Hill Law Firm Cases

The holidays are here. More people are on the road and that means more accidents. We cover some of the safe holiday driving tips to try to help our San Antonio neighbors avoid crashes and make sure everyone stays safe on the Texas roadways. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases podcast where we not only talk about what's going on at our firm, we also talk about ways to not need a law firm like mine, safety tips, how to live a safer life, how to drive safer, how to be safer on the roads and in your home and in the work. Today, we're talking about holiday driving. It's right around the corner and actually, Thanksgiving holiday is already behind us. If you drove then and you're fine now, good for you. We're glad you were able to drive safely. As the Christmas holidays approach, we hope you also drive safely. The CDC, we all know a lot about CDC now that we have lived through this pandemic, but they also do injury prevention and control and they've released some tips for holiday safe driving. They also started by pointing out that it looks like 2020, we'll see a 7% increase in deaths, roadway fatalities which is surprising to everybody because actually, there were less miles and time driven by people in 2020. In 2019, they said there was about 36,000 people killed in crashes. I expect it to be closer to 39 in 2020. Even less people on the road has not led to less traffic fatalities. Be careful out there. San Antonio has a lot of roads, a lot of people on the roads, and the holidays just make for even more traffic. Some safety tips they recommend for everybody to follow. Number one is, the real obvious one, is do not drive when you are impaired. In 2019, alcohol-impaired driving was part of- or contributed to over 10,000 crashes in the United States. That's not just alcohol, drugs, marijuana. If you're on medication in which you shouldn't drive, don't drive, call a taxi, call an Uber, have a friend drive. Number one tip that we've been hearing our whole lives. Remember it and plan ahead. Also, distractions. That's the new thing that's leading to a lot of crashes that we see here at our law firm, a lot of people in San Antonio. If you're just driving around or sitting on the phone, one of the things the CDC points out that- if you are receiving a text message and reading it, driving at 55, that you are likely keeping your eyes off the road for almost the distance of a football field. Five seconds not looking at the road is almost the length of a football field at 55 miles an hour. Just remember, put your phone down, pull over if you need to use your phone. Also, check the weather. Us in San Antonio saw one of the worst traffic backups mass casualty events. It's probably the worst that I've ever seen or heard of was the Fort Worth pile-up last year with the ice on the road. I have hit ice in Fort Worth before. It is a very scary thing to hit that unexpectedly. Check the road safety tips, check the weather on the road. Make sure before you head out, you got a plan. Make sure you know what to do. If you do hit bad weather, get a hotel, stay the night, try to avoid it. Some child passenger safety tips they recommend. Make sure your kids are in the age-appropriate seatings whether it's a car seat or a booster seat, make sure the seat belts fit them properly. There's a lot of analysis that goes into properly restraining a child in a vehicle. Make sure you're up on that and make sure you've got the right booster or car seat. Make sure you take off their puffy, bulky coats and things like that before you strap them in because that can limit the effectiveness of a car seat or...

Your San Antonio Personal Injury Law Firm, Hill Law Firm, has been very busy the second half of 2021. From new cases, to settlements, to community involvement, we have a lot to share. This short update covers mostly the injury lawsuits that have settled recently. Sexual assault, on the job, car wrecks, and other cases have been part of our recent settlements. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin Hill: Welcome back to Hill Law Firm Cases. We haven't had an episode in a while. I wanted to update everybody on what's going on over at our law firm. First, happy holidays, happy Thanksgiving, and a Merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah, and whatever you celebrate, we hope you have a good holiday. We wanted to update everybody on what we've been up to. The firm has gone through a lot of changes over the last couple of months. We've been very busy from a work side, from a staffing side, from all types of things going on. It's a very busy time of the year as it relates to lawsuits. It's also very busy as it relates to our involvement in the community and our work with nonprofits. We recently attended Restore Education, big fundraiser, a spelling bee in which me and Gabriel from the Hill Law Firm were able to take home first place. It was a lot of fun, but we've also been involved in zoo activities and San Antonio Bar Association activities, and other fundraisers. It's important for us to be involved in our community, but not just from some of the vanity type charities and where people want to put their names on, but real small charities that need the help and need donors and need people who can put in hours to help. We're really involved in those as well. I just wanted to talk a little bit about what we've been going through in the last couple of months in terms of our cases. What kind of cases we've been working on, how those cases have been turning out for us, and I think it's good to just start and walk through some of the settlements we've had over the last 45 days. Some of them have been real victories for our clients and for our law firm and for the justice system as a whole. To start, we recently settled a case against a major insurance company that really had in bad faith and in a really bad way treated our client poorly. She was rear-ended in a car crash in San Antonio. No fault of her own. The other driver said she was messing with her cup of coffee. When she rear-ended our client, our client ended up requiring a shoulder surgery. Now she had had a shoulder procedure just months before this. We had imaging and doctor's notes and everything showing that she was fully healed before this crash, but the insurance company, as they tend to do, lodged frivolous defense that was trying to allege that even though we had records and notes and doctors saying she was fully healed and fine with complete range of motion and no pain prior to the crash, they tried to say that the previous issue is what required her to have surgery after this crash. They hired a doctor who charged about $17,000 to agree with them. I don't think he was in any way impartial. In his deposition, he said that he had given 20 to 40 depots over the last three years, but whenever he was pushed and we got documents on it, he had actually been deposed over 120 times over the past couple of years. This was a real victory because after the deposition of this expert, we increased our demand from our demand at mediation, and that's pretty abnormal when the insurance company will agree to accept an increased demand. We settled it for more than we were willing to settle at mediation, more than they ever wanted to pay, but it was a real victory for our client....

Recently, H.E.B. grocery stores have announced a massive recall of millions of pounds of chicken products due to the risk of listeria contamination. Listeria is a deadly pathogen that can cause illness and is of particular risk to pregnant women. If you have purchased these possibly listeria contaminated HEB chicken products, return them immediately. If you ate one and feel ill, seek medical attention now. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] There are not many law firms in San Antonio that handle as many food poisoning cases as we do and we have. Probably the most recent largest food poisoning lawsuit in San Antonio revolved around a outbreak at Pasha in San Antonio. That involved hundreds of people who were injured and became sick as a result of eating contaminated food. That case recently resolved. Recently in the news was a story that HEB was recalling some 8.5 million pounds of ready-to-eat Tyson Food chicken products that included some of their Meal Simple products. If you live in San Antonio or you shop at HEB, you know what these Meal Simples are. They're ready-to-eat meals, you buy them and heat them up. Also, included in the recall, were some Tyson grilled chicken breasts, fajita chicken, grilled and ready pulled chicken, a bunch of Tyson products, a bunch of Meal Simples to include Meal Simple buffalo chicken, pepper trio chicken, barbecue chicken, curry chicken. Then even some of their SoFlo products, which is pizza, their buffalo chicken pizza, and their crustless Buffalo chicken pizza had been recalled. They've all been recalled as it relates to a potential outbreak of Tyson chicken with a pathogen known as Listeria. You may know of Listeria from the Blue Bell recall a few years back that almost shut down Blue Bell. Listeria is a really nasty illness. Listeria can and does kill hundreds of people in America a year. It's something that can be through proper food handling techniques eliminated or very, very limited from contaminating food. One of the bad things about Listeria is that it can be a very, very deadly, and very dangerous sickness specifically for pregnant women. Pregnant women are 10 times more likely than other people to get a Listeria infection. On top of that, it can cause all kinds of complications with the pregnancy and really anybody who would be at risk from other illnesses, older people, people with weakened immune systems, but in particular, pregnant women have a real risk with listeria. Some of the facts include that pregnant Hispanic women are 24 times more likely than the general population to get a Listeria infection. This is straight from the CDC website. According to the CDC is the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness or food poisoning in America and that approximately 260 people die per year. What we know right now is that HEB has taken on upon themselves to withdraw some and recall some 8 million pounds of chicken. If you have any of these products, you need to throw them away or go back to HEB and get a refund. If you think you have eaten some of them and you feel sick, please go to the doctor. Food poisoning is something people talk about like it's a tummy illness, but in reality, food poisoning is very dangerous and can kill people and does kill people. If you think you have been part of the Listeria HEB food poisoning outbreak and you'd like to seek counsel, please reach out to us. if you have not been injured by this, but have some of the products, call HEB, get a refund, and let them properly dispose of any products you have. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. We'll try to keep you all up to date on what's happening in Texas and what's happening in San Antonio and what's...

Vehicles can be very dangerous places for children. A lot of the dangers are unknown or less publicized. In this series, we are trying to cover and discuss some of the most common dangers in vehicles for San Antonio and Texas residents. Transcript: Justin Hill, San Antonio Injury Lawer: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin: Welcome to another episode of Hill Law Firm Cases where we talk about what's going on at the Hill Law Firm, but we also talk about ways to keep yourself and your family safer on the roadways, on the job, in everyday life. One of the things we want to talk about today is keeping our kids safe in the vehicles. If you get on the internet, there's all kinds of information about properly installing and fitting car seats and children's helmets or bicycles, all types of information about how to increase the safety of your child in a range of environments and in a range of situations. One of the things we want to talk about today is some of the more uncommon, I'll say, but very serious dangers associated with vehicles that we typically hear in the one-off story, the tragic story that you hear in the news and think, "That couldn't happen to me," but are real dangers and really happen to normal people doing their best every day. In San Antonio, one of the things that people know about our city is it's very hot. You come around the San Antonio River Walk during the summer holiday when you get a lot of families down here going to SeaWorld, and I still look around and think, "Jeez, how is this a holiday for some people?" Because I'm very hot-natured, and I sweat, so I do not enjoy being out those really hot two or three months during the summer. One of the things to consider in those hotlines or really all the time of the year, especially in South Texas, where it never gets too cold, is the risk of heatstroke. People talk about this oftentimes, and you hear about this in the media where people leave a dog or leave a child, unfortunately, in a vehicle, even for a short amount of time, and it can lead to heatstroke. It's one of the leading causes of non-crash-related causes of death for children, and it can happen when kids are left in a hot car alone, and it doesn't take long to leave them in there for the vehicle to get so hot that their core body temperature gets too hot, and it can just overwhelm their little bodies. For example, the inside temperature of your car can rise almost 20 degrees Fahrenheit in 10 minutes. If it's 100 degrees outside, you're talking, it's 120, 130, within 10, 15 minutes. Once a child's body temperature gets above 104, it's a very bad deal, and once it gets above 107, it can be fatal. These are really serious concerns. There's lots of things that we need to think about. We're going to talk about a few of those things, but one of them is just habit. As it relates to your vehicle, get in the habit of checking all of your seats before you lock the door and walk away. Make sure that you keep your vehicle locked if you have young children. 3 out of 10 heatstroke deaths in vehicles involve children just crawling into a vehicle and accidentally closing themselves into it. It's not being left. Almost 30% are preventable just by locking your car and keeping your keys away from your children. Third, pay attention to other vehicles you see. If you see a child or a dog, in my opinion, in a vehicle in a hot day or, really, any day, make sure to call the authorities if it looks like, or you even suspect a slight risk that the child could be in danger. Never leave your kid in the car. Even if you just have to run in for a second, don't do it. People do not fully appreciate the risks of vehicle getting hot and

On this episode, we discuss the use of seatbelts in Texas. The statistics, the law, and the campaign to increase usage are discussed. In San Antonio, it is important that everyone follows the Click it or Ticket campaign when possible. We cover some interesting details about seatbelt usage. Transcript Justin Hill, Injury Lawyer: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast where we typically talk about what's going on at our law firm here in San Antonio, Texas. We talk about our cases, we talk about results, we talk about personnel and just good things that are happening as well. One thing we really try to focus on as well is safety. We're a law firm that represents people injured through no fault of their own, in most cases. We're in a practice area where if people, companies, government agencies enforced and implemented safety procedures, we'd be out of business. That's the long-term goal of our industry, to regulate safety such that it becomes economically responsible and the right thing morally for businesses and people to do. For example, automotive safety has increased significantly over the last 20 or 30 years in large part due to lawsuits. Everybody's familiar with Ford, Firestone and some of those lawsuits, but everything from airbags to rollover safety to the strength of your roof to the way tires are manufactured now, all of those things have been affected for the better through lawsuits and litigation forcing industry to be held responsible when they either take shortcuts or just ignore safety altogether. Too often and many of those industries, the marketing department had more say than the safety people. Did a feature sell was more important than did it save lives. If you've been driving around Texas, you know that our state also works to improve road safety in the state of Texas. Just here in San Antonio, driving around, you see a lot of billboards talking about the number of fatalities on the roadway and injuries on the roadway. Click It or Ticket campaign, it's one of the things we're going to talk about today. In preparing for this, a statistic that really stood out to me as shocking is that November 7th of 2000, more than 20 years ago, was the first or was the last day in Texas in which there was not a roadway fatality as a result of an automobile accident or some sort of accident on the roads. As a result of that, Texas has taken up the Click It or Ticket campaign and not as a direct result but due to the fact that our roads have a long way to go to be safer, one of the things that state of Texas has done is create and implement this Click It or Ticket campaign. It is passed and pushed by the Texas Department of Transportation and according to NHTSA, which is the federal government's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They said that the Click It or Ticket initiative in Texas is estimated to have saved over 6,000 lives, prevented over 100,000 injuries and saved Texas almost $25 billion since the campaign began just 18, 19 years ago. It's been a highly successful campaign. As the run-up to the new year, the state of Texas renewed their push and published a lot of data to talk about why wearing your seatbelt remains a very important piece of contributing to roadway safety. It reduces the risk of dying in a crash by 45% for people in the front seat and it reduces the risk of dying in a pickup truck crash by 60%. Mostly as a result of rollover vehicles being much more prevalent in pickup truck accidents. Through some data and analysis, the state of Texas said that more than 90% of Texans have gotten into the habit of using their seatbelt every time they get in the vehicle but...

Join us to hear about some of the dog bite and dog attack cases we are currently handling at Hill Law Firm. Both involve our San Antonio neighbors being attacked and injured by dogs that were not properly restrained or handled. Transcript: https://www.jahlawfirm.com/personal-injury/dog-bite-lawyer-san-antonio/ (Dog Bite Attorney) Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real world cases handled by Justin Hill, and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing what we have going on at our firm, safety information, general information about our cases, and really just whatever I think will be helpful for our listeners, helpful for our industry, and helpful for you and your family just from a safety perspective. If you keep up with our law firm, either on social media or through this podcast, you know that I love dogs. We have Winston, he's been my dog for 12 years, we even have a Meet-the-Team episode on this podcast with Winston. It was done as a joke, but also he's part of the team. He's in the office quite a bit. He's my best friend and it's great that I have an office where I can bring him in. When we bring him in, we're careful with him. He's a nice dog, we know he's a nice dog, but when he's outside, he's on leash. I make sure that I monitor him around people. If I'd ever seen him show any sign of aggression, I would not let him be around people, he would just be sitting in my office with the door closed with me and probably leashed or something. Luckily, he is not one of those dogs, he's a good dog, goes around and gets belly rubs. Unfortunately, a lot of people have dogs that aren't like him. My personal views aside on why people keep dangerous or aggressive dogs is neither here nor there, but people do have them. For many reasons, there are duties under the law by which they have to keep them leashed, safe, away from people. Texas actually has causes of action by which you can file a lawsuit against somebody who doesn't maintain their dog in the correct way. For example, Texas has a cause of action, which is a way to sue somebody, there's a cause of action for negligent handling of animals. If you can prove the defendant was the owner or the possessor of an animal, and we've seen that before, we've had people that say, "Well, I didn't own it, I was just babysitting the dog." Well, Texas doesn't care. If you're a owner or possessor of an animal, you owe a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent that animal from injuring others. If you can prove they breached that duty of reasonable care, you can hold them responsible for any injuries that they caused. You see this often, for example, where somebody has a dog that, has either been aggressive or bit somebody before, they have house guests over and the dog bites somebody. They weren't reasonable on allowing a dog that had a history to be around people and injure them. Or you have instances in which a dog has a history of getting out of the yard and attacking people. Well, the fact that it got out the 10th time is enough for us to hold them responsible, not because they knew it was going to attack but because they knew it could get out of the yard and then all bets are off if it was going to attack. There's also causes of action under the law for what's called negligent per se. If you can show that the dog owner violated a law or city ordinance or municipal code related to a dog, you may be able to hold them responsible under those provisions. For example, in Texas, in San Antonio, there's a leash law that if you have a dog it needs to be on a leash, and we've sued many people for violations of that. We're currently representing multiple people who've been injured by dogs in our lawsuit and I want to talk about

Damond Garza has been a defense and a plaintiffs attorney in San Antonio for almost 20 years. He has tried over 40 cases to juries and leads San Antonio's trial lawyer association. He is a good friend and offices next to us at Hill Law Firm. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. All right. [music] Justin: All right. Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases podcast. Today, I've got Damond Garza with me. Damond is a lawyer in San Antonio, a friend, and he's also a lawyer that we work with on some cases. He is the current president of the San Antonio Trial Lawyers Association and his reign ends tomorrow, right? Damond Garza: I think officially on the 21st, actually. Justin: He's also a stickler for technicalities as you will learn. I asked Damond to come on and talk about practicing law. Really, the point of these has been younger lawyers. That's been the thought process and that's been the response from people. When I tell you who will respond about you being on here, then you'll understand. You'll be like, "Oh, okay. I understand your audience now." You're not the first SATLA president I've had on there. Damond: That makes me a little- Justin: Second. Damond: -less special feeling, but that's okay. Justin: First [unintelligible 00:01:22], I mean. I think that's what they say in that one show. Javier was on. I think he's the only one that would have been SATLA president. Bill Marler was on. There's been books written about him. Mikal Watts was on. He's been indicted and has a book and movie coming. Damond: No books or movies based on me yet, unfortunately- Justin: Indictments? Damond: -or fortunately. No indictments that I'm currently aware of. Justin: I think you would know. What is SATLA? Damond: SATLA a local trial lawyers association that is comprised of a little bit over 400 members these days. Primarily lawyers here in the Bexar County area, but we have a good contingency out of South Texas and we have members really spread as far as Alaska, even because it's a group of lawyers who represent folks, who represent people against companies, organizations, insurance companies who tend to have a lot more power and influence in the courts. We represent those folks against those powerful folks whenever they suffered a loss, injury, death, economic loss, something like that. We put our minds together to share information, to help each of us better represent our clients. The folks who usually defend injury cases have large organizations, they share information to help strengthen their defenses. We try to pool our resources to better combat against those forces who would otherwise deny the availability of the courts to regular people who have suffered a loss. Justin: San Antonio Trial Lawyers Association is not limited to San Antonio lawyers. I think there used to even be in Alaska person. Damond: We still have a very active member from the State of Alaska, we've got people from the East Coast, the Midwest, the Southeast, and everywhere far-flung in between. Justin: A very robust idea and document sharing through our Listserv, but the rules are just lawyer and do not regularly represent insurance companies. Is that basically the breakdown? Damond: More or less. Yes, you have to be a lawyer who represents people for the most part, but the biggest thing is you cannot represent insurance companies or any corporation or governmental entity regularly. Justin: To get in, they apply, they have to have multiple people that vouch for them, pay their dues, which are really not bad. Damond: Our dues are actually significantly lower than a lot of...

Texas trucking crashes and commercial motor vehicle accidents are a product of a booming transportation and oil and gas industry. We discuss some of the lies and dishonesties about these crashes being used to push tort reform. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Two professors at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway completed research recently using hair and urine samples for drug testing, and they were also studying whether hair drug testing has any racial bias to it. One of the things they found was that if we move to hair drug testing instead of urine, more than 300,000 truckers would be removed from the roadway. They would be unable to pass their drug test because they will have used illicit drugs in whatever time allowed to show up on a hair drug test. The authors were asked to do this by a trucking industry association because the trucking industry associations were considering hair drug testing. This really shocking finding came out of their research that basically said that urinalysis is insufficient to really pick up illicit drug use after some amount of time. If we really want to crack down on people who think it's okay to drive 80,000-pound vehicles and also use drugs that we should use hair analysis. Now, the obvious import for the industry is we can't lose 300,000 drivers overnight. What would we do? Where would we find those 300,000 people to make up for those jobs? That would likely mean they'd have to raise wages and make their jobs more appealing. The researchers went on to talk about how all those people should be pulled off the road, and they don't care what the industry has to do to fix that problem. That it's really just so reckless for trucking companies to have this information. To know that if they did a hair test that they would find some of their truckers were using drugs or alcohol, and they still don't do it. This is a study that came out this year, just six months ago. This is really important right now because what's happening in Texas is a coalition of trucking companies and trucking industry trade groups, and highly most likely also insurance companies are pushing for reforms of our legal industry so that they're held less accountable when they cause crashes. Texans for Lawsuit Reform and the trucking association here in Texas have teamed up, and they say that lawsuits and people injured on the road are putting them out of business. Texas doesn't even have close to the highest trucking insurance premiums, but the trucking industry is saying we can't afford these premiums so we have to get legislative changes to our legal system. It's worth noting that they're not discussing changing the way insurance is handled in Texas. They're not discussing changes to their own industry that allows for a lot of trucking crashes in Texas that involve texting and driving, alcohol-related driving, and lots of really egregious gross negligence. It is criminal, but almost homicidal behavior. If you were behind an 80,000-pound vehicle and you're texting and driving or drunk, you know that you've got a really high likelihood of hurting somebody or killing somebody. But the industry isn't trying to address that. What they want to do is say, "Hey, legislators. Please shield us from lawsuits because we're not self-regulating," which is leading to a lot of bad lawsuits and a lot of injured and killed Texans too that people forget to talk about, so they want the legislator to fix it. Just for some background information, Texas has had an explosion in the oil and gas industry which has led to an explosion in the support industry for that, supporting oil and gas, and a lot of that is trucking. We've had a lot more trucking...

We get a lot of questions from potential and current personal injury clients. We address those questions today! Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases podcast. This is going to be our second edition of a lawyer Q&A that we have put together. I've asked my staff and I myself have done the same as we get common questions from people that call the office or from our current clients that we get. I've already done Part 1 of this series. It looks like we've got about another 40 or 50 questions that we have compiled, and I'm going to just go through some of the most common questions we get. If I didn't hit the question that you have, try and listen to Part 1 of this series and we might've covered it there. In Part 1, we talked about honors and awards we've received, how we get paid, what a fee arrangement is? Who's responsible for out-of-pocket? How much time do we spend on a case? What is a case worth? How are we paid? What happens if you lose? Then questions about our firm, what percentage of our case load is personal injury? Do we get cases referred by their lawyers? Do we handle complex cases in cases against Fortune 500? The questions that you have, feel free to listen to our lawyer Q&A Part 1, that's up on our website, jhlawfirm.com. Today, I'm going to start with a common question that I personally have gotten. One of those questions we hear a lot is, "Have you handled personal injury cases like mine before," and/or questions such as, "Have you ever tried a personal injury case like mine?" One thing I always have to tell everybody when they call and ask you a question like that is that every case is unique. Every case is unique from the fact that what our plaintiff has gone by case and also the liability against the defendant and the ability to recover against the defendant is going to be different. For example, we have handled lots of car accident and vehicular accident cases, but I've never seen two that are exactly the same. Have had the same plaintiff, have had the same liability, and have had the same insurance company and lawyers. Every case is different. My first boss always said a lawsuit is a lawsuit is a lawsuit and as long as you can learn and understand the substantive law, then you get evidence to support your substantive law, you go try it to a jury under the same rules of evidence that don't really change depending on what type of case it is. We can never tell somebody, we have handled a case exactly the same as theirs. Ethically, we are bound to only take cases that we feel we are competent to handle. It's the reason I turned down a mortgage, a dispute case that came in last year. When a bank asked me to go try a case on their behalf regarding a mortgage fraud claim, it's not something I have done before. Honestly, I didn't feel too motivated to get into a trial representing a large bank. We have tried lots of different types of personal injury cases, dram shop cases and negligence cases, car wreck cases, on-the-job injury cases. We have the ability, the resources, the knowledge and the know-how to work up, prepare and try a personal injury case, a product liability case, dram shop case, 18-wheeler case, on-the-job injury case. Even though the case may have some differing details, we feel like we are competent, ready and able to handle those cases. The next one we're going to hit up is, "Do cases like mine usually settle out of court or go to trial?" I tell all clients that the vast majority of cases settled before trial and there's multiple reasons for that, but the biggest reason is at the end of the day, the defendant has to ask themselves, do they prefer to let a jury decide, which means...

All injury attorneys in San Antonio and the rest of Texas see an uptick in cases during certain Holidays. Christmas is no different. There are more people on the road, more parties involving alcohol, and more fire hazards present. Transcript: San Antonio Attorney Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] We are now in December, which means everybody is full on Christmas mode. We've put away the pumpkin spice lattes, we've shelved the cornucopia and turkey and dressing until next year. Now, we're onto peppermints and hot chocolate and Christmas trees and all the wonderful things associated with Christmas. Another thing about Christmas, though, it is associated with lots of its own specific dangers. We want to talk a little bit about this. The great people at the National Safety Council, which is one of America's leading non-profits regarding safety information and safety advocacy, has put together some holiday safety information. I wanted to share that with our listeners. It's truly broken down into two things, or three things. We're going to be on the road a lot. We're going to be decorating. Lots of things involve fire this time of year, so let's talk about that. The holidays are a dangerous time to be on the road. I think, in 2017, they said there was almost 300 deaths on Christmas Day on the roadways. Alcohol was a factor in a third of those. What we know is that people go out and they celebrate on Christmas Day, Christmas Eve. People travel for Christmas, a lot of people are on the roadways. A few things, it's cold outside, prepare your car for winter travel. Depending on where you are in Texas, that probably don't mean much, other than to watch the news, watch the weather, make sure you're not driving into an eye storm, especially if you're going up to North Texas, like where I am from. Here, in beautiful San Antonio, I think it's probably unlikely that there will be much ice on the road or snow on the road or the need for change or anything like that. Depending on where you are and where you're traveling, make sure you prepare for the weather, whatever that may mean, and prepare for a breakdown in cold weather as well, just in case that were to happen. If you're going for a long drive, make sure you get a good night sleep. You don't want to be fatigued or drowsy while you're driving. Also, don't drink and drive. A lot of people like to celebrate the holidays with a drink or two or too many. Just make sure that you don't get behind the wheel after that. Plan your travel ahead. Traffic during the holidays picks up. Plan your travel so that you know where the traffic is, maybe how to avoid it, and then you have plenty of time to get to where you need to be. You may have people in the car with you. Avoid distractions. Make sure that you're not on the phone or watching a TV or not paying attention. Make sure everybody in your car is buckled up. This might be one of the only times a year that everybody is in the car together. Make sure that you follow all safety protocols with your kids and/or family in the car. Be a defensive driver because, remember, some of those other people on the road will have partied too much and may be a drowsy driver. Pay attention to those on the road. Next thing we want to talk about is decorating safely. In our house, we say, "You got to be careful with poinsettias because they can kill dogs." Poinsettias and things like that can also poison children, so be careful with the plants that you use. Be careful with the tree that you use. If you've got a artificial tree, make sure it's fire-resistant. If you have a real tree, make sure it's fully watered and there's no source of flame around it, because those trees...

The Texas Department of Transportation recently released data showing an increase in traffic fatalities and crashes in the oil rich areas of Texas. South of San Antonio and out in West Texas are areas with large oil and gas stores. That has lead to more traffic and more crashes. Transcript: Oilfield Injury Attorney Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] I think it's fair to say that no matter where you live in the state of Texas, you know that Texas is associated with oil and gas production. I came from a town called Burkeburnett, Texas. It was known as boom town and there was actually a movie with Clark Gable named Boom Town about Texas' oil production. Everybody's heard about Spindletop. The movie Giant spends a long time discussing our Texas moved from cattle ranch and farms to oil and gas. The movie There Will Be Blood. The TV show, Dallas, Texas' oil and gas is as any other state in the union and probably the most of all States. With that being said, Texas is in a new peak of oil and gas production. In 2017 Texas oil production exceeded the peak of oil production that Texas on 1972 and then they beat that production in '18 and '19. Without a doubt, Texas is going through a huge renaissance or revitalization of oil and gas production in the state of Texas. A lot of that has to do with the technology advances and fracking or hydraulic fracturing and finding new energy plays in the Barnett shale, the Eagle Ford shale, the Granite Wash, the Hainesville and Bowser shell and the Permian basin and the Wolf camp and you could go on and on about all these new areas where oil and gas companies have found essentially oceans of oil under the ground. What that means is there's a lot of oil production, meaning there's a lot of people working in the oil and gas industry and there's a lot of people working in the sectors that support the oil and gas industry. In San Antonio, for example, there's a lot of people that work in industries that support either the Permian basin or the Barnett shale and that can range from delivering water to taking wastewater, to loading mining and delivering sand to building pad sites and to actually be in a roughneck out in the oil patch, either as a driller or in a frack crew or any of the other areas that are supporting the oil and gas production in the state. That also trickles down to just regular jobs like gas station workers, grocery store workers, the HEB in Karnes City or outside of Kennedy was seeking people to work and were paying high wages because they could not get workers because workers were going to the oil and gas industry. This also means that a lot of people are on the roads in communities that aren't used to that. The traffic in the Midland Odessa area and the Permian basin area in the Barnett shale, is in numbers unseen before. A lot of that traffic is 18-wheeler traffic and commercial motor vehicle traffic. What we found is that traffic crashes in these energy producing areas have increased just substantially. For example, in 2019 TxDOT said there was over 205,000 crashes in counties defined as the Texas energy sector and that's defined by the Texas Railroad Commission and it includes large portions of West Texas, South Texas and some metropolitan areas or edges of metropolitan areas like Dallas and Fort Worth and even El Paso. The number of crashes represents an approximately 3% increase from the year before and these crashes led to almost 1700 fatalities. Now we personally have worked on a lot of these cases and a lot of them involve unqualified drivers or drivers over hours. A lot of them involved distracted drivers driving 18-wheelers, 80,000-pound vehicles and...

Have you ever had questions about hiring a personal injury attorney or about how the practice works? In this series of Q&A, we are going to tackle some of the most common questions we get at Hill Law Firm. Transcript: San Antonio Personal Injury Attorney Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases. One thing I wanted to do was cover some frequently asked questions we get. We get a lot of discerning clients that come and meet with us, or one of those reasons is because a lot of clients that end up calling us are clients that have done a lot of research into client satisfaction and reviews and looked into a bunch of different law firms. Nobody's going to hire our law firm because we got a slogan or a jingle. We don't carry hammers or other types of tools. We don't have a phone number that's really easy to remember. What we are is a good law firm and does good work for people. We get a lot of questions from people when they call about hiring us, and a lot of those questions I've tried to keep track of and write down. I'm going to just walk through some of them. This is going to be a multi-part series where I just hit up a bunch of questions that people ask. One of the questions we get is, how do you get paid? Our law firm is a contingency fee law firm. That means that you don't pay us hourly, you don't pay us a flat rate. A lot of lawyers get paid by the hour. A lot of lawyers get paid by the flat rate. For example, if you get a DWI, you're going to have a criminal defense lawyer say I'll handle your case for $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000. It's a flat rate, no matter what happens. Our law firm gets hired on a contingency fee, which means we get a percentage of recovery if there is a recovery. If there is no recovery, we don't get any money. We don't get any fees. We don't even get our expenses back if there's no recovery. If there is recovery, we get our fees as a percentage of the recovery, and we get our expenses back. One thing that makes us a little different, I think, is that our client always makes the decision on when to settle a case. We can tell them we disagree with them. We could tell them we think it's too high or too low, but they tell us what to do. At the end of the day, they get to make the final decision on how to settle their case. We have been asked, have we received honors or awards? I think this is a funny question because if you look, there are so many lawyers that get all sorts of awards. If you're a lawyer, you get a letter probably once a week or every other week saying you've been named top this or top that, now give us $500 for your certificate. A lot of these awards are made up. There was a famous example where a lawyer bought an award for his pet chicken because he wanted to point out how worthless most of these awards were. Some of the awards are peer vote based. I, Justin, has been named Texas super lawyer rising star for almost 10 years. Now, that's peer-based in which other lawyers vote on you, and it's done through Thomson Reuters. We've also been nominated for other things and gotten some of these other awards, but I think that's probably the best one in terms of how you gauge things because it's voted on by their attorneys. We get asked if we offer free and confidential case reviews. The answer to that is always yes, with the caveat that we can't give people free legal advice. I can talk to them about their facts. I can talk to them about their potential case. I can tell them if it's a case we would take or not take or who I would call if I was them. What we can't do is give them legal advice when they're not our clients. With that being said, also, whatever they share

Unfortunately, the COVID crisis has created situations that make settling and trying personal injury cases in San Antonio and the rest of Texas much more difficult. Courts are shutdown. Doctors offices are running with low staff. And, getting evidence needed can be slowed. We discuss expectations for our clients in this episode. Transcript: San Antonio Injury Attorney Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] All right. Welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases, this podcast has been an attempt to make sure our listeners, make sure our clients, our former clients, our potential future clients not only know what we're doing on a day-to-day basis in terms of the type of work we work on, but also who works with us, what's going on in the legal industry and what to expect if you ever need our services. One of the more common questions that we're getting these days revolves around the COVID crisis, the court shutdowns, what to expect, and how it's going to impact their personal injury lawsuit. In San Antonio, the court systems have been shut down for months at this point, very few things have been moving forward. The courts have been looking for people willing to try their case by Zoom, but not many people want to try a personal injury case by Zoom for a variety of reasons. We get these calls from our current clients asking what to expect and what's the delay and what's going on. We have to walk through this uncharted territory that we're in right now as it relates to the COVID crisis. From our law firm standpoint, I just wanted to discuss a few things. With the COVID crisis early on here in San Antonio people weren't going to work, people weren't driving on the highways and the streets. That meant there were less car crashes. There were less on the job injuries. There were less people needing our services. What that meant practically was our phones weren't ringing as much on intake and new cases but it was still ringing, but it allowed us to start focusing solely on moving the cases that we had at that time in light of the fact that there were a lot of hurdles to moving cases with the COVID crisis looming. One thing I have to tell all of my clients now and our future clients is that the question of how long will it take to resolve my case is up in the air at this point. There's a lot of reasons for that. The one that most people know about is that the courts are not trying cases right now. We're able to get hearings, we're able to do some things, but from a plaintiff's standpoint, in a personal injury case, the deadline or the backstop time in terms of a cases lifespan, is the trial date. If you don't have a trial date, the other side feels no pressure because there's nothing looming for them to worry about. They don't have to worry about allowing 12 people here in San Antonio decide the merits and value of the case. They can delay and just sit tight because there's no risk for them, but practically there's other considerations as well that we have to talk to our clients about. For one, depos are more difficult. We're able to do zoom depositions, they're happening all over America, the state of Texas is no different, but they're much harder to handle for certain types of depositions. A fact witness, that's not that bad, but when it comes to very document-intensive depositions of experts or doctors or corporate representatives, it's more difficult to the extent that some of them we have to really weigh whether or not we want to wait to handle that deposition in-person because it will be a more effective deposition. Some of the other things that people don't think about is medical records right now. Not only are doctors harder to get to see patients...

What are the laws in Texas about interacting with school buses? That is the question we discuss on this episode of San Antonio's go-to personal injury law firm podcast. Join us to learn more. Transcript: Personal Injury Attorney Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real. These are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] Welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm cases where we're going to be talking about school bus safety in the state of Texas and in San Antonio. One of the things about our law firm is we are a safety advocacy law firm as well as a personal injury plaintiffs law firm. It's very important for us that what we do makes our community safer, and specifically, what we do make San Antonio safer city for everybody to live in. I always joke with people that I wish we got put out of business by everybody following the laws, by products being made safer, and by people doing what they're supposed to do. I hope we don't get put out of business by political changes in which our legislators and insurance companies try to protect and shield insurance companies and corporations from any liability when they do wrong. One of the things I like to talk about is, in a case, usually there's some standard by which people have violated that led to somebody being injured. For example, if somebody is on their phone or drunk, and they cause a crash, they violated that law and that safety standard about drinking and driving, or texting and driving and caused a crash. In that example, San Antonio is one of the worst cities in the state of Texas in the United States for drinking and driving. These are issues that if people would follow the law, and do correctly, I wouldn't get those types of cases, and that would be great for everybody in our city, our state, and it will make our community safer. One of the things I want to talk about today is school bus safety. We all have been stuck behind a school bus before, we've probably all hated that experience, especially if you're stuck behind a school bus that stopping over, and over, and over, and you can't get around it. I remember growing up, I lived out in a rural area, and we'd be stuck behind buses for a long time on our way home. That was part of it and I actually rear-ended the school bus as a kid, so I'm glad that people follow the laws when they do because I was one of those kids that could have been injured. [clears throat] The State of Texas has laws on how we are supposed to interact with and treat school buses when they're on the road. Some of the laws involve all drivers must stop for flashing red lights on a school bus regardless which direction you're traveling. We've all seen a school bus start to slow, and the yellow lights on the back of it start flashing, and then they turn red. The law on that is that they're essentially the same as a stop sign, that no matter which side of the road you're on, whether behind it or fixing to pass it, you're required by Texas law to stop. The reasons for this are pretty obvious, kids exiting and entering a bus might dart across the road or step out when a vehicle is trying to pass. If you're old enough to drive, you've probably got better judgment, hopefully, then, a six-year-old who's running across the street and just wants to get home, or just wants to get on the bus. If you see the red lights, come to a complete stop. Another thing about school bus safety is that you're allowed to continue your trip once the bus has moved, and the flashing lights have stopped flashing, or if the school bus driver lets you pass. You can end up passing the bus if you need to, you just can't do it with its lights flashing. The fines in Texas for this type of bad behavior can lead to $1,000 fines in the state of Texas. Some of the...

Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] Justin: In the Hill Law Firm podcast, we try to not only discuss the cases that we handle but elements of cases that we handle, the way we handle cases, people we work with on cases. The podcast is designed to give information generally about the types of cases we handle from start to finish, from intake to end, the questions that arise along that process, as well some substantive cases that we handle as well. We've talked recently about the discovery process, depositions, what they are, what they're intended for, and why they are a part of the process. One of the most common things that we as attorneys have to do in personal injury cases are prepare our clients for their depositions. When a plaintiff files a lawsuit, they're usually alleging that somebody else was at fault for causing their injuries and that they suffered injuries and as a result of those injuries they suffered damages. Those damages can include pain, mental anguish, disfigurement, physical impairment, all in the past and in the future. It can also include wages lost in the past and future or wage-earning capacity for people that can't work anymore. It almost always includes medical bills in the past and the future. When we prepare our clients for their depositions, there are some things that are pretty standard among all cases. I want to walk through a few things I tell my clients in preparing for their depositions. We have a few rules that we go through, some general information about presentation and how to prepare. Now, this is not intended to be information anybody should use in their own personal case. They should always consult with their own attorneys. I think it's important to generally hear how we go through our process. If you're one of our clients and you have a call coming up with me, or you have a deposition upcoming with our law firm, here's some of the stuff you're going to hear and here's some of the things that everybody should do, in my opinion, when it comes to a deposition. I always tell my clients there's a few rules as it relates to a deposition. First and most important, the number one rule is, to be honest. We're not here to make up a case, we have a case. Honesty is the most important thing in a deposition for a few reasons. One, because it's important that we tell the truth of our case so that we can all understand what a jury is going to hear about our case. Two, because I'm not going to represent somebody who's not being honest. Three, honesty is something the jury can pick up on. Be honest even when it's uncomfortable because a jury wants to know that you're being honest, and a jury wants to know that you're being fair because at the end of the day, we're going to ask them to be fair. You need to be fair as well. Another thing about honesty is that the law allows only certain things and only certain pieces of evidence to go in front of the jury. For example, certain criminal convictions if they're so old or certain types, aren't allowed to be told to a jury. The law says only certain types and only certain types of crimes in a certain time period can be told to the jury. Those limitations sometimes go out the window if they witness lies about them. It's important they're honest so that they don't create an evidentiary problem for themselves. Another rule is answer the question. The purpose of a deposition is a question and answer session with the other side under oath. I tell my clients, listen to the question, understand the question, and answer the question. There's multiple reasons for that, but for the most part, one is you want to make sure you understand the question before you answer it...

At Hill Law Firm, we handle many motorcycle crashes every year. Unfortunately, they often involve very serious injuries due to the disparity between automobiles and motorcycles. If you are driving around San Antonio, share the road with those on smaller vehicles. Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] At Hill Law firm, we handle all types of personal injury, car wreck, motorcycle, pedestrian accidents, bicycle accidents. Another thing we handle fairly regularly are crashes involving motorcyclists. Crashes involving motorcyclists are unique for a few reasons. One of the main reasons is that they typically involve very serious injuries due to the fact, they usually have a big difference between the vehicles either impacting one another or you have the result of somebody falling off or being thrown off a motorcycle at a high rate of speed. One case I handled many years ago and took to a jury verdict involved a fireman who was on his motorcycle. When he was turning into a gas station, the person behind him wasn't paying attention and struck him. They hit this man at a pretty high rate of speed, estimated to be somewhere between 40 and 50 miles an hour. Our client the firefighter was just grievously injured. He ended up losing a portion of his leg in the crash and was never going to be able to be a firefighter again. That particular crash involved another driver who had been drinking before. It highlights the dangers involved in motorcycle vehicle crashes. It's likely that if our client had been in a passenger vehicle at the time, that he might not have suffered such serious injuries. We're currently working on a case in San Antonio, Texas involving a motorcyclist who was pulling into a gas station. The gas station had hired a company to do power washing and pressure washing of the parking lot. At the entrance, they had put two cones far apart from each other, not blocking the entrance. In those cones, they put metal posts and they strung a wire. Now that wire covered the entire entrance of the gas station, but the wire was not very visible, it was almost impossible to see. Our client, as they drove into that wire, fell off their motorcycle as did their passenger, and they were both seriously injured. A car would likely have driven through that wire. A car would have sustained damage but it's a very different experience than if you're on a motorcycle and you're knocked off of that motorcycle. In Texas, July is considered, Share the Road, Look Twice for Motorcycles Campaign month. The Texas Department of Transportation puts out this annual campaign every July of 2020. In particular, it's done to enforce the, End The Streak Campaign in the state of Texas. Currently, Texas has not had a single day without a roadway fatality since November 7th of 2000. Due to that, the Texas Department of Transportation has tried to create a campaign through social media and other news related awareness pieces to try to lower and reduce and potentially, hopefully, eliminate roadway fatalities for at least one day. The Share the Road, Look Twice Campaign regarding motorcycle safety is one of those. In the press release, the state points out that on average one motorcyclist dies every day on Texas roads. The cities with the most motorcyclist fatalities include Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Lubbock, and Odessa. The six month period from May through October is the deadliest six month period for motorcyclists in the state of Texas and accounts for over 60% of all motorcycle fatality crashes. In the press release put out by the Texas Department of Transportation, they cover a few things that we should all do to make sure that we are

We tell our San Antonio personal injury clients that we are not the type of San Antonio injury law firm that will wait a long time, send a lot of letters, and hope the other side insured company pays us without doing much work. We file our Texas personal injury and car accident cases. We think our clients are treated better when their cases are filed, set for trial and prepared for trial. Transcript: Justin: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin: With every new case that we get in the door, I have to sit down with a client and have to discuss with them expectations for the process, what to consider going forward, and try to set their expectations about a process that really is unfamiliar with most people. It's unfamiliar because most people aren't used to having to go through a long, drawn-out process to find resolution to a problem. They usually should be able to be resolved without court intervention. Insurance companies have realized that the longer they delay a case, the more time they can have holding on to money in their reserves. There is a financial incentive for insurance companies to hold on to their money and delay the payment of claims, even claims that they know they should pay out. One of the first things I tell clients when they come to meet with me and discuss hiring me is that unlike a lot of law firms and a lot of lawyers, I'm going to file the case. I'm not going to do what a lot of people do. There's a different strategy among lawyers. Some lawyers take the position that they want their client to finish treating, do everything they need to do, figure out all of their damages, then send a letter, and try to resolve the claim. Then, if that doesn't work 6, 9, 12 months down the road, then they'll file a lawsuit. I was trained at a young age to file a lawsuit immediately because insurance companies have proven, time and time again, over a long period of time, that they're not planning on doing the right thing. If they do the right thing, they're not going to do it early on. I explain to my clients there's a few reasons that we need to file their lawsuit, and also explain to my clients that if they want one of those law firms that is going to go through a letter-writing campaign of trying to get their case resolved, without putting it in the court system, then I might not be the lawyer for them. One of the first things I tell them is that insurance companies rarely, if ever, will disclose the amount of insurance available in a case. Whether it's a $30,000 policy in a car crash, or a $10 million, $20 million policy available in some other type of claim, including an 18-wheeler case in which someone lost their life, it's very rare day that an insurance company will tell you what sort of insurance policies you're dealing with, the layers of the insurance, or the insurance carriers. Some states require that the insurance carriers tell you how much insurance there is, what the limits are, and who the carrier is. Texas does not require that unless a lawsuit's filed. If a lawsuit is filed, the defendants have to disclose the amount, the limit, the carriers, and all that information allows you to properly and adequately advise your client. It also allows you to potentially put the defendant in a Stower situation, which puts a lot of pressure on the insurance company to evaluate your claim because in those situations, there could be risk if they do not pay a claim when it would have been reasonable to do so. Another reason that we file cases early on is we're the plaintiffs. We have the burden of proof. We need to be on the offense. We have to prove our claim, we have to push the case to trial, and trial is the only risk that most defendants...

We get a lot of questions about how we evaluate cases. People whom we tell we cannot accept their case often want to know why. In this episode, we attempt to clarify how we evaluate cases. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Just recently, we got a call from a man whose wife died in a very tragic incident in the hospital. He wanted us to take his case and help him out. He had called many lawyers before, he had gone on for years trying to find a lawyer that would help him. There weren't any that would help him. He called the state of Texas and filed a grievance or complaint against the doctors and hospitals involved. That investigation cleared the hospital and doctors. He then appealed that decision, and he lost. He was a very passionate man who had lost his wife, he was angry, he was upset, he was grieving. By the time he called us, the time to do anything, in terms of filing a lawsuit, had passed because the statute of limitations puts a limitation on how long you have to file a lawsuit. He didn't understand why we couldn't help him, and I don't know if it was because he was just so upset or if he just didn't understand it. It made me think I want to do a little bit of talking about how we evaluate a case when it comes into our office, because sometimes we can't help people with their cases, and that can be for a variety of reasons. Generally, when we get a call on a new case, we get all the facts and all the information that we can get. One thing I always like to ask the person on the other line, who's trying to hire us, is, "Who's at fault? Who do you think is at fault for this incident, for your injuries, for your loss of a loved one?" That's the first step I have to figure out. Did somebody do something wrong? Did somebody else's acts or inaction cause the incident that either left somebody injured or led to the wrongful death of somebody? I have to tell people when they call us sometimes that the law cannot right all wrongs. The law sets out when a person has legal redress to take them to court to seek compensation or justice through the form of compensation for the wrong that was committed. We have to ask, "Who did something wrong? Was it an entity? Was it a corporation? Was it a person that their actions cause some harm?" The next thing we have to know is, what is the harm? Did you have an injury? Did somebody pass away? Are you just angry that somebody wronged you, but there was no injury? We have to analyze whether the wrong caused the injury. In the law, we have to prove that the wrong that we're talking about, the bad act, led to somebody's injury. It's not enough that there was a wrong and then there was an injury. We have to show that they're connected. The law calls it "causation," we have to show that the wrong was the proximate cause of the injury. It's not enough for conjecture, and it's not enough that you know it really deep in your gut. You see this a lot in instances in which people are exposed to chemicals, or a landfill, or drugs. Everybody's seen the commercial on TV where it asks, "Have you taken this drug and suffered these injuries?" By the time those things are on TV, there's been a long history of studying and research and studies that typically leads to some understanding that these drugs cause these injuries. It's not enough that somebody believes that the drug they took caused this bad side effect. There has to be science, there has to be some proof of causation, proof enough that a judge will say, "That's valid causation." One of the other things we have to consider is, does the law allow for this kind of lawsuit? Sometimes we have a wrong, and we have an injury that was caused by the...

