FAQ Friday w/ Gregory Herrman and William Privette | Corpus Christi Personal Injury Lawyers

hello everybody welcome again to frequently asked questions Friday today we have a returning star will prevent hey there and the question today is are auto accidents the only type of personal injury cases that there are and you know Greg and I will bounce back and forth over the next couple minutes but the short answer is no there are several types of personal injury cases that our law firm handles and are several out there that that go pass just car wrecks you know basically any person that's injured by the negligence of another negligence is the key word there that's the kind of case that we can handle you know the negligence of another that causes injuries you need damages obviously that's one of the elements of a negligence claim but you know you have to have a duty of another that person have to breach their duty that breach of the duty needs to cause your injuries and so those are the four elements of a case and if you can have those four elements met then we can usually help you you know I'm going back to law school a little bit the term of art or the term they use is torque and torque quite literally means a wrongful act by an individual leading to civil legal liability there are three types of torts intentional tort negligent tort and strict liability tort we're getting into the woods a little bit but you know we handled negligent torts you know reasonable persons standard is what you look at so you know to that person act reasonably in the situation if not it could lead to negligence and could lead to liability on their part so an example that we mean well some additional examples outside of a car wreck you know I've got a few here on-the-job injuries you know if you're injured while working there are some instances where we can help you still one of the instances are if your employer is a what's called a non-subscriber Texas Texas Department of Insurance put together you know basically a program workers compensation and all employers are supposed to you know buy into that program and if they do not buy into that program then the legislature has carved out a few rights for people that are injured by it by somebody who doesn't you know subscribe to workers compensation so one of those of a big name that that does not subscribe is Walmart so if you work for Walmart and you're injured on a job you can still go after Walmart for liability because they don't carry a workers compensation nothing should be is another one ATVs and not yet yes sir and what kind of proof do you need other nonsubscribers um it's actually a very low very low threshold one percent so what and again it kind of goes into the policy behind they're trying to punish employers that don't subscribe to workers compensation so if you're not in a workers compensation program you know you have to show as the plaintiff which we represent plaintiffs you have to show 1% negligence on the employer so very very low threshold compared to regular liability cases so you can be 99 percent at fault and still recover yes yes you would start up you have to show that 1 percent somehow as long as Murray sees you know even 1 percent on the Falls an employer that you can collect and how much revered Avenue would you recover if you're not in that person for a hundred percent you'd still be able to collect a hundred percent of your damages even though you're 99 percent at fault now that's that's one of the types of on-the-job injuries and other type is if you get injured by somebody that's not your employer so you're working for you know a company you're you're delivering something to a business and that business has a defect and you can get injured up on that business premises then you can go after that third party and it would be very similar in terms of thresholds and showing liability to a regular car wreck in that instance a third party case we've been as a subcontractor were to run you over in a car somewhere you're out there you know that gets into a little bit sticky situation if it's contract or subcontractor or sometimes they can you know take it right away some of those rights that they would have so if you're all in one entity you know you'd still would be able to probably go out to the third party you'd have to look at the agreements between the contractors and the subcontractor to see if that's still allowed to see where the subcontractors are observant or not the employer yes sir yes sir all right now you should we handle negligence cases so we don't handle any kind of intentional tort cases well intentional torts you know and this is proud law school research here you know most of that kind of falls under fraud slander assault battery those types of things you know when you intend to do harm and so it actually kind of falls completely out of our our kind of expertise because we're looking at accidents you know collisions you know stuff that that people are not intending to do you know I would say a lot of that it does open you up to civil legal liability but also criminal liability those intentional torts and so you know that there's not that many instances where we have intentional torts that we that we help with at our law firm well I know where I know we're we sue in the city of Corpus Christi I'm behalf of a bunch of workers that weren't paid their pay what they should have paid yeah not when they were on call yes well you know it depends like you asked I guess you're right where were arguing I was intentionally done there the defense is probably arguing that that was not intentional and their priority end up didn't happen but I guess you're right that would be one of those may be a fraud a misrepresentation that was intentional there are a certain circumstances where we can help we're not if the defendant has a lot of money he's rich and he intentionally hurt one of our clients well that that is a different story because I was gonna kind of get to that later one of the you know one of the things you generally need for a case like ours is you need to have the at fault party has to have the ability to pay your damages I mean if you can't pay your damages you're look call them please all the defendant meaning you don't you can't pay your dues and so long story short you need generally speaking we deal with insurance companies that will cover defendants wrongdoings but certainly if you have somebody that is known to be rich or you can look up their assets through our through our databases and find out that they have assets that you definitely can go after somebody personally for an intentional tort but most of the insurance companies that we deal with out right away intentional torts they say they only cover technical potential for exclusion on the mentor on most insurance policies different so it's not as much we don't have the expertise is just that this going after somebody with insurance coverage for the post correct there's most people don't don't have the assets for satisfying an ejectment correct and what will do is you know you ever think you have a case loved me to call Herman Herman and talk to one of the attorneys here or one of the staff and if it's something that sound like there might be some covered there we'll definitely look into it and we have access to databases and people that can find that information out for our clients and so you know we look we look for that and if it's something that you can't you know we find out that there is no coverage then you know we we unfortunately get the file back to the client but no charge to us you know we try to try to find coverage and we can't then it's kind of one of those costs do in business we let the file go unfortunately and then finally a strict liability you should we don't like them because well you know I feel like we do but our bread and butter is negligent cases so strict liability we have a couple of experts I feel in the in the litigation department Josh Hopkins is one of them that's looking more at defective products and inherently dangerous activities so you know if you have a product that was manufactured incorrectly that caused damages that's going to be under your strict liability tort when you prove that the product is defect defective then that manufacturer is strictly liable for their hand so we we actually you know our bread and butter is negligent negligence towards but we actually you know as we just discussed we have cases that range from intentional torts negligent torts and strict liability towards at the firm and yes this is my fault I was get your list of cases products cases worth taking I mentioned gadolinium last week with a dead lamb cases we're also taking IVC filter cases those are those filters that put in people's veins to supposedly stopped blood clots from getting back up to the heart causing pulmonary embolisms and causing architects the filters are breaking and little pieces of filter or sticking in people's bodies they're causing more problems than they were even solvent in the first place we're also taking talcum powder cases these are the cases where women had been used in Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder or other other cotton powder for years have developed ovarian cancer and apparently Johnson & Johnson has known for years that there's a huge increase in the likelihood of getting ovarian cancer from using topical products but they've never warned anybody they're still denied to this day even though the science is clearly against them I guess they just feel they just keep denying it tonight and I ended people may believe and I know that we're taking our Deisher birth control cases we've got a list of about 15 more Christine when I get you that list after this can you get that posted on get on our Facebook page and so these would all be strict liability cases yes so tell us how strict liability works what does that mean how's that different from negligence or intentional so it's it's a little bit different in the sense that like I said the strict liability is either either dealing with an inherently dangerous activity so that means that there not even be any negligence on the fault of the defendant but they still have to pay or it would be some of these defective products these manufacturing defects so you know I feel like the elements are very similar it's still a negligence claim but you know you have to it's a little kind of over my pay grade in the sense that you know it's it's it's very similar to a negligence claim that the defective products cases but you have to prove a lot more you have to prove a lot more and you have to prove that there was a safer better alternative to make that product so in the in the talcum powder example you know let's say they have 50 ingredients in the talcum powder if the plaintiffs show that this is an inherently dangerous you have a defective product and all would have taken was to take out one of those 50 ingredients and it live it's safe for women and men alike that's an example of you know strict liability for sure and so it's you have to show that it's it's an easy fix as well and you have to you have to obviously prove there's a defect whereas in a negligence case you know there's no defect there's somebody did something wrong if one person doing something to another whereas the strict liability tort it's almost the company doing something wrong whereas it's instead of a person you know so it's a little bit different so it's basically putting an unreasonably dangerous product on the market when there is no reasonably safe alternative right and if there is a reasonably safe alternative then you shouldn't have put that product on the market right okay well that's about it for today we kind of use about 15 minutes let me just amount have a few announcements here our Instagram winners this winner this week is Erica Resendez she's our hundred dollar winner and Chris how is it how is it Eric you're gonna come to us to recontact her she can give us a kadhai ready to help okay Erica you can also to help or we'll we'll give you a call but you need cause because you're giving away last week's winners the the price last week because the person who won never contacted us and we repeatedly tried to get all they have and he wouldn't call us back so we are given that to a new winner Maddie Pettis batting evening ddy feathers so many be sure to call us if you don't hear from us and they have to call if I went oh it's possible reading to reach out about two three days you know after we announce the winner by certainly by the extra bases it makes one's always realistic okay for sure if you wait from their front and the next recipe for it can be giving away your prize to someone else you think we're going to call this also just a couple of announcements we're doing PD's back to school bash today from 4:00 to 7:00 at the Boys and Girls Club and this is basically for needy families that need some school supplies and you still haven't gotten any you can come by there and get the first 300 students to come by you're going to get a backpack filled school splutters so if you don't happen to you know be one of those families but you know somebody tell them to come by that the Boys and Girls Center today from 4 to 7 and what's the address for Chris it is it's a nano to green what I believe yes I'm Greenwood I am still if you watch an issue where you have no to bring I say I said if you watching you should probably have a smartphone or something on it you can google it he went 30 I know to Greenwood come by there 47 or send anybody you know by there 47 that pick up school supplies for you kids also reminder our scholarship deadline is December 1st you have to get your submissions in before that the topic is what changes can be made to decrease distraction in automotive automotive vehicles we keep adding stuff to car and it makes it just gives you more and more things to get distracted by so how can we use technology basically don't fix that so submit your essay first place winner $2,500 second place 1500 third place a thousand and again I say this every week but you know every things like the people when these scholarships are all from the east coast or the west coast they keep entering this he's been in this contest and winning so I sure would like to give to somebody in South Texas so please enter and hopefully hopefully you can you can be a winner this year this is I believe our fourth year north and lastly reminder the deadline to register to vote is October 9th and I mentioned this last week but don't just assume you're still on the voter rolls just because you voted before the the folks in Bauer the Republicans are literally kicking you off the voter rolls if you skipped a couple of elections there was they did that in Ohio and they took it to Supreme Court United States Supreme Court United States by five before decision big surprise there said that's okay that the Republican Party basically in Ohio that controls legislators okay to kick people off the voter rolls if they hadn't voted in and of course our justification is this false narrative that does all this voter fraud going on when the the evidences there is no voter fraud that they literally prosecute about one person a decade for voter fraud there's just no reason people would risk a felony to get somebody a bill vote for them it just doesn't happen but they're using that false narrative to justify kicking people off the voter rolls so just because you thought you're on the voter rolls or just because you voted a couple elections ago doesn't mean you're still on there you may have been kicked off so Kristin we share that link again to check to make sure you're registered so we'll put the link up on Facebook again please click it please go on there make sure you're still right and if you're not registered but I just checked because you may be surprised lots of people I know last election cycle we had a bunch of people working here that thought they were registered they showed up to vote and they get turned away so that they weren't registered so don't wait till Election time to decide oh I think I'll check so you need to do it before October 9th so yeah August and September basis you get two months please go check make sure you're registered all right well I think that's it for this this week and thank you Friday thank you all again for being here all right thanks again and Erica and Maddy congratulations and people don't forget to vote that's right and we will see you next week same time same Channel