided her case had not held her 15% at fault, the award would have exceeded $750,000. Despite an appeal, the damages award remained unchanged. The opinion issued by the Louisiana Court of Appeal in the case is a useful reminder about the amount of discretion the law gives juries in injury cases. In the case, the injured woman was determined to be 15% at fault, based upon her decision to use the highway and her failure to exercise “greater caution” while driving. The appeals court upheld this jury verdict, stating that the evidence in the case did not indicate that the allocation of fault was “clearly wrong.”

The case involved Hieu Phuong Hoang, who was injured when the car she was driving on US Highway 90 was struck by a dump truck driven by Kenneth Thornton. Hoang sued Thornton and his employer for her injuries. At trial, Hoang put a variety of witnesses on the stand. She called her neighbor, an expert witness, and herself to testify that the stretch of highway where the accident occurred was a dangerous area, due to heavy truck traffic and road construction. The parties also submitted photographs of the area where the wreck occurred.

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In any civil trial, the entity charged with weighing the evidence and issuing a verdict (whether it’s a jury in a jury trial or a judge in a bench trial) has many tasks. One of the most important ones is deciding which witnesses are credible and which are not. The law gives a jury (or a judge in a bench trial) wide breadth in making these decisions. That latitude figured into a recent Louisiana Court of Appeal decision upholding a judgment in favor of an injured driver. Although witnesses differed on who ran the red light, the trial judge was within his bounds to find the injured driver’s witnesses more credible.

The accident leading to this case involved a fairly common set of facts. In March 2014, Vicke Mosley was driving south on a four-lane road in Shreveport when she approached an intersection that was regulated by traffic lights. Mosley drove through the intersection where her car collided with that of Jacob Griffin, who was driving east on the intersecting road. Each driver claimed that their light was green. The testimony of other witnesses was mixed, with some saying Mosley entered the intersection on a yellow light and others pointing to Griffin for advancing while his light was red.

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A woman whose vehicle was sideswiped obtained a judgment and damages award for herself but not her children in a recent case decided by a District Court in Jefferson Parish. That ruling was affirmed by the Louisiana Court of Appeal. Despite testimony from the children and their chiropractor, the appeals court nevertheless determined that the trial court’s decision was not so unreasonable as to require reversal.

The crash occurred on Williams Boulevard in Jefferson Parish. A vehicle driven by Joel Hashim moved from the left lane to the center lane of the road and, in the process, struck the vehicle driven by Regina Tezeno, who was already traveling in the center lane. The total damage amounted to one lost headlight and scraped paint. Tezeno sued Hashim and his auto insurer for personal injuries on behalf of herself and her two children. At a trial without a jury, the judge heard evidence and found Hashim 100% at fault. The judge awarded Tezeno $5,535 in damages. The children recovered nothing.

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Insurance companies sometimes seek out ways to deny a claim even if the person making the claim is entitled to be paid. Sometimes, even when they pay, insurance companies delay an excessively long time in doing so. Such an excessive delay was the basis of an Ascension Parish man’s lawsuit against his auto insurer. The man lost his case, though, after a trial court and the Louisiana Court of Appeal decided that the insurance company’s payment was made in a timely manner, even though the man’s lawyer did not receive the insurance company’s check until three days after the deadline imposed by the Louisiana Statutes.

The case arose from a 2010 auto accident involving Beau Schexnaildre and Nathan Spicer. Spicer was at fault, and the two sides eventually settled Schexnaildre’s claim through Spicer’s insurance. After that resolution, Schexnaildre also sought payment from his own insurance company, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., under the terms of his underinsured motorist coverage. Thirty-three days after Schexnaildre made his claim, his lawyer received a check from State Farm for $25,000, the limit of the man’s underinsured motorist coverage.

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Most drivers have, at some point, found themselves in the position of sitting at a stop sign and needing to navigate a cross street with stopped traffic. Sometimes, there’s even a “helpful” driver who waves for you to proceed. A woman in that position lost her case before the Louisiana Court of Appeal recently because she did not exercise the required degree of caution before crossing an intersection. The decision highlights that an anonymous driver’s waving does not diminish the level of care that the law requires of drivers at stop signs.