We have represented some very courageous clients. Two cases we had, one in San Antonio, led to not only a monetary settlement but also the changing of company policy. Personal injury cases can make our communities safer for everyone. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Some of the most rewarding cases we get to work on here at Hill Law Firm, are cases that involve not only a settlement for the client that makes them happy and makes them feel like justice was served, and a full measure of justice was served, but also there are cases in which we were able to affect policy changes, sometimes through the law, sometimes through products and sometimes just internal company policies. I want to talk about two of the latter. In two cases we've handled, we've been able to change the policies of a company in the way they do business. The first involved a company that allowed one of their employees to take people out drinking on a company credit card. After he had been out drinking on a tab picked up by his employer, to entertain clients of his employer, he got in his company vehicle and as he was driving down the road, he crossed the center line and crashed into our client. That case was worked up over many months and led to a substantial monetary settlement that made the client very happy. She was very satisfied with what they had done in an attempt to make it right, but that wasn't enough for her. She wanted to make sure that this wouldn't happen again. We told the defendant that we would accept her monetary settlement, as long as it also came of policy changes. Among those was a training program for anybody that had a company vehicle. This included a four-hour training program for anybody with a company vehicle to know how they could and could not use it. Also, the company instituted policies with regard to how the company credit card could be used, and it could no longer be used to pick up alcohol tabs for their clients. Finally, the company instituted a no-questions-asked policy for its employees, that if they're intoxicated and need a ride, the company would pay for a taxi or a rideshare company to pick them up. At the end of the day, my client by standing her ground, not only made the company safer, she made the public at large safer. The second example of this is also related to a drunk driving case. In that case, we pursued a bar and the bar had policies that encouraged servers to upsell their patrons. For example, if a patron said they wanted to buy 12-ounce beer, they were encouraged to tell them that for just a small amount more monetarily, they could get a double the size beer. In that case after the settlement, we were able to talk to them about those policies and get them changed. Also, we instituted the policy as part of the settlement. The defendant agreed that after anybody had two drinks, that the computer system, the point-of-sale system they use, would generate a ticket where the manager would have to go do a quick check on anybody. Just a, hello, lay eyes on them and see if they seem to have their faculties. Plaintiff's lawyers too often get a bad reputation, mostly due to media and insurance companies. They want to sensationalize and turn plaintiff's lawyers and victims into villains, but the reality is, these cases that are prosecuted by plaintiff's lawyer like the ones here in San Antonio, Texas, make the road safer, they make companies safer and they make it safer for the general public at large.

Recently, we settled a case for a young lady that was a passenger in a vehicle that ran a red light. In the intersection, her vehicle was t-boned by a VIA bus. This case had a lot of tricky issues due to the number of claims sure to be filed. We settled this case early for maximum limits. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill law firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Recently we were able to settle for what was a surprisingly good amount for a client. It was a case involving a car crash in which a car was T-boned by a VIA bus. This case had some difficulties. One of them was our client was very close family friends with the driver of her vehicle. However, that driver was at fault. Another complication was there was about 25 people on the VIA bus, Texas law provides that the insurance company can pay out whatever claims they want. They don't owe a duty to multiple plaintiffs to be fair to everybody. They can payout their money, wash their hands of it, and be done. We knew this and we knew that provided some sort of need for speed. We had to hurry up and make sure that our client's rights were protected. Our client at the end of the day would be competing with 25 other claims, assuming those 25 other people were injured. Our client suffered serious injuries. She was a young lady, barely out of high school, suffered a very serious cut to her face, some broken teeth and some other internal injuries. Luckily for her, she had health insurance and she was able to get all the medical care she needed. She seems to be on a road to full recovery. We were able to resolve her case without filing a lawsuit, which is pretty rare anymore in these times. The defendants understood that she had serious injuries. She had a scar on her face that would not heal anytime soon and the juries normally feel a certain level of sympathy for women who have injuries such as hers. On top of that, we expected the insurance company to toss all the money in a pot and tell everybody to fight over it. What was working in our favor was like most cases, we were the most aggressive. We pushed hard, we stayed on it. We got the insurance company everything they needed early on, and we told them we were going to be filing the case by a date certain if they didn't resolve our claim. I was surprised, and anymore in our industry it's pretty rare to be surprised, and I was surprised that they made a full policy offer for our client without having to file a lawsuit. It was much higher offer than I thought they would make, especially that early on. On top of that, we were able to get a full offer of the under-insured benefits from our client's insurance. Our client was able to put this to bed without having to follow a lawsuit, be deposed, go to trial. It was a great result for her and is going to provide money to pay for her college.

About 10 years ago, a terrible bus rollover happened in South Texas that killed two and injured many other Texans. Justin Hill worked on that case for years fighting off every defense raised by the major bus company. In the end, we held them accountable. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. In 2008, a commercial bus rolled over in South Texas. It was all over national news. It shut down the interstate for hours. I was hired by the families of the two people killed in that crash and about five other people that were injured. That case is one of those cases that took on a life of its own. The defendants decided that they were going to spend as much money as they could fighting the claims and they were going to make no attempt to reasonably or fairly settled them. The case drug on. One of the young men on the bus who was killed had young children and a young wife. He worked for the company, but at the time he was traveling on a personal ticket. He had gone to visit family. He had taken out a free ticket and the reason for travel was personal. In spite of this, his employer, the bus company, tried to force him to take workers' comp benefits. Now, they do this to try to limit his recovery because the workers' comp system limits the amount of damages if somebody is killed on the job. We thought it was pretty clear he was not on the job at the time, he was dead heading back to work. He worked in a ticket area and he wasn't a driver, but they took the position he was on the job so they could try to limit his recovery. The other woman killed left four adult children and a husband. The bus companies tried to blame the manufacturer of the bus, the manufacturer of the bus that they continued to buy buses from. They tried to say that there was some defect in the bus, even though it was 17 years old and had what we calculated to be well more than 4 million miles on it. The driver in this crash had lost control after a driveshaft had broken. Now, drive shaft breaking isn't the most common problem, but it happens regularly and that doesn't cause buses to roll over left and right. Now the bus company argued that that is what caused it to rollover. They hired more than 20 experts and spent what had to be 2 or $3 million defending this case. They wanted make everybody that sued them and their attorneys spend as much money as possible and waste as much time as possible. We never gave up. We stuck to the case, and most of the cases were settled a month out from trial. However, the poor young man who was stuck in the worker's comp system, his case went up and down in the appeals court for almost 10 years, until finally his case resolved and his wife was finally able to get money to help care for herself and her children. I've said before, we handle a lot of bus cases and this was the bus case that sort of defined my early career. I learned a lot about buses, about the companies, about the manufacturer of buses. I learned a lot about the economics of the companies and how they have such buying power that the manufacturers of buses will change the entire way they build buses to make specialized versions for their big customers. We continue to represent victims in bus crash cases, and we continue to hold bus companies accountable when they do wrong.

When we file an injury lawsuit in San Antonio or anywhere in Texas, we know that the defendants and insurance companies will create some defense whether it is true or not. When it comes to car crashes, we know the playbook and we know the defenses they will use. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real world cases handled by Justin Hill in the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin Hill: We've represented a lot of San Antonians in car crash cases. Without failure, I have to warn and prepare my clients that no matter what the facts of the case are, the other side is going to come up with some defense. In car crash cases in San Antonio, there have been enough trials and enough cases that we know the playbook from the defense side. Recently, I went to a CLE and I heard one of the San Antonio Trial Lawyers Brethren, discuss how he calls the defense's the PIG defenses, P-I-G. In 99% of car crash cases, the defense is going to say one of these defenses. First they're going to say, "The person injured in the vehicle had a preexisting condition." This could be from the person really honestly, it had an injury to the same location they injured in this crash, to the fact that they went to a chiropractor 20 years prior, and the chiropractor mentioned that they were going to do a full body adjustment. They'll try to contort that to say that the client had some preexisting condition. Currently, I'm working on a case in which the client after getting rear ended by woman not paying attention, had shoulder surgery. Now, the defense is saying since she had had shoulder surgery a while before this crash, that it's the previous injury or the previous surgery that caused her injury in this crash. They ignore the fact that the previous surgery had nothing to do with a traumatic injury. It had nothing to do with the portion of her shoulder that was injured in this crash. It had nothing to do with anything related to this crash. It was just in the same general vicinity of her injury in this crash. They'll go to all lengths to say that some previous medical condition is what caused the injuries from the car crash. The 'I' is impact. Another thing they like to do is say, "Well, there's no way that somebody could have been injured in this impact. Look at the pictures." Now, they have to admit that all the studies show that there is no amount of impact by which an injury cannot occur. People can be injured at any speeds depending on how they're positioned, the dynamics of the crash, the size of the vehicles and their condition. Some people are more susceptible to injury than others. Older people are more susceptible than teenagers. That's the second most popular defense we see. The third, the 'G', is gaps in treatment. In normal everyday life, we all try to walk off injuries and try to see if they'll resolve on their own. However, insurance companies ignore the fact that people do not want to go to the doctor unless they absolutely have to. They'll try to turn that into a defense and they'll say, "Well, you had a gap in your treatment." It doesn't matter if the gap is one week or four weeks or four days. They're going to say that at some point, there's so much distance between two doctor visits, that either you weren't hurt or you hurt yourself some other way. It's odd having to discuss with clients, how these PIG defenses will be used to try to defend the case. Then at any other point in life, you would want to see if time heals your injuries, but the insurance companies will use that against you. They'll use it against you if you put time between your doctor visits, and then if you don't, they'll use it against you that you went to too many doctor's visits. One thing can be clear is the insurance companies are never going to...

We represented a young San Antonio man, with another law firm in San Antonio, whom was injured when he was at a friend's and a hot tub fell on him. He injured his knee and shoulder and had surgery. The hot tub delivery company were held responsible. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real. These are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin Hill: Truly, one of my favorite things about being a lawyer is the ability to work with other good lawyers, learn from other lawyers, whether that's an old gray hair, it's a new lawyer. Our world, in the legal profession, people talk about the practice of law. I think that's an important point because we're all trying our best to learn and we should learn every day. We call it "The practice" because there's no perfection. You cannot be the world's best mason without trying a lot, you can't be the world's best plumber without trying a lot. All of these trades and professions you learn all the time and one of those professions where people should learn all the time is the legal profession. I have the opportunity on occasion to work with young lawyers, older lawyers. Right now, I've got Sean Luchnick with me here, who's a younger lawyer compared to myself, not young in terms of knowing what he's doing but he got the opportunity to intern/work with me when he had just gotten licensed. We got to work a case together. I have him on here today. I want to talk about that case. [unintelligible 00:01:36] thank you for being here. Sean Luchnick: Justin, thank you for having me. Justin: One thing about [unintelligible 00:01:41] is I always have to teach him, so you got to talk close to the mic. We're going to talk about a case. We don't use names. We don't use numbers. Neither of us wants to get in trouble with a bar. It's important I think for our listeners to understand the personal injury law, personal injury lawsuits are not confined to what you see on television, they're not confined to what you see in the news and they're not confined to what the insurance companies and defense lawyers want you to think about us. [unintelligible 00:02:09] and I had the great honor of working a few cases together. One of the cases we work together involved one of his friends who he's known a long time, who was at a home, when a large piece of equipment, a hot tub was being delivered. The delivery people basically enlisted him to help out with the delivery. Is that fair to say? Sean Luchnick: That's exactly right. Justin: Okay. He's just a guy hanging out at the house, people show up to deliver a hot tub. As I work to the case with your help, the allegation was they were very ill-equipped to deliver a giant hot tub. What would you say about that? Sean Luchnick: Yes, so pretty much it's happening. My friend, he is at a other friend's house. The house they're at, it's my friend's house, and my friend is at my other friend's house. A hot tub is being delivered to my friend who owns the house. The company gets there. When they get there, it's two people who work for the company delivering the hot tub. They're starting to put this hot tub onto a dolly and they're pointing around the side of the house, let's say so here's the house. The hot tubs on the dolly coming around the side. Justin: Sorry about this way. It's heading north and it's about to take a 90-degree turn to the east, fair? Sean Luchnick: To the east. Yes. Which would be where the patio is where it's going to ultimately get installed. Justin: Okay, they're delivering a hot tub to a patio in the backyard but they come to the front yard, they unload the thing, they're heading north, they're going to take a 90-degree turn to the east. What...

We have handled two 18 wheeler crash cases that involved jack knifed 18 wheelers blocking all lanes of travel. One of these cases was in San Antonio. Both of these cases involved fatality crashes. Tractor trailer drivers are expected to be safe and not create dangers. When they do, deadly accidents occur. Transcript: Speaker 1: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] 18-wheelers are the largest vehicles on the road. They're largest in terms of length, they're largest in terms of weight. They drive at highway speeds with the rest of us on the road. Due to their size, if they're to hit a passenger vehicle, it's a much different crash than two passenger vehicles hitting each other. 18-wheelers can weigh as much as 20 or 30 times the weight of a passenger vehicle. Hill Law Firm has handled a lot of 18-wheeler crash cases, and a lot of them have had very, very tragic consequences. We've handled two cases in which the 18-wheeler driver, the defendant driver, somehow or another came to block all lanes of travel, with his trailer running perpendicular to the roadway. In both of these cases, the 18-wheeler driver was somehow reversing and jackknifed his vehicle across all lines of travel. In both of these cases, it was at night and in both of these cases, our clients were doing what they were supposed to do; minding the laws, driving the speed limit, paying attention when they came upon a trailer in the night, blocking all lines of travel. One of these cases we handled involved four men going to work. It was a car full of people at about six in the morning in the fog when an 18-wheeler driver had blocked all lanes of travel by getting jackknifed across the roadway. When they hit that trailer, they underrode it, and it cut off the top of the passenger vehicle. Two men were killed in that crash and two men were very seriously injured. The other case involved a man who was going to work who was also in an 18-wheeler. It was a dark part of San Antonio and there was a curve. As he came around that curve, the 18-wheeler trailer that had been jackknifed was parked shoulder to shoulder across all lines of travel. Our client must have seen him because he attempted to move to the far right and break, but he wasn't able to break and move in time. He crashed into that trailer, and he did not survive the crash. Both of these cases bring to light the importance that 18-wheeler companies hire safe drivers. San Antonio, statistically, has a big problem with 18-wheeler crashes in this county. The rules and laws say the 18-wheeler drivers and 18-wheeler companies can use the roadways. However, they're held to a little higher standard than normal drivers. Their drivers have to have more schooling, have to have different licensing, have to have different requirements and employers have to jump through certain hoops before they hire these truckers. The law states that if you're going to drive a bigger, heavier, longer vehicle on the roadways, that you have to do a few things that other drivers don't have to. Those additional hoops and those additional safety measures are there to make sure that the normal motoring public is not put in harm's way by negligent and unsafe trucking companies and truckers. Unfortunately, in those two cases, the trucking companies and the truckers hadn't followed the rules and that's what led to these terribly tragic accidents. We're going to talk more about some of the other ways 18-wheeler drivers and 18-wheeler companies occasionally create dangerous situations on the roadways that lead to San Antonio crashes. [music]

There are many wrong way crashes in San Antonio, Texas. The State has even studied the problem due to the number of those types of crashes in San Antonio. Recently, we represented a young lady hit head on by a drunk driver and then she was hit by a second vehicle seconds later. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. San Antonio has had a problem with wrong way drivers for many years. Different organizations and DOT and other government agencies have researched this to try to figure out why San Antonio has a higher incidence of wrong way crashes than other cities. This is especially true in the 1604 corridor on the North side of the city. If you live in San Antonio and you read the news, you see these every so often. They are not uncommon to see crashes involving wrong way drivers on 1604. It's not limited to 1604 in San Antonio, but some of the other roads just do not have the same level of problem. Our law firm has handled many wrong way crashes in San Antonio. About five years ago, we were hired to represent a young lady who was driving home on 1604 after being at work. It was pretty late at night, and as she was driving, she was hit head on by a drunk driver. Many of the wrong way crashes on 1604 happen in the middle of the night, and many of them involve intoxicated drivers. For our client, that's was what happened. She was hit head on by a drunk driver, and while she was unconscious and her vehicle was disabled in the roadway, she was hit by another vehicle as well. She spent 10 days in the ICU. Somehow or another, she was able to make a pretty good recovery. She had soft tissue injuries that were going to be with her for life, she had broken bones. She had scars on her face. In that case, the drunk driver's insurance and the drunk driver settled as soon as they could. They knew they couldn't defend the case. The driver who hit her the second time at first attempted to say that they had no liability, even though the roadway was lit in this portion, and even though there was, by all statements, about three minutes between the first crash and the second. After a few months, his insurance also settled their portion of the case. However, our clients uninsured under insured motorist coverage, took about nine months to settle their case. Due to changes in the law, there's very little risk if insurance companies deny their insurance claim for UM or UIM coverage. In the end, we were able to settle this case for the limits of three different policies for this young lady injured by a wrong way drunk driver off 1604. Unfortunately, unless many things change and they figure out why this problem occurs up there, wrong way crashes in San Antonio are going to continue to be a problem, and I expect we'll continue to represent victims of these wrong way crashes. [00:03:42] [END OF AUDIO]

