by diazlaw | Dec 31, 2019 | Blog, Personal Injury
With Christmas just around the corner, parking lots are more frantic than ever. In more normal times around a fifth of all car accidents happen in and around parking lots, so when the Christmas rush is on, it’s likely to be more than that. Injuries don’t just happen because of careless driving. Parking lots are also sometimes crime prone. The question of who is liable if there is a car accident or mugging arises when someone is injured in a parking lot. Generally, the owners or managers of parking lots are not liable for damage to vehicles or injuries except in specific conditions. It can be hard to know whether a parking lot owner is in fact responsible for the safety and security of people and their vehicles who use their property. The best advice is always to talk to a personal injury attorney before deciding about making a claim for compensation. A parking lot owner or operator may be considered liable or partly liable for an injury that occurs in their parking lot if the design or maintenance of the parking lot is unsatisfactory. If there is a valet involved, then the care of the vehicle is most likely the vale’s responsible. As far as injuries due to crime are concerned, the owner / operator maybe considered liable if there has been a history of crime in the vicinity and there has been nothing done to alert users of the parking lot, or to provide safety features, such as surveillance cameras, security guards, etc. Careless driving the most common reason for parking lot accidents The most common accidents...
by diazlaw | Nov 29, 2019 | Personal Injury
It’s rare for passengers to be accused of causing a car accident. In most cases they are the victims of someone else’s negligence. It could be the driver of the car they are a passenger in, another driver altogether, or some other party, like a truck company, government agency, road maintenance department etc. In most car accident personal injury cases the emphasis tends to be on the driver of the vehicle that has been hit but of course often there are other people in that car who may have been as badly injured as the driver. Those injured passengers in some ways have an easier opportunity to file a claim against whoever ultimately was to blame for the injuries as it would be unlikely to have to deal with an accusation of shared fault. This is quite a common situation when an injured driver files a claim with another diver’s insurer. The insurer alleges that the injured plaintiff was partly or even wholly to blame for the accident. Who can the passenger sue? An injured passenger can only sue the at-fault party (or parties) if there is evidence that negligence caused the injury and that the party being sued was negligent. There are several different scenarios, each of which has its own particular challenges. Scenario 1: The driver of the vehicle the injured passenger is in is at fault This should be straightforward. The driver has a duty of care for anyone in the same vehicle. If the driver falls asleep, drives too fast, runs a red light, drives while drunk, or crashes while texting, then the driver may...
by diazlaw | Oct 25, 2019 | Personal Injury
Typically in Mississippi, as in other states, police officers or other law enforcement officers such as Highway Patrol officers and sheriff’s deputies are dispatched to the scene of a traffic accident when advised. Whether they attend or not depends on the seriousness of the incident. By law, all crashes involving some sort of injury require the crashes to be investigated and a report to be compiled. That police report, more formally called a Mississippi Uniform Crash Report (MUCR) could be a vital piece of evidence for you if you intend filing a personal injury claim after an injury resulting from a crash. Bear in mind that if you are seriously injured in a crash, there may be very little or nothing you can do personally to help obtain evidence that can show who was at fault. It may seem paradoxical that the very people who will need compensation the most are the least likely to be able to exert any personal influence on proving who was at fault. It is vital for compensation to be offered that there is clear evidence of who was at fault. The MUCR is therefore probably the most important evidence available after a serious traffic injury. Even eye witness statements may only be made available by consulting the crash report that should contain details from eye witnesses. If there has been no injury in a car accident, there is no absolute necessity for police to attend unless the vehicles involved are badly damaged and are blocking the flow of traffic. This means that if you have a slight sideswipe or someone reverses into your...
by diazlaw | Sep 29, 2019 | Personal Injury
The e-cigarette and vaping epidemic has claimed its first victim in Mississippi. It is a male, aged under 30, according to the state’s Department of Health. There are also 4 other Mississippians who have succumbed to pulmonary or lung disease that has been associated with vaping. Mississippi has joined 9 other states that have recorded fatalities. So far, this year there have been 12 deaths and 805 illnesses. The figures, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that there has been a sharp rise from last year when there were 530 illnesses recorded and 7 deaths. The increase in vaping related illness has been labed an ‘epidemic’ by health authorities across the U.S. The rise of vaping vs smoking tobacco Vaping has been around for at least a decade now. It uses a liquid contained in a container called a pod that is heated by a battery device. Users inhale the vapor, which is normally, but not always, a concentrated nicotine product, derived from tobacco. The vapor from these products does not have the other substances associated with tobacco that are known to cause lung cancer and other health problems. When vaping was first introduced, vaping was touted as a safer alternative to conventional cigarettes. The steady increase in the use of vaping has been paralleled by the equally steady decline in smoking tobacco. Health authorities are unsure exactly what the primary cause of the lung disease is. It is likely that it is a chemical product, but there is no certainty what it is. There has been some suggestion that it might be tetrahydrocannabinol...
by diazlaw | Sep 23, 2019 | Personal Injury
More and more people are entering nursing homes and managed residential care facilities as they get to an age where it becomes too difficult to live at home. Sometimes, it is because family members cannot provide the standard of care they need. Elders may themselves choose to enter a nursing home because they don’t want to become a burden on their family. Unfortunately, not all nursing homes provide the level of care which we expect them to do. A report compiled by an organization called Families for Better Care revealed that many nursing homes across the U.S. failed to provide adequate levels of care. Mississippi nursing homes were given an average ‘D’ rating based on a number of different criteria, with the state performing near the bottom of the country in many respects. The findings of the report would be enough for many Mississippi residents who have elderly relatives in a nursing home take a long hard look at how they are being cared for. Early legal intervention when nursing home neglect or abuse is discovered can mean all the difference to the future conditions for a loved one as well as recover valuable monetary compensation that can help improve the loved one’s life. Evaluating the standard of care in Mississippi nursing homes The Families for Better Care’s survey looked primarily at 3 main factors that the organization thought were important in measuring the standard of care in the nursing homes they looked at. The three factors were: staffing levels; inspection reports; number of complaints made and verified. Verified complaints Mississippi scored particularly badly on the number of verified...
by diazlaw | Aug 26, 2019 | Personal Injury
If you travel a lot in any major urban center in Mississippi, you may be a frequent or, at least, a casual rideshare customer. Lyft and Uber and other newer rideshare companies lie Ola and Guru are becoming more and more frequently used in urban areas, or even between cities. They are easy to dial up using an app on your cell phone and are usually quite a lot cheaper than a traditional cab. You might even be an Uber or Lyft driver yourself. Granted, rideshare drivers don’t make heaps of money, (one report estimated an average $16 / hour before expenses for an Uber driver), but it doesn’t take much capital. Anyone who has a license and a reasonable car can become a rideshare driver and make some extra cash, even if it is only part time, to supplement a regