News & Articles

When someone dies as a result of another party’s wrongful conduct, California law creates two separate civil claims. The wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving heirs for their own losses. The survival action belongs to the decedent’s estate and covers the losses the decedent personally suffered before death. Under California Code of Civil Procedure sections […]

A life care plan is the document that converts a catastrophic injury into a dollar figure a court can evaluate. It catalogs every medical service, piece of equipment, therapy session, medication, and home modification a seriously injured person will likely need over a lifetime, assigns a unit cost and frequency to each item, and builds […]

California law limits who may bring a wrongful death lawsuit. Only the people specifically identified in Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60 have legal standing to file. The statute places the surviving spouse or domestic partner and the decedent’s children at the top of the priority list. Other relatives and dependents may qualify under separate […]

Yes. When a child is injured at a Texas daycare or school, a civil personal injury claim may be available. The exact path forward depends on whether the facility is privately operated or publicly funded, what caused the injury, and whose negligence contributed to it. Texas law treats private daycares and public school districts very […]

Which insurance coverage applies when a rideshare driver is injured on the job in Texas depends almost entirely on what the app showed at the exact moment of the crash. Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2402 divides every rideshare trip into three distinct periods, and each period carries its own coverage rules. A driver who is […]

Legal Snapshot Legal Topic: Product Liability E-Bike and Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Injuries Case Stage: Pre-litigation through civil litigation Primary Legal Issue: Strict products liability for manufacturing defect, design defect, and failure to warn Primary Authority: California Vehicle Code § 312.5; California Civil Code §§ 1714 et seq.; Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc., 59 Cal.2d […]

Yes. Under California law, a vehicle manufacturer can be held responsible for injuries that were caused or worsened by a defect in the vehicle’s design or construction, even when a different driver caused the collision itself. This legal theory is called a crashworthiness claim, or an enhanced injury claim. The core idea is that a […]

Bus and shuttle crash claims in Texas follow a different set of rules than ordinary car accident claims. Texas law imposes a heightened standard of care on commercial passenger carriers. When the bus is operated by a government entity such as Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) or a public school district, the Texas Tort Claims […]

When a product’s design rather than a manufacturing flaw or a missing warning is alleged to have caused an injury, California law gives an injured plaintiff a choice between two separate legal tests. Under the framework established in Barker v. Lull Engineering Co., 20 Cal.3d 413 (1978), a plaintiff may prove a design defect by […]

Texas law treats a person riding a bicycle on a public road as a vehicle operator with the same rights and duties as a motor vehicle driver. When a car strikes a cyclist, the cyclist can pursue a personal injury claim if the driver was negligent. The fact that helmets are not legally required for […]