If you are injured in a car accident, you should immediately seek medical attention. This is a question we hear a lot from people that were recently in a crash. The only way to know how injured you are is to let a trained medical professional evaluate your injuries. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] In our ongoing series here on Hill Law Firm cases we've been discussing some of the common questions we get from people following car crashes. As previously stated, sometimes we get calls while people are still at the scene of a car crash and sometimes they call us weeks, months or maybe even a year following. We mostly had been talking about the calls we get from people we know at the scene of a crash. Usually, these are former clients or friends of clients or family members or friends that we've known and they'll call us because they want to make sure they don't do something wrong that allows their insurance or the other side's insurance to deny their claim. One of the questions we get often is, should I go see a doctor. Across the board, I tell clients when they come in at any stage of the litigation or their case claim process that I'm not a doctor. I can't give them medical advice and if they think they're hurt, they need to go see somebody. What the insurance companies like to do is they like to say that if you didn't go see a doctor in X number of days following the crash, that you must not have been hurt. I don't play those games. I don't let the insurance adjuster tell my clients whether they're hurt or not. I let the doctors decide whether somebody is injured. A few examples I always think of is one of the more common examples is we'll get calls from people following a crash and they'll say, well, I'm stiff or I feel weird, but I'm not in a lot of pain. In the next day or 24 or 48 hours later, they call and they say that they're in terrible pain. At the scene of the crash, people seem to have adrenaline or something going on in their system that lets them know they're hurt, but they're not feeling the pain just yet. At any point along that process, I tell them, "If you start to hurt, you need to go see somebody." Another thing that we see a lot is people who bang their heads in crashes or with their heads so fast, they end up with a concussion, and those symptoms present overtime sometimes. We'll have clients that'll say after a crash that they have a really bad headache and then they start realizing they have problems sleeping. They realize that they're nauseated. Maybe they're dizzy and maybe they're having memory issues, but some of those symptoms come on overtime. What we tell everybody, our clients, our friends, our family is that if you think you're injured, you should go see a doctor or a medical professional but the only one that can determine whether or not you're injured or in pain is you. Listen to your body, listen to yourself, and if you think you've been injured following a crash or an accident or an incident, go see a doctor. Go seek professional medical help. [music] [00:03:37] [END OF AUDIO]

Commercial buildings are supposed to keep the property safe so that invitees into the property do not get injured or killed from a dangerous condition. In this case we represented a young girl that fell through the stairway railings that were 10 inches wider than the code allows. She suffered a major traumatic brain injury as a result of this property owners negligence. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill law firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill law firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Speaker: About four years ago, we had the pleasure of representing the mother and grandmother of a young elementary school-aged child who was injured at a bank. On that day, the grandmother was going to visit with her wills trust and estate attorney. Now that attorney shared office in a bank building. The bank was one of these multinational Fortune 500 banks. They had a bank building, but they didn't really care to update it or make it safe. While this little girl and her grandmother were walking up the stairs, the little girl tripped. What normally would just be a little trip and fall on the stairs turned into a very tragic situation. When this little girl fell, she fell to her left, to the left where the stairwell railings should have stopped her. However, the stairwell railings were too wide. They were outside of code. They were not narrow enough to stop a child from falling between. As this little girl fell between them. Her grandmother reached and grabbed and she was able to grab her shoe which came off of her granddaughter's foot. The grandmother was doing everything right and paying attention and the young girl was a little girl who tripped on stairs. The reason she fell through this stairwell 25 feet under her head was because the bank had failed to ensure that their stairwell railings were up to code and that they were safe, and that even though they invited the general public to be in that building, to be paying customers, and to go visit their tenants, they didn't care to make sure that their bank was a safe building for children, adults, and their tenants. This little girl fell 25 feet under her head. She crushed her skull, she had a bad brain injury. The case proceeded, and the bank made any number of defenses that they thought they could use to defend and avoid liability in this case. First, they tried to argue that the bank railings were up to code based on 1974 codes when the building was built. After we were able to prove that to be untrue because they made major renovations on the building and therefore, had to bring it up to code. They moved on to the next argument, and that was, yes the kid was hurt and maybe the bank railings weren't up to code, but this little girl made a full recovery and therefore, she was fine. There was multiple experts involved who had done neuropsychological testing of this young lady imaging of her brain and other diagnostic tests. In the end, the defense lawyers put up an expert who purported to be an expert in brain injuries. In that deposition, he had to admit that there were indications on some of the testing that this young lady was going to develop a seizure condition as a result of this brain injury. In mediation, we were able to settle this case for an amount of money that will take care of this young lady's medical needs for the rest of her life. We were also able to hold the bank accountable for failing to do what they should have done. If a business is going to invite people onto their grounds and into their building to transact business, they have a duty to make sure that building is safe, and they have a duty to make sure that they keep it in a safe manner and a safe condition. [00:04:43] [END OF AUDIO]

The lessons learned early in my practice guide the way I work personal injury cases today. My first deposition was of an investigating officer in a quadruple death wrongful death product liability case. I learned a lot in that case and practice law differently because of that deposition. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] As attorneys, we always look back on cases and we reminisce and we look back and think about what we learned and didn't learn. Early on in my career, I was lucky to be hired by one of the best law firms in the state of Texas in the United States. Probably the Premier Product Liability Law Firm in the United States at that time. I'd been at the firm about two weeks when one of the partners told me that he wanted me to take a deposition, sort of baptism by fire. As I start preparing for the deposition, I realized this is a really big deposition. Some law firms give young associates busy work and the firm I was at, let me do real work. I was going to be deposing the investigating DPS trooper, regarding a car crash that involved tire delamination. Now, what that is, is that when a tire is defectively manufactured, the tread can come off of a tire at highway speeds, which can cause drivers to lose control. In this case, these drivers were going North on 281 when their front left tire delaminated, suffered a traumatic tread separation and cross the center line hitting the other car head-on. Everybody in both vehicles died in this crash. I was deposing the DPS trooper regarding the cause of the crash, what he found, what he saw, who he talked to. It was a very in-depth deposition. I remember I prepared for days. On the way to that deposition, the lawyer I was working with on the case asked me what my plan was, and I told him. To this day, I'm not sure if he was doing it to mess with me or test me or just a disagreement, but he told me on the way there 30 minutes before, that he wouldn't do any of the things I was doing. Rightfully, I was terrified, I was confused. I went and took the deposition, I think I sweated the whole time but learning on a case with so much riding on it, such a heavy weighty case, forced me to prepare in a way that I wasn't used to. This is the very start of my career but I felt the importance of what I was doing at that point and that importance led to my preparation. I still follow that philosophy today as I prepare for depositions, or I prepare for trial. I look back on that deposition and I think, "No, I would do it exactly the same way I had planned to do it." We all have to learn the way we do things in our own style. I take depositions of troopers and wrongful death cases the way I prepared to that day and the way I still think is the right way to do it. One thing that I've learned through my career is nothing can beat preparation.

We represented a lady that was at her hardware store to pick up some supplies. While walking out of the store, she tripped on a bold that was left in the concrete after a recent renovation. Her fall led to her braking a part of her should that required her to have surgery. This San Antonio case settled quickly after filing. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill in the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. We handle all types of personal injury cases here at Hill Law Firm. One of the types of cases people hear about often are slip and falls or trip and falls. They're spoken of negatively as though somebody injured, when a property is unsafe, is somehow at fault. Sometimes they are at fault, but sometimes they're not. The law in Texas has become so difficult that it's very hard to prove one of those cases, and never get in front of a jury on any case like that. We don't do a ton of premises liability cases at Hill Law Firm, but we do some of them. One of the cases we handled was for a woman who was injured at a hardware store. The hardware store recently had a renovation. They had moved the front of the store out, they had put an even an overhang area in front of the store, they had changed a lot of the areas where people come and go to expand the size of their store. My client was at the store picking up something, when she was walking out towards her car. What she didn't see was that when they renovated the store, they had left a bolt sticking about one inch out of the concrete. This bolt was right in the middle of the walkway, and the store had just opened up after the renovations. The color of the bolt was almost identical to the color of the floor. My client was walking, looking at her receipt, when she kicked the bolt and fell. My client was about 65 years old and not as agile as she used to be, and she fell on her shoulder and broke her shoulder. The incident was on video, and the hardware store shaved down the bolt the next day. They admitted that they had accidentally left that bolt there. They admitted that they had created a dangerous condition for our client, that they had a duty to remove any dangerous conditions, and they had not. Due to the trip and fall of my client in the San Antonio hardware store, she had significant medical bills. She had a surgery. I thought she was going to require a second surgery, but her first surgery and rehabilitation did the job. Luckily for her, the defendant, in this case, realized that this was a trip and fall that they were responsible for. They did the right thing, and they resolved her claim early. [00:03:28] [END OF AUDIO]

Sometimes when a drunk driver kills someone, not only can they be held responsible civilly and criminally, but the bar that over served the drunk can be held civilly liable as well. In this case, two people were killed and two were injured. Four families forever changed by a bar and person making bad choices. Transcript Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. At Hill Law Firm, we handle personal injury cases, and we also handle wrongful death cases. Some people don't understand the tie in and how they're related to each other, but generally, the law is very similar, cases approved almost the same way. A couple of years ago, I was reached out to by four different families, one of the most tragic cases I've ever worked on. Four young adults, fresh out of high school, were in town catching up. A couple of them worked at a local restaurant, and were getting off, and one of their buddies picked them up. They were going over to one of their houses to catch up after they had all been gone, some to college, some to the military. They were stopped at a light, when all of a sudden they were rear-ended by a drunk driver. The two passengers in the back were killed. The two passengers in the front were seriously injured. Both of them suffered brain injuries, and both of them suffered bad soft tissue injuries. The woman who hit them didn't even know where she was. She thought she was still on the highway. She thought she had her kids in the car. She told the police officer she hadn't even been in a crash. She was so intoxicated, she didn't even understand what was going on. All of the families hired me to represent them. They all agreed to waive any conflicts they may have, and they wanted to make sure they were all together in this because it was a tough thing for all of them to do, and all of their kids had grown up together as great friends. We found out the lady that hit them had been drinking at a bar celebrating her 25th birthday. Her coworkers had taken her out and got her drunk. Then they sent her on her way. Even though she was clearly intoxicated, as the video from the bar showed, she kept getting served. Then her friends, her so-called friends, let her get in the car and drive. She lived in the Northeast side of San Antonio, but she was in the Southwest side when this crash occurred. She thought she was almost home, she told the cop. She had no recognition of where she was, what had happened, or how to even get to her house. The families in this case hired me, my law firm, to handle the case for them. Once we were able to get our hands on the video from the bar, and the TABC certifications from the bar, it was pretty clear that the bar was not following the rules. The video showed that this person was intoxicated, and the TAB certification showed that they had servers serving alcohol who were not certified. The bar tendered its policy limits pretty quickly thereafter. I stay in touch with some of these former clients. I stay in touch with two of the young men who were injured, one in the military. We also helped him apply for military benefits that he did not know existed. Even though we represent clients for one case, we help them where we can because we got into this for the right reasons. Dram shop cases are difficult, and very few lawyers handle them anymore because they think they're too difficult to prove. We're one of the few law firms in Texas that have tried Dram shop cases to verdict. We continue to represent victims of drunk drivers against drunks, and it gets the bars that get them drunk.

Some of the hardest cases we have worked on include sexual assault lawsuits arising out of the sexual assault of minors here in San Antonio. These cases are difficult legally and emotionally. One such case we took led to a change in Texas law that we are very proud of because it helps all Texans. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] A lot of people we meet with, we have to explain that the law is not made to right every wrong, but the law is written the way it is written due to legislators and courts who have interpreted it a certain way and decided that certain things would be actionable in the civil system. Sometimes the laws need to change because they, by operation, are unfair. One of the early cases I worked on, which I've talked about in this podcast, involved the sexual assault of a minor. I got involved in that case because at some point along the way, a sexually-oriented business establishment, a strip club, had sued her. When she was being trafficked, she was taken to a strip club at one point. After she was rescued, the strip club sued her and the attorney for the strip club got on the news and said that she looked like Miss America and looked like she wanted to be there even though she was 14 years old. The strip club sued this 14-year-old girl for, according to them, jeopardizing their TABC license. Somehow or another, this young lady was referred to me because nobody knew how to help her. Two years out of law school, I can't say I really knew how to help her at that time, but I was going to help her. I represented her as a defense attorney first, the one time in my career I was a defense attorney, and then the strip club decided that was a really bad idea on their part and they wanted out of it, but it was too late at that part. We pursued them for allowing this to happen in their bar for not using diligence, and what we felt was something they knew was happening and they just turned a blind eye to it. They filed a motion to dismiss our case in the court. The law at the time was that if somebody suffered mental injuries without physical injuries, that they don't have a claim in Texas except for a few limited circumstances. This was not one of them. The trial judge told us that that was the law and he didn't feel it was just, but he had to grant their motion, so the case went up on appeal. On appeal, the appellate court said that they thought the law was unjust as well, and they wanted the Supreme Court to give guidance, but for now they were going to change the law and say that if a minor was in a sexually-oriented business, and the law protects minors from entering those businesses, that the court was going to recognize that she would have suffered a mental injury. This was new law in Texas. The Supreme Court chose not to decide this, so for now, in one appellate division in the state of Texas, we were able to change the law and make new law. This is new law that protects minors. It protects children. It protects them against predators. In this sexual assault case, I was able to represent my client in a way that, not only at the end of the day, stood up for her rights, but due to her courage, we were able to change the law in the state of Texas, at least in one appellate division, so that children are more protected now than they were before. [music]

Josh Fogelman of Austin and Justin Hill teamed up to represent a nice lady injured when a ceiling tile fell and hit her on the head. The ceiling tile had become soaked with water due to an improper AC repair. This leak was known and never fixed. When the tile hit her in the head, she suffered serious psychological and neurological injuries. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin Hill: Occasionally, on this podcast, we get to have our friends, our colleagues, our co-counsel/co-workers on to join us and discuss cases and issues and other things we've worked together. I have Josh Fogelman here with me today who's an injury lawyer in Austin, a really good friend of mine and classmate from Baylor Law School. Him and I had the occasion over time to work on a few things together, but today, we're going to talk about a case we worked on out of Austin. We're not going to say the name, Josh. We're not going to say any amounts. It was a really fascinating case with a really fascinating client that had a really fantastic result. Tell me what you remember about the factual scenario. Josh: This was definitely an interesting one. We represented a woman who was visiting Austin from out of state with her husband. They were staying at a hotel in Downtown Austin. Our client was sitting in the lobby of the hotel waiting to speak with the concierge desk and a ceiling tile collapsed and fell and struck her while she was sitting there in the lobby. It was an interesting injury case because this particular client had a pretty extensive history of some physical and psychological injuries. She'd actually been a civil rights activist who was very involved in the civil rights movement. Because of her involvement in the civil rights movement, she had actually been subjected to a number of physical attacks that had left her with permanent injuries, as well as some pretty serious post-traumatic stress syndrome. When she was hit by this pretty heavy falling object, she was not expecting to strike her. It triggered both her physical and psychological injuries in a permanent manner. Justin Hill: One of the things that was interesting about that case was the incident was on video, correct? Josh: It was. There was some security camera footage of the incident. It was pretty alarming. Justin Hill: Yes, which takes away some of the defenses that we've seen. We talk about that on this podcast a lot. These frivolous defenses, made-up defenses, you see them in all the cases. I always have to tell clients, "No matter what your facts are, if it's on video, they're still going to have a defense to your case." In our case, it seemed like the defense ran the gamut from, "Okay, that happened, but blame all these other people," to then, "Okay, maybe it was our fault. Now, let's blame her pre-existing injuries and her pre-existing psychological issues." What did you find to be the toughest element of that case? Josh: I thought the toughest element of that case was proving the extent of her harm. One of the things that we struggle with with personal injury lawyers is so many of the cases that we see, you can actually look at photographs of the physical injuries. It's very clear what has happened to a person. Oftentimes, they will walk into the courtroom with a permanent reminder of what those physical injuries were, whether it's the loss of the limb or some permanent scarring, something of that nature. But when you're dealing with primarily psychological injuries, it can be a little bit more challenging to really present that in a way that you feel comfortable and confident a jury will identify with and understand. This was one of those cases....