The accident that led to the lawsuit occurred at an intersection of two city streets in Monroe. Betty Blount was driving on North 8th Street and was stuck at the intersection of 8th and Louisville Avenue. As a result of another accident, traffic on Louisville was stopped in the outer lane. After spending several minutes waiting at the intersection, both Blount and her passenger, Joseph Solomon, saw a driver in the outer westbound Louisville lanes wave them through. Blount entered the intersection and was struck by a different driver, Sarah Tugwell, who was in the inner westbound lane.

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When you are arrested on suspicion of DWI, you may have the choice to submit to or refuse a chemical blood-alcohol test. If you choose to refuse, there may be certain consequences that go with refusing, such as the suspension of your driver’s license for a year. However, in some cases, you may be entitled to an immediate reinstatement of your license, as opposed to waiting for a year to pass. One driver arrested in Ascension Parish was entitled to such an immediate reinstatement, according to the Louisiana Court of Appeal, since the state failed to show that he had been previously arrested for DWI within the last 10 years.

The driver who contested his license suspension was Jay Veasman, whom law enforcement officers arrested for DWI in April 2013. Veasman was informed of his rights and elected to refuse a chemical blood-alcohol test. The state suspended Veasman’s license, and an administrative law judge determined that the suspension was proper. A trial court judge, however, disagreed and reinstated the driver’s driving privileges.

The state Department of Public Safety appealed but lost. One aspect of the case that favored the driver was the plea deal he worked out in his criminal trial. Although he was originally charged with DWI, Veasman and the state agreed to an arrangement in which the state dropped the DWI charge, and the driver pled guilty to Careless Operation of a Motor Vehicle. Since the impaired driving-related charges were dismissed, the 2013 incident alone could not stand in the way of the man’s immediate license reinstatement.

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Sometimes it is the auto or motorcycle accident you avoid that still leads to an injury. Two men whose vehicles narrowly missed each other on Highway 431 in Ascension Parish eventually ended up in a fistfight that left one man with a bitten nose and both men in court as a result of the bitten man’s injuries. Since the trial court had enough evidence to conclude that the biter was the aggressor, and not biting in self-defense, the Louisiana Court of Appeal upheld the lower court’s decision to award the bitten man past and future medical expenses.

The source of the incident began when Clifford Barr attempted to turn left from Louisiana Highway 431 into the parking lot of an auto service shop. At the same time, Ray Schexnayder was turning from the lot onto the highway in his truck. The two trucks narrowly avoided colliding, and both men stopped their vehicles in the roadway, and a verbal quarrel ensued.

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An insurance company and an auto auction company will not face being sued for spoliation of evidence based upon their negligent failure to preserve a vehicle involved in an auto accident that injured the vehicle’s driver. The Louisiana Supreme Court recently ruled that the state’s law does not recognize a civil claim for negligent spoliation of evidence, although the companies’ failure may allow the injured driver to sue for breach of contract.

In March 2008, a multi-vehicle wreck left Richard Reynolds injured and his car totaled. Reynolds sued one of the other drivers, Robert Bordelon III, for negligence for his role in the accident. In addition to suing Bordelon, Reynolds also advanced claims against the manufacturer of his 2003 Infiniti G35, stemming from the car’s failure to deploy its airbags in the crash. Despite the driver’s alleged requests to the contrary, the auction company that took possession of the Infiniti on behalf of Reynolds’s insurer did not preserve the car, which meant that it was never inspected for defects.

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In a recent Southeastern Louisiana case, the expert testimony of two doctors, along with a driver’s own testimony, was not enough to secure a verdict in the driver’s injury lawsuit against the owner of her trailer park. Since a jury’s finding can only be overturned when it is blatantly erroneous, and evidence existed in the driver’s case that cast doubt on the credibility of the driver’s testimony and that of her doctors, the Louisiana Court of Appeal concluded that the verdict was not reversible.

The case centered around Wendy Richardson’s single-car accident in July 2011. Allegedly, the driver’s vehicle lurched when the right rear tire landed in a hole in the surface of one the entrances to the trailer park where Richardson lived. The driver claimed that the accident caused her to suffer serious neck injuries that required spinal surgery to address.

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