Texas has a number of laws passed and created to protect people from the dangers associated with guns. Many of the laws are created to protect children and vulnerable populations from the dangers of guns. In our Law in 10 series, Steven Lopez and Justin Hill discuss some of these laws. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. Steven Lopez: Hi, I'm Steven Lopez here with Justin Hill, we are both attorneys here at the Hill Law Firm. We're going to talk today about a case that we're dealing with here at the firm, and talk about one of the laws that applies to that case, and it has to do with guns safety. We recently started working on a case, Justin, that involves gun safety. It's an unfortunate incident where a person left a loaded firearm in a place where an eight-year-old could readily access it. They ended up gaining access to that gun and losing their life. Today I thought we'd take some time and talk about gun safety and law under the Texas penal code that has to deal with not only a negligent use of a firearm, but what can happen when negligently using that firearm leads to the wrongful death of a child. Justin Hill: Yes, I think that's a good point for us to move into some of the things that we get calls about at the law firm. Because we'll get calls where people just want advice on the law, which we can't really give advice on the law if we don't represent somebody. We can touch on some of the big parts of the law that we see in our day to day practice, and that's what you're doing here today. In light of this case you just filed up in Bell County. I think it's a perfect time to talk about,firearm safety, and the laws you're going to talk about. Because you yourself, you're kind of a gun guy and a gun owner. Steven: I don't know if I'd call myself a gun guy. I do own a couple of firearms, I do hold a concealed handgun license. I'm not the person that carries a gun around every single day. I do have a license to do that, I do believe in the second amendment. I also believe that with owning a gun, and especially if you have a concealed handgun license that, that is an awesome responsibility. It comes with just a lot of responsibility in how you use and operate those firearms. Justin: Yes, I never got my CHL. It's interesting to me to go to the class, but I've always thought it's either going to get stolen. Somebody else is going to get their hands on it. I have some guns, but I didn't mean you were crazy about guns, but you have guns. You're a supporter of the second amendment. You have your CHL. You've been to the class where they teach you a lot about these laws. Even in light of that, the case where we're suing the man who had a CHL, and still just ignored some of these very important laws. What's the big criminal law we're going to be talking about in that case as we move forward on that Bell County case? So Our listeners can understand, and specifically our gun-owning listeners can understand that there's a lot of responsibilities about owning a gun outside of just what you're taught in the class. Steven: The law we're going to be talking about today is Texas penal code section 46.13. That's a law that deals with where you can leave your gun when children are around. Just the plain text of the law says, "A person commits an offense if a child gains access to a readily dischargeable firearm, and the person with criminal negligence fails to secure the firearm or left the firearm in a place to which the person knew, or should have known the child would gain access." Now that's a lot of legal words we're going to go ahead and break that down for our listeners, and for people who own guns and have them around

Our client was rear-ended by a cement truck. The driver of that truck didn't have a commercial driver's license and he and his company knew that. Regardless, they let him have the keys to this large vehicle and put him on the road. He injured my client to the extent she had to have neck surgery. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases. A podcast discusses real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. or confidentiality reasons names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin: As the oil and gas boom in Texas has taken over the trucking industry, a lot of trucking companies that require their drivers to be licensed and safe have stooped to hiring truck drivers who maybe aren't licensed and maybe don't have a good driving record. A couple of years ago, we were contacted by a young lady who was rear-ended by a cement truck. It was not that big of a hit, however, she was very seriously injured. Her injury required her to have surgery on her neck. Working on the case we were able to find out a few things: one that truck driver, the 18-wheeler driver, the cement truck driver that is, did not have a current commercial driver's license. Now, that seems pretty unheard of, and it is pretty unheard of. Once we started digging into it, however, we found out that this man had been ticketed for not having a driver's license multiple times. When he was ticketed, his employer would pay those tickets. In this case, an employer knew they had a driver who did not have a commercial driver's license and was, therefore, illegal to drive. They gave him the keys to a fully loaded, very heavy cement truck, and sent him out on the road. Unfortunately for my client, she was in front of this trucker when he failed to stop and he rear-ended her vehicle. Now she has fixation in her neck, which means some of the spinal columns have been fused together. She'll never be the same again, due to the negligence of this truck driver and his company, she's been forever injured. While working at this case the defendants tried to come up with any defense they could, but they could never get over the fact that they gave the keys to a truck, to a trucker who didn't have a license. In the end, we were able to resolve this case. In the end, I think, we were able to change the way this company did business. Not only did that happen, this trucker was criminally prosecuted because what he was doing was illegal at the time. At Hill law firm we not only like to represent our clients in the civil matters for the monetary damages they have suffered, we also hopefully can use the civil matter to effectuate change in some of these companies that need to change their policies. This is one of those cases where we were able to change the policies of a company. While our client will never be the same and never fully recover from her injuries, she received a settlement that made her very happy, that she thought was fair under the circumstances, and she got to change the policies of a company to make sure it would never happen to somebody else again. [music]

Hill Law Firm handles all types of personal injury cases in San Antonio and all over the State of Texas. In this episode, we discuss some of the cases we signed and filed in the past month or so. They include 3 different cases stemming from allegations of sexual abuse, a worker injured on the job, an 18 wheeler crash, and a case involving the negligent securement of a firearm. Hill Law Firm handles a very diverse docket of cases. Transcript: San Antonio Injury Attorney, Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] All right, welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases. As I started this podcast, part of the reason to do it was so that I could explain to clients and potential new clients and people in our industry the type of work we do as a law firm. These are not things that we publish or put out there, but it's important, I think, that people understand what type of work we do for multiple reasons. One of which is, I can't say how many times I've had in town, reach out to me and tell me that they didn't know the type of work we did, or that they would have referred me somebody if they'd only known that was the type of case we handle. I started this podcast with part of the idea of giving a little bit of background in who we are and what we do. Today, I want to talk a little bit about just a general month. I want to talk about some of the cases that we filed over the last 30, 45 days or so to give you some flavor about the type of work we do. As a lawyer, really, my entire career is representing victims of sexual assault, sexual violence, sexual harassment. It's just always been something I've been very passionate about. It's something many lawyers won't take or handle, so I've gotten a lot of calls by people that have nowhere else to turn. This month is kind of different in that we've had a lot of those cases come in, and we filed three cases involving some sort of sexual assault or sexual harassment. We filed two cases. We brought in two cases involving allegations of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church. One of those cases has been filed in Houston. One of those cases is here in San Antonio, and it's not currently filed. The one in Houston has been in the newspaper, the Houston Chronicle ran an article about it. We represent the victim who was assaulted when she was still a minor by the youth minister at the church. That youth minister ended up being convicted and is a registered sex offender. He was hired by the church just a very short amount of time before this assault occurred. In our lawsuit, we alleged that they failed to screen who they were hiring, supervise who they were hiring, or train them properly. On top of that, they put this man in close approximation with young children without knowing really anything about him. That case is filed in Harris County. The one in Bexar County that we've yet to file involves a priest sexual abuse allegation for many years ago, involving a priest who's a well-known pedophile criminal, and the church has admitted as such about this priest. The third case we filed in Bexar County, Texas, involved the owner of a business who was running fake Craigslist ads to get women to come into his office for a fake interview. When they were there for the interview, he would assault, harass, and otherwise try to take advantage of these women who were trying to get a job in these tough economic times. He's now been arrested and indicted in Bexar County, Texas. We have filed a civil lawsuit against him for these actions as well. Some of the other cases that we filed this month include a traumatic brain injury case filed in Harris County, Texas. We represent a young woman who went to a restaurant,...

Steven Lopez is going to chronicle his transition into the San Antonio, Texas personal injury law practice at Hill Law Firm. At recording, he has been at the firm about 3 weeks and will join a few times to discuss. Join Steven and feel free to send us questions. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Welcome to this episode of the Hill Law Firm podcast. Today, my guest is a previous guest. This is the first repeat guest on the Hill Law Firm podcast section. Now he's a member of the law firm. Steven works with us, so this is going to be meet the team and also get caught up on what Steven's doing and what he thinks and what he plans to do here. Thanks, Steven. Welcome. Steven Lopez: Awesome. Thanks. Happy to be here. Happy to make history. Justin: [chuckles] Welcome to the Law Firm as well and happy National Tequila Day. Steven: Awesome. Thanks. Justin: As a perk here, I have provided Steven a margarita that he's going to have later and I also provided myself to get a little bit about what's going on here. We've got a Q&A with you talking a little bit about where you're from. We put it on our website a blog post with a Q&A, more information on who you are as a background. I don't want to cover that, but I want to talk to you a little bit about your time here. You're in your seventh year as an attorney. Steven: Seventh year. Justin: In our world, the seventh year is the most marketable year for a lawyer. Five to eight-year lawyers are the most sought after. I got you at the peak of your career- Steven: Price. Justin: [laughs] Let's talk a little bit about first impressions. You got here, what are some of the first impressions you have of working here and your caseload and what you think? Steven: Sure. Well, I met all the staff, got situated during that first week, and really what was really outstanding to me was the relationship that everybody seems to have here. It's a very small firm and everybody just talks to each other like normal people. You can tell that the staff feel respected and feel that their input's worthy and that people listen to them. There's not really a hierarchy, a boss-employee vibe that I got when I got here. It was very warm from all levels, from the top down. It's a flat aces and just dove in. I got a lot of interesting cases with some really hurt people that I was able to meet and talk to and get involved right from day one. For me, that's the most rewarding part is meeting our clients and getting to work on some interesting cases. Justin: Our law firm is unique. I tell everybody that we meet and part of what we say on our website is you're going to get a whole bunch of individualized attention. We're very intensely focused on the cases and clients, and that's together, which is going to be exciting and fun. Steven: Yes, which is great. It's always good to know that you've got someone in your corner, someone that's also familiar with the facts and the legal issues in your case and you're just not on an island out there fighting by yourself because 9 times out of 10, the defense firms and insurance companies have a whole squad of lawyers that are pitted against you. It just feels good to have a strong team and somebody in your corner. Justin: You got involved and you got caught up on our file system, you got caught up on our document management system, our phones, our computers, all that. You did that on the weekend, on your own time as you were transitioning over here. One of the things that I've asked you to take a lead or role in to get some of the stuff off of my plate, honestly, is intake. You're going to be working with Josh, and I...

Due to future economic needs for babies injured in the birthing process, they are some of the only medical malpractice claims in Texas that remain viable. The causes of birth injuries due to medical error can stem from failure to screen the mother and baby prior to the birth to failing to monitor the health of the mom and baby during the process. Either way, these cases are hard to prove and require expertise. Expert medical malpractice lawyer Brian Steward joins us to discuss. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] All right. We're back with another episode of Hill Law Firm Cases, and we're here talking with Brian Steward regarding medical malpractice lawsuits. Brian is a local lawyer in San Antonio, an injury lawyer, a mediator, and he has had a long history handling medical malpractice from plaintiff's and defendant's side and also pre and post law changes that made it almost impossible in the state of Texas to bring these types of cases. One of the ways these types of cases have lived on though is in the birth injury context. That's mostly because if somebody is injured at birth, a baby is injured at birth, their medical needs into the future are so significant and so catastrophic really for their families that the claims are still viable and the crazy cost of paying for experts to work these cases up is justifiable in those situations. Brian, one of the only ones I've ever had experience with, was whenever I was in one of my old law firms. We got a call regarding a terrible birth injury and the baby was going to be injured for life. It was going to have cognitive issues for the rest of its life. The issue was whether or not during birth, there were signs that the oxygen had been deprived to the baby as it was being born. It turns out, after experts and all this, we didn't have a viable claim. The experts said, "This is a real risk that can happen," and the doctors did everything right in this particular situation, and it could not have been avoided is what we were told. We didn't have a viable claim, but I had spent enough time working up that case and started to realize just how catastrophic-- Before we talk about the law, when families go through a birth, it ends up with a baby that has a terrible injury, what are they looking at lifetime? Do the kids just bounce back or a lot of times they're looking at lifetime future medical needs? Brian: Most of the children who are delivered and survive that initial 48- to 72-hour period will ultimately be diagnosed with cerebral palsy, which is a catch-all for brain damage as a result of diminished or total lack of oxygen for a period during the time of the birth. Justin Hill: Let me just interrupt. You mean most of the babies that survive who have had some sort of hypoxic or lack of oxygen injury during delivery? Brian: Right. Justin: Okay, sorry. Brian: When those children and those parents ultimately are trying to evaluate what's taken place, what happens is, unless they're told at that time, which most hospitals won't do, they're trying to look at three, six, nine, 12 months later and that child is failing to make certain landmarks, certain benchmarks, and they're trying to figure out what these developmental delays are due to. The problem with that is that unless you know what you're looking for and unless you, as the parents, were suspicious of the events over the last few hours or days before delivery, you're going to miss it. There are things that happen and the rules that obstetricians and Labor and Delivery Departments are supposed to follow that are set in stone. They didn't just appear, and they're not because of lawyers, they're because the...

One of the most common causes of medical malpractice in Texas is surgical error. This includes when the wrong body part is surgically affected, when a surgical instrument is left in the body or when a surgical error complication that is not a known risk occurs. When this happens, people can be killed or forever injured. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] All right, I'm here again with Brian Steward discussing medical malpractice cases. Brian's a medical malpractice and personal injury lawyer in San Antonio, with just a broad array of experience in all kinds of medical malpractice and personal injury issues. We've talked previously about misdiagnosis, failure to diagnosis and a couple of other common causes of medical malpractice, and now we're going to talk about surgery. Brian, you and I recently were talking about a case involving a surgeon that during a neuromonitoring of the surgery, there was something missed, and that led to a very serious injury to one of your clients. Let's just walk through, let's start with just generally surgical errors and how that can happen in a case, and how as a lawyer you go about evaluating those claims. Brian Steward: Sure. Surgical mishaps, problems or errors in surgery are cases where you look at what the presentation is, you look at what the problem is, and then you try to evaluate what the response was. What did the surgeon do in response to the symptoms that the patient was providing them with? Some of these cases are fairly simple, and they're the cases we all read about years and years ago, where surgery is done on the wrong leg or they fixed the wrong knee, they fixed the wrong ankle, they replaced the wrong hip. Those are easy cases. Obviously, they made a mistake, and the nurses and the people in the operating suite made a mistake. What we're seeing more and more is surgeries in elective surgeries' situations where the person, the patient doesn't get the outcome that they expected. Now, outcome expectations are very different than a surgical mishap or a surgical mistake. An outcome problem is where your patient, your potential client believes, "Okay, this is what I was told, that this is what I expected. I was told I was going to get a knee replacement surgery and I was going to be able to walk and play golf and return to my life like I was 35 years ago". Those are expectation cases, and those are hard cases because of this thing called informed consent. Before any of us have had any meaningful surgeries, we have filled out a form. We don't remember the form, but we filled out a form, and that form, which was created by the Texas Legislature, with the help of the Texas Medical Association, basically sets out the risk for that procedure, which means you thought that these guarantees were made by the surgeon, when in essence and truthfully, you weren't guaranteed anything. What you were told is, "Here are the potential risks, here are the potential hazards, and hopefully you will get a good outcome". That surgeon's good outcome, the medical profession's good outcome is different than your belief in what a good outcome is. Trust me. When you're looking at these surgical cases, both from the patient standpoint and from the lawyer standpoint, you are looking at mistakes which are glaring mistakes, whether it's wrong location, whether it's something that another surgeon, thousands of miles away or in a teaching facility or a teaching hospital would say, "I never would have done that". Those surgeries, although you wouldn't think that they'd be prevalent, actually are. Justin: I got to think one of the hardest parts of an expectation case, because I've gotten calls on these

One of the most common causes of medical negligence and a leading reason for medical malpractice lawsuits is the misadministration of drugs in a hospital setting. Whether it is giving the wrong drug or too much of the right drug, these acts of negligence can kill or forever injure patients. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed, however, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] Justin: I'm here with Brian Steward on this new edition of Hill Law Firm Cases, discussing medical malpractice. Brian's not a specific medical malpractice lawyer, but he's had a long history of handling medical malpractice cases from the plaintiffs and the defense side. He's somebody I would go to with questions regarding medical malpractice because in my career, for the most part, medical malpractice cases had been very limited by the laws in the state of Texas on what is viable and what kind of cases can actually be brought anymore. On the last episode, Brian and I discussed one of the first cases that got him involved in medical malpractice lawsuits and it involved the misadministration or misprescription of a prescription drug. What was it, Brian? Brian Steward: The drug was actually a chemotherapy drug called dynemicin and it's a drug that's used through an IV to pediatric patients who suffer from cancer, specific types of cancer. The case, which was 1992, involved the over administration of that drug, which means that this child who is already suffering from cancer gets-- I think it was five times the accepted dose of this medication. Any of you who've dealt with cancer or loved ones who've dealt with cancer, know that there's a balance in prescribing chemotherapy and radiation. The balance is you want to stop the cancer while also allowing the host, the person, to survive. With dynemicin, if you overprescribed it to that extent, it essentially shut the host down and ultimately took the life of this child. It's one of those things where we think about misprescriptions, and you hear about it all the time. You hear about the person who goes to the pharmacist and they're supposed to get one drug and they take this drug for two days, then they realize it's not the correct drug and they go back. That's the tip of the iceberg on these cases. I think if you look at the literature and you look at the history, in hospitals currently, the misadministration of medications is probably the most prevalent malpractice that's committed because of the system and the way drugs are prescribed and ultimately used. Justin: Brian, where's the failure in that? Is that the doctor prescribed the wrong amount, the tech administering or the hospital pharmacist? Where's the chink in the chain? Brian: It's a systemic failure and part of it is language. I handled a case out in West Texas about six years ago, doctors use and nomenclature for the prescription of drugs and it says Q1, which is once a day, Q2 which is twice a day, Q4 which can be four times a day. Now, that's fine if the doctor and the nurse are on the same page, if the nurse is not on the same page as that doctor, and you see a Q4 that can be four times a day, that can be four times an hour, that can be four times a week. It's a mess. The big hospitals' systems, all have pharmacy software. They have pharmacy hardware in place to take in these pharmacy orders from the doctors and make sure that the actual medication has been ordered is appropriate. The problem is there's the human factor, and the human factor is the pharmacist that types that in, can override the system. Even though there's a system that says, "This is too much", that pharmacist can say, "No, this is exactly what's ordered on this standing order from this doctor and I'm...

When a doctor or medical professional fails to diagnose or misdiagnoses a treatable condition, it can lead to long term injuries or death. This is one of the most common causes of medical error in Texas. We discuss this with Brian Steward. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real. These are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] Justin Hill: Welcome to another episode of Hill law firm cases. I'm here with Brian Stewart again, as we've been talking about medical malpractice. Brian is was one of San Antonio's best, most knowledgeable medical malpractice attorneys. He's done plaintiffs and defense work and we've been talking about the most common reasons and bases for medical malpractice lawsuits specifically in Texas in San Antonio since we have our own unique set of laws I guess is the best way to put it. Brian, let's talk about misdiagnosis. I've had calls before and only almost all the calls I have gotten have been related to the failure to diagnose or the misdiagnosis, not failure to diagnose. The misdiagnosis of some medical condition that the misdiagnosis led to worse complications or death in the future. Talk to me about that, how those are evaluated and what you've seen in your practice. Brian Stewart: The thing about failure to diagnose and misdiagnosis cases is that you're always looking retrospectively, meaning you're looking backwards, which means once it's finally diagnosed, it's easy to figure out what it was. Unfortunately, we don't get the luxury of preparing those cases in that way. We have to look at what the physician or the healthcare provider knew at the time that patient presented. That makes those cases difficult, not impossible, but difficult because at many times, we will know vastly more than that healthcare provider knew at the time of presentation, which means that the decisions that we're trying to make when we're looking and evaluating these cases are much different than the decisions that the healthcare provider was making. There's an exception, and the exception is fractures. The exception is health. When healthcare providers take X-rays, take CTS, taking MRIs, and they interpret a film and then two days, three days, a week later, they call back and say, "Yes, we actually do see a fracture", those are slightly different cases on the liability part because it's fairly easy to determine, "Okay, someone missed something". The problem is the damages aspect of those cases because the delay in the diagnosis typically doesn't change anything in those fractures. Where you get a lot of calls, and these are heartbreaking calls are in cancer cases, cancer failure to diagnose or delay in diagnosis, because you have people who, they rely upon their health care providers, they follow the instructions, they get the testing, whether it's mastectomies or various other exams, and they believe that they're doing fine until they find out ultimately that they're not, so then you try to work backwards to figure out what was missed. When you do that you determine or you understand that someone may have misinterpreted a test or not ordered the test that would have been diagnostic, meaning they didn't order the test that would have given them the answer that they're looking for, and now you have a patient or a patient's family, unfortunately, who's asking you to try to determine, "Hey, what happened here?", and should they have done something sooner and would they have changed the outcome, and changing the outcome is where these cases rise and fall. Justin: You have to prove that at some point that if it had been properly diagnosed whenever it should have been found, that the outcome would have been different. Specifically with cancers, there are some that...

Due to some changes in the law, medical malpractice cases in Texas are less common and harder to prove than ever before. The quality of care has not improved, but injured people have fewer options. Medical error continues to be one of the leading causes of death in the United States but in Texas, and San Antonio, the ability to hold wrongdoers accountable is significantly limited. Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and The Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] Justin Hill: On this episode of Hill Law Firm cases, I have good friend, good lawyer, good former defense lawyer Brian Stuart here with me. I wanted to talk to him a little bit about medical malpractice cases, because we get calls on medical malpractice cases and oftentimes I have to tell people one, you don't have a case, and really the only answer to ever having a case is to vote and get involved politically. Brian, talk to me a little bit about your background in medical malpractice from- on the defense side to the plaintiff's side. Brian: It actually started before that. Believe it or not, when I was an undergrad, I was premed. For two summers I worked at University Hospital as an RT. It was fascinating. It was great stuff. I really believed and my parents certainly believed that I was going to be a doctor, until I took organic in the summer between my sophomore and junior year and realized maybe there was something else out there. Despite that, I always was interested in the medicine. When we started, when I graduated from law school, I worked at a firm in a plaintiff's firm that did some med mal. One of the best cases we worked on was a case against the [unintelligible 00:01:39] involving daunomycin, which is a drug that's used for chemotherapy. It was used on a child and they overdosed the child and the child died. The partner and I worked it up. We did a lot of work on both the medical side and also the product side, because there was a system in place. There was a pharmacy system in place that should have prevented this but for some reason, the pharmacist overrode that and allowed the medication to be prescribed. After that case and after working with some really fantastic lawyers on both sides, I was hooked. When I switched sides and started doing defense work, one of the things I wanted to do is I wanted to do med mal, because I wanted to learn it. I wanted to interact with the doctors and the nurses. I thought it was something where my science and my medicine background would be an asset, and it was. I did that and I worked for Columbia HCA and their system, defended cases from El Paso to Laredo to Brownsville, and saw some of the craziest things come in the door as far as cases, mistreatment. Again, met some fantastic lawyers on the plaintiff's side who were prosecuting those cases. Some lawyers who because of their experience and their intelligence were able to figure out that what the medical charts said wasn't exactly what took place. I knew just from my experience that a lot of cases would go away, because when people saw the chart and the way it was written they thought, "There's no way I have a case." In fact, if they ever got to the point where they could talk to the nurses and the doctors they would realize that a lot more went on than appeared in that chart. When the opportunity arose and I was able to switch sides and do plaintiff's work again, one of the things I always wanted to do was keep a med mal docket. I don't do many of them but I always have a few of them that I'm looking at and going through because regardless of the legislation that's passed in 2003 and afterwards, there's still medical malpractice out there. A lot of what I do is explain to people what the law is and explain...

Hunter Craft has handled some of the biggest cases against car makers, trucking companies and major corporations in the United States. He blazed his own path and had hard times along the way. Now, he is running a great practice and doing great work for people in need. He joined the podcast to talk about being an attorney and give advice to young attorneys. He is my friend and the closest thing to a mentor I ever had. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] Justin: All right. Welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases podcast. I just made Hunter Craft listen to our ominous intro music, which the podcast that I started for the law firm has really kind of changed since I've started it and it's become more of just kind of a-- I really think if you just listened to the podcast, you would learn everything you need to know about my law firm, who's here, who we work with, and the types of cases we handle. Honestly, I think that's been a pretty big success. Hunter, thank you for being here. Hunter Craft: Justin, thanks for having me, man. I'm looking forward to visiting with you. Justin: Yes, a little color commentary. Hunter is who I tell people has been the closest thing I've had to having a mentor. As a lawyer, he was a Attorney at Watts when I started, he then became a capital partner with his name on the wall at some point, which was well deserved. I worked in his office. I worked on cases with him, and then over time, we started our own law firms, and still occasionally, we work together. I rely upon Hunter heavily to provide me guidance, sometimes tell me when I'm being an idiot, and really just be a great friend. I'm glad you're here and I want to talk to you about the things that I think are interesting about you. Like I told you before the show, the context is, a lot of people nerd out about being lawyers. I tell people you're the best lawyer they've never heard of because you're not into the pomp and the stuff on Facebook and all that, you do it quietly and you do a great job. I'm getting the opportunity to ask you questions that I'm sure a bunch of lawyers wish they could. Hunter: Well, I appreciate it. I tell you, I've told a million people that the greatest compliment I've ever gotten is the one you gave me, and that is that you refer to me as the greatest lawyer that people have never heard of. It's a source of pride with me. I've always been taught, and since growing up under my father, that it doesn't take pomp and circumstance, you don't need billboards, you don't need TV ads, you don't need to brag about everything that happens is good, if you do a good job for your clients and you're fighting every lawyer out there, to whom that will eventually be relevant, will know about it. Justin: I think to everyone that comes across your path, they know who you are. It's funny in my world, there are so many lawyers I run across and talk to, and there's some that have never heard of you, and then the ones that have worked with you or against you have nothing but great things to say. Let's just get started. You and I are both Baylor Law graduates. You were there a little bit before me. You left Baylor and got the job at one of the firms that everybody leaving Baylor wishes they could get. Fulbright & Jaworski, man, that was one of the top echelon firms. What drew you to Fulbright? Then honestly, you weren't there that long, so what drew you to leave? Hunter: The obvious answers on Fulbright, it was one of the jobs that everybody really wanted. You got to crawl into an elevator and go up 41 flights and get out and hear the Dane and look around and see some of the greatest talent in the country...

Bexar County courts require mediation in almost all cases prior to trial. Mediation is an effort to settle a case through the use of a third party neutral whom tries to help find a resolution. Brian Steward is one of San Antonio's finest mediators and he answers questions. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill law firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] Justin Hill: All right, welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases. We're here talking with Brian Steward. Brian Steward is a San Antonio personal injury lawyer. He's been doing it a little bit longer than I have. He's got a few more gray hairs than I have. He also has recently started mediating. I wanted to get him on, talk a little bit about what is mediation. This is really a podcast for clients and people that are trying to learn about the process. I want to start first is, what did you think about mediation and what was your way of explaining it to your clients prior to going through mediation training and becoming a professional mediator? Brian Steward: Sure. Mediation is an interesting process. It began in Bexar County in 1992 when Judge Charlie Gonzalez says, "We're going to start employing mediation." I had absolutely no idea what it meant and I've come to love it. Mediation to me as a lawyer and to my clients means, we have an opportunity to sit down with a third party, an impartial third party, listen to the evidence, listen to our case and try to resolve it. The mediator is not going to fix your case. He's not going to decide your case. The mediator is going to listen to your case and make some suggestions. The mediator is also going to go into the other room where the defendants are, listen to them, and also make suggestions to them. By that, I mean, the mediator has more information than even your lawyer does during that mediation process. If you trust the process and you trust that mediator, sometimes you'll be able to get cases resolved. This is an opportunity. Mediation is an opportunity for plaintiffs, normal people to get the benefit of the mediator's knowledge on this case in the context of these county cases going on in this county in trials that are being tried currently on issues that will face you in juries that will decide your case. Justin Hill: I'll just be candid. I have a problem with mediation, in that, I feel too often than not the other side is showing up trying to buy a case for cheap or settle a case for cheap as opposed to evaluating risk and actually trying to resolve the case. I always tell my clients, "Look, our goal of mediation--" My question for you is going to be, what has your goal of mediation been for your own clients? Because what I tell my clients, "My goal in mediation is, let's figure out how much they have brought today to settle your claim and let's get them to offer the maximum amount that they have to settle your claim. Then you can make an informed decision on whether or not that is sufficient." That's always been my goal. That's always been my plan. I've never seen mediation as the sole goal of settling the case because I don't want to lean on my client or tell them, "Hey, you need to settle the case." I want to know how much did they bring to settle your case so the client can then make a decision. Has that been what you've told your clients in the past or how have you, as a practicing lawyer, gone about explaining the goal to your clients? Brian: There are two things that you bring up that are important. The first issue and the first focus is, I want to make sure, as the lawyer for the injured party, that I get the most possible money on the table during this mediation. Sometimes you'll realize fairly soon that that's not going to...

Bill Marler got his first food poisoning case when he was less than four years out of law school. Against the odds, he almost single handedly changed the food industry in the United States. He has represented thousands affected by food poisoning and recovered hundreds of millions. Most importantly, he is a really humble and nice guy. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin: All right. Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases. Bill Marler just had to listen to my overly-dramatic intro music, but we're learning as we go. We were just talking. I said it's crazy. You don't have a podcast and you said you don't have time and COVID allowed me this free time to do something I'd been wanting to do for a while. Bill Marler is, I don't even think it's arguable, the foremost food injury lawyer in America which has created you to be one of the foremost food safety experts probably around the world. What I want to talk to you about, food cases, how you got into it. You sent me a little bit of background information. I'm in San Antonio. Migrant farmworker is something that's in the past history of so many people in this city and lawyers I know and friends of mine. Talk to me about how you had some time working as a migrant farmworker. Bill Marler: [laughs] Yes. When I was 16, it was the summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school. My parents were both teachers, really good people. I had decided that I didn't want to hang around the house and hang around the little town I was living in for the summer. I wanted to go seek adventure. A friend of a friend of a friend said, "Oh, man, you could work in the apple orchards and pear orchards of Eastern Washington and make a fortune." I was like, "Gosh, that sounds like a great idea." I told my mom and dad. I said, "I'm going to do this." They're like, "No, no, you're not. You're going to get a job here." I was like, "No, no, no, I think I'm going to do it." "No, no, no, you're not going to do it." One Saturday, when they're-- to the grocery store, I packed a duffel bag and hiked down to the road. You could hitchhike back then. By eight hours later, I wound up in a little town on the Columbia River that's known for raising cherries, apples. I worked that whole summer from Eastern Washington to Eastern Oregon to the eastern side of British Columbia, which is called essentially the Okanagan Valley. It's where all Washington fruits and vegetables were raised. Now, with global warming, it's the hot spot for wine. Now, Oregon pinots and Washington cabs are right up there because we warmed up the planet enough that up here in the Pacific Northwest can grow good wine. It was a really interesting experience. I think the thing that I took away from it was just how hard those people work. Back then, this is 1970s. Back then, it was White, Black, Hispanic, but a lot of poor Whites. It was a different demographic than really what you see now. Although in slaughter facilities across the Midwest, a lot of the people in the slaughter facilities are Eastern European. I learned a lot about immigrants. Justin: When you were doing it, was that not the Hispanic migratory farmworkers? Would they not get up that high? Bill: It was very few. There were a handful. Nowadays, that is what it is. Right now, Washington and the COVID thing, Washington as a state has done pretty well, considering we were the first state that blew up, but we're doing really well in Western Washington. In Eastern Washington where food production is, we're starting to see some of the small towns that have food production facilities blow up with COVID problems. Exactly the reasons for that is that people...

Another San Antonio personal injury lawyer joins us to talk about a case that was joint ventured between his law firm and Hill Law Firm. The case involved the partial amputation of a finger at a day care. A young child lost part of her finger due to a danger on the premises. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] Justin Hill: Welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases. I'm here with one of my great friends, San Antonio Personal Injury Lawyer, Sean Luchnick. He practices law on the north side of San Antonio. He's a young lawyer, but I wouldn't say he's inexperienced or not knowledgeable. He knows what he's doing. To his credit, he is not somebody who's too bold or too brazen to think he's got a lot to learn. He's here with me today. We're talking about some cases we've worked together. At this point, we've probably worked 10 to 15 cases together, and if you really take it out from when you interned with me, we've probably worked 30 cases together. It's great to have him on to chat some cases. We talked previously about a case, probably the first case that he had a lot of hand in working with me, and we're going to talk about another case involving a daycare injury, and I've talked about it before on this podcast. Let me just ask, it's always great to get a fresh perspective from a young lawyer. I remember the first time somebody asked me to represent them about their child being injured. I felt this very profound sense of weight and headiness to that. That's a real serious thing. To this day, anytime somebody asks me to represent their child, I still feel a very bizarre responsibility. I feel it in all my cases, but when somebody's putting their child's injury in my hands, it's just a different thing. Did you feel anything different when you were reached out to by that family that we represented together regarding that daycare case? Was there some sort of emotional response that you had that was abnormal or new or different? Sean Luchnick: Well, first off, I want to say thank you, Justin, because you said I was a great friend of yours. You're a great friend of mine. I appreciate you didn't just say as a good friend or a colleague. That made me feel good inside. Justin: I mean it. Sean Luchnick: Onto your question, sometimes it's hard. You always want to try to put yourself in somebody else's perspective. I don't have children. The closest thing I have to a child is a dog. Justin: You have 10 dogs. Sean Luchnick: I have about four, but if you count my parents' dogs, you could say I have 10 dogs that I'm family members with. My firstborn, Bear, I care for him greatly. I couldn't imagine how it would feel if there was an injury to Bear and it was because somebody else maybe wasn't doing their job the way they should do. They weren't abiding by their standard of care. Justin: We don't want to marginalize children with dogs. There's a whole different perspective when you have children, which at some point, you will have children. There's a headiness to somebody calling you and telling you they've got a child who's been injured in a grievous way. We had a child who had part of her finger chopped off. That's a real serious call. It's got to create some sort of emotional response in you. What was your first reaction to that? Sean Luchnick: My first reaction was someone who was a friend of a friend. Again, I even had to tread lightly myself because we're attorneys but we're also counselors. When they're asking us stuff about the merits of a case, I don't want to, in any way, downplay what happened to their daughter because it is a horrible injury. Again, the photos were incredibly...

Workers are often taken advantage of in the State of Texas. We represented a worker in San Antonio whom was hired to do a job and given very little information regarding the dangers associated with it. The contractor knew the structure was rotten and put him on the roof anyway. His fall when the roof collapsed broke both of his legs and limited his ability to ever work again. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] One of the more common questions we get from new clients or people that are meeting with us, especially in South Texas in San Antonio is whether or not somebody has a claim or a right to file a lawsuit or a claim if they're undocumented. In Texas, they have a claim. If somebody is injured through no fault of their own, the negligent party or the wrongdoer doesn't get to say, "Well, since you're undocumented, you don't have a right to recourse." Luckily, in Texas, that's not the law. One case I worked on, involved a construction worker, a man in his middle age who was working with a company that did a lot of odd jobs purported to be a roofing company, but when you dig into it, maybe they weren't. They had been hired by a house flipping group to replace the roof on a house that was being flipped. If you know about house flippers, some of them cut corners, and some of them do work as cheap as possible. That's what we were dealing with in this case. They hired a group that didn't know what they were doing. My client had been called by a friend, a friend who knew his cousin and asked if he could come help on a roofing job. My client was not a skilled worker or a skilled roofer, he was a laborer and he was told to start tearing off shingles. It was probably his third time ever on a roof. While he was tearing off shingles, a portion of the roof collapsed. While the house flipper had a copy of the inspection report showing rotted wood and rot under the roof, they had not shared that information. My client fell off the roof when it collapsed, and he suffered what has to be the worst lower leg injury I've ever seen in my career. A lower leg injury that the treating trauma surgeon said had an outcome over life that was less positive than people with diabetes, AIDS, cancer. It's a lower leg injury that forever will alter his mobility, his ability to work, and his quality of life. As expected, the house flipping company tried to blame everybody but themselves. At first, they said there was no inspection. Then there was an inspection and they said that it was made available. Then they said it wasn't made available, but they would have made it available if anyone had asked. They also tried to say they didn't do anything to control the manner and method of the work of the roofing company even though all the roofers said that the house flipping owner got on the roof, told them what to do, when to do it, and what order to do it. Specifically for us, he told them what portion to tear off of the roof that collapsed. The part of the roof that collapsed wasn't part of the original structure, but with some add-on patio that somebody had added on, and they'd never done it correctly. That was in the inspection report as well. After we were able to pull back all these layers of frivolous defenses, we were able to get a full measure of justice for our client who was injured on the job through no fault of his own.

We hear the craziest defenses to our injury lawsuits. One recurring defense is that a vehicle is stolen and therefore there is no insurance coverage. Almost universally, there is no police report showing that the vehicle was stolen but it is an attempt to avoid liability. We fight these defenses. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill in the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin Hill: A few fiestas ago, a young couple were driving through an intersection when they were hit broadside by a lady that ran a red light, was speeding and was high on methamphetamines. The crash was so severe that the husband didn't survive the crash. We represented the wife and their children. In cases like this, there's lots of investigation that has to be performed to make sure that anybody who caused or contributed to the cause of the crash is held responsible. Through our investigation, we were able to find out whose car this driver was driving, where she had been, what she had been doing, where she got her drugs from. We needed all that information to make sure that we had fully and completely investigated the possible cases and any possible liability against any third parties. We're going to talk about frivolous defenses on this podcast. This is one of those cases where I ran into the frivolous defense of a stolen vehicle. Insurance companies can deny coverage if they can show that a vehicle was stolen or is being used without permission. Certain insurance companies are almost infamous for doing this. They'll say that vehicles are stolen anytime. They don't like the facts of the case or anytime they think they can muddy the water. In this case, they tried to say the vehicle was stolen. What our investigation found was that this was the ex-wife of the owner of the vehicle. What we were able to find out that she had been at his house with him and that she had made a mention of using the vehicle. Now, he said he told her she couldn't and she took the keys. Now, we were able to search to see if any criminal charges had been brought or any police report had been filed. What it looked like to us based on the documents we found was after the crash happened and they found out about the crash, then they decided they were going to file a police report. Whether they were instructed to by their insurance company or not, we don't know. What we do know is they denied our clients any level of justice for a long time, trying to ride out this frivolous defense. In the end, they were able to delay a settlement in this case using this made up theory. We were able to figure out that this defense was frivolous. It was being manufactured as a way to deny coverage. As we continue to push the case, something happened on their end. Most likely they were looking at a trial date, and they finally agreed to settle the case for the full policy limits. This is a great example of the frivolous defense of a stolen vehicle that insurance companies like to use. Almost never is there a police report to corroborate the idea that a vehicle was stolen. However, that doesn't stop insurance companies from using this frivolous defense to try to deny justice or delay justice. [music]

We represented a young man who was rear-ended at a high rate of speed by a distracted driver on I-35 in San Antonio. The driver was going approximately 60 miles per hour when she hit our client. Luckily, he was able to walk away from the crash with injuries that would not keep him from doing his job or walking. Transcript: Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] The most common cases we handle, just because the volume of these cases is the highest, are car crashes. Car crash cases in San Antonio make up the bulk of most personal injury lawyers work. A lot of people roll their eyes at this or scoff at this, but the reality is that insurance companies have made it necessary to hire a lawyer and oftentimes file a lawsuit just to get a fair settlement on what is an uncomplicated car crash case. While there's lots of discussion over frivolous lawyers and frivolous lawsuits, there's very little discussion over frivolous defenses. Defenses made out of whole cloth, as a way to deny, delay and defend a claim. Insurance companies only get paid by the money they hold on to or the money they don't pay out. They don't make money by paying out claims. This makes me think of a recent case we just settled, in which I represented a young engineer going to Austin to visit his girlfriend. It wasn't yet rush hour, but it was probably about 3:45. I-35 headed north towards Austin around the Windcrest area. If anybody's been there, they know that traffic slows and speeds up. Sometimes it stops. My client's following the law, following the rules, traffic stops, he stops. About two seconds later, he's hit by a vehicle going about 60 miles an hour. What that lady was doing, we don't know, but she wasn't paying attention and she's lucky she didn't kill him. Those kind of speeds can kill, or traumatically injure everyday people. Our client got very lucky. While he was injured, he didn't have a life-time debilitating injury that he would never be able to recover from. He has a back injury that will be with him the rest of his life, but he's gonna be able to work and he has a concussion that mostly resolved, but he hasn't lost his ability to do his job as an engineer. I tell people about cases like this and they cannot believe that it didn't settle, but it didn't. The case got filed, the defendants moved that case to federal court, they required depositions, discovery, they dug into my client's past medical history. They were looking for any way to deny his claim. That's what insurance companies do. In the end, the insurance company did the right thing but they made sure that plaintiff, my client, felt stress, felt pressure, felt like he had done something wrong. These are the cases we handle day to day. Car crash cases are not easy cases anymore. They were at some point in history out here, but insurance companies make their money by denying these cases. We continue to represent car crash victims because they are some of the most preyed upon of injured people, because insurance companies think they can convince juries that it's made up or frivolous and in doing so, they'll pull out all the stops.

Lawrence Morales has worked in the area of employment litigation and law since he got out of law school. He has defended employers but now spends most of his time standing up to workers whom were treated poorly in violation of the laws protecting workers. He came on the podcast to discuss the type of work that he does. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. All right. Welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases. I'm with Lawrence Morales, who's a local employment lawyer who I went to law school with. Hi, Lawrence. Lawrence Morales: Hi, Justin. Justin: We've done a Q&A series of local lawyers, what they do, why they're into what they do. Lawrence and I have worked a handful of cases together. We have a couple of cases going on right now. I asked Lawrence to come on, talk about what he does, who he is. Then we're also going to have a separate episode talking about some stuff we're both going to get into together. Lawrence, you are mostly an employment lawyer from the plaintiff's side. At least you do other things, but from the plaintiff's side, you do employment work. What is your interest in employment work? Why did you get into that? What's your passion? Lawrence: I've been doing labor employment now for about 15 years. My passion is really helping people navigate through this complicated scheme. Right or wrong, people identify themselves with what they do for work, and the realities that they spend more time at work than oftentimes they spend with their family. Sometimes there's a disruption in that. Maybe something they caused or maybe something that they didn't cause. When there's that disruption, they need help. Fortunately, I've been able to do that. The other lawyers at my firm, including you, when you help us on certain cases, have been able to help people when there's that type of disruption at work. Justin: I've heard some of the politicians talk about the dignity of work, and I've always really appreciated that idea that our identity and our reason we get out of bed in the morning, is often tied to our professions. Is there anything in your backstory or your history that made you really have a passion for workers, or did you just get into it as a lawyer and realize this is something that really motivates me? Lawrence: I think both. Some of my family, growing up, had bouts where they unfortunately didn't have work. As a child, I saw the effect that that had on them. I recently read a study that the number one way to get depressed is to stop working. If you want to stay engaged, if you want to stay happy, if you want to live a longer life, frankly, don't retire because the schedule, the purpose of going to work, interacting with people, those social interactions, is important. We're there to help if there's a problem with that. Justin: We said that in our own household right now with what's going on with COVID, just being stuck in your home really, it affects your mood. I'm sure for a lot of workers going to a work environment that is not friendly, or welcoming also starts to affect them. You and I have worked cases involving hostile work environment, situations or environments where workers are made to feel bad or made to feel unwelcomed due to things that are outside their control, race, sex, religious identity, other things like that. What are the types of cases you work on in the employment context? Lawrence: Sure. Anytime there's a dispute between an employee and an employer, we can get involved. On a typical week, we'll get 50 calls from potential clients. The vast majority of those will be tied to terminations, people saying they were terminated for 'unlawful or wrongful...

Ladder safety is a very important issue at worksites and workplaces. When people fall from ladders they can suffer very serious and even fatal injuries. OSHA investigates falls and ladder injuries and will sanction companies that violate OSHA regulations. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real. These are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Lately, we've been discussing worker safety a lot on Hill Law Firm Cases Podcast. Specifically, we've been talking about the most common violations and most common OSHA citations and what they relate to. We've handled a lot of worker safety cases, and a lot of cases involving on-the-job or work site injuries. One case type that we see consistently involves ladder safety. For whatever reason, either due to height or due to the operation, or for whatever reason, in my career I have seen, represented, and even sometimes told people that they didn't have a case, cases involving and arising out of injuries and falls from ladders. One particular case I looked at recently involved a man who was doing work at a beach house in preparation for a storm coming in. While he was working, putting up boards on the windows, the ladder fell out from under him. His injuries included two crushed heels, a broken leg, and a broken ankle. That's one thing about ladder cases is every time I've seen a ladder injury, the people that have been injured have always suffered very serious, long-term complicated injuries. I've seen leg injuries. I've seen injuries to arms. We've represented a man who suffered a brain injury. At my previous firm, I worked on a case in which somebody was paralyzed as a result of a ladder fall. All this to say that ladder safety is of utmost importance, whether it's on-the-job site or in your home. The reason for that is that a fall from height, we know can cause debilitating serious injuries and even fatalities. We've been talking about OSHA violations and OSHA citations, and one of the commonly cited set of regulations that employers are cited for failing to follow revolves around ladder safety. OSHA has a set of standards and regulations and rules that employers and employees are supposed to follow when they're on-the-job site. OSHA's regulations for ladder safety are outlined for whether it be a step ladder to a type of ladder used in orchards. Very specific regulations about all types of ladder usage. On top of that, for all of our listeners, OSHA puts out an OSHA quick card on portable ladder safety. Why this is important is because a lot of people use ladders at their homes, not only at their job sites, but at their homes, their businesses that they may own, or just in their day-to-day operation they'll use ladders to accomplish whatever needs to be accomplished. Because of that, normal people who are not laborers or not people that work on ladders every day are often put in positions where they could fall and injure themselves severely as a result of using a ladder. I recommend anybody that's going to be using a ladder to review the OSHA quick card on portable ladder safety, because it outlines and details a lot of things that can be helpful for everybody. It goes through a few things, including read all the labels and markings and follow them to the extent that they're on the ladder, and explain how you should use it. Another thing that people oftentimes forget is, be careful where your ladders going because if there's an electrical line and you have an aluminum ladder, that could lead to an electrocution. You should always inspect your ladder and make sure there's no damage to it. Whether that damage be a locking mechanism that doesn't work, a bent portion, a broken rung, or any other part of your ladder that doesn't work or is broken, you...

Recently, a monumental Supreme Court decision clarified that employees cannot be fired or discriminated against due to their LGBTQ status. Justin Hill and Lawrence Morales, both of San Antonio, have handled many cases involving employees that have suffered discrimination. Transcript: Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed; however, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis. [music] Justin Hill: All right, welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases. On Monday, June 15th, 2020, the US Supreme Court came out with an opinion Bostock versus Clayton County monumental decision. I'm here with Lawrence Morales, who's one of the best, and in my opinion, the best employment lawyer in town for plaintiffs, or probably a business too, but they're not normally the people I represent. For people that have been wronged on the job and need some answers, Lawrence is the guy to go to. He's the guy I personally go to. I asked him to be on the show today to talk about the Bostock versus Clayton County opinion. Him and I are going to do some cases and represent some people who are going to fall under these new protections. Lawrence, what happened? Lawrence Morales: On Monday, there was a landmark decision that basically extends protection under one of our discrimination laws to about one and a half million more Texans than previously existed. Let me back up and tell you a little bit about the origins of this law. The law is the Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964. That is the law that basically bars discrimination and has barred discrimination against race, national origin, sex, color, for the last 40 years. A big question has been whether people who are transgender, sexual orientation, and gender identity are protected classes under that law. By way of background, we'll get a lot of calls sometimes and people will say, "I got fired because I'm a homosexual. Can I bring a claim?" Unfortunately, until Monday, the answer to that question was, "It depends on where you live." There were 29 states in the United States that basically did not have any state law protection for gender identity or sexual orientation, and Texas was one of them. We had to say, "Sorry, go to the EEOC, file a charge of discrimination. This is an issue that's going up to the Supreme Court, and hopefully, it'll be decided in your favor." Thankfully, on Monday, that day finally came, and now it is safe to say that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected classes under Title VII. Justin: I love the fact that you pointed out 1.5 million Texans are going to fall under this new law or this new decision, which means 1.5 million Texans have additional protections on the job by a law that was passed by a Texan and LBJ. Lawrence: That's right. It was signed into law by LBJ. That's exactly right. The good way to describe it was after the 2015 same-sex opinion, you could get married on Monday morning to somebody of your same sex, but then you can get fired that afternoon because you got married to somebody in your same sex. On Monday that changed. Do you want me to tell you the story about how ironically we have a segregationist to thank for the law that came or the decision that came out on Monday? Justin: Yes. Lawrence: Okay. The story is about a guy named Howard Smith-- Justin: I don't get a lot of questions, so I appreciated that question. Lawrence: I'm trying to help. Howard was a United States Congressman from Virginia for about 30 years between the 1930s and the 1960s. Among other things, he was an unapologetic segregationist. He opposed racial integration. At the time, in the early 1960s, there was a lot of movement with black rights. Martin Luther King was making great strides in trying to push for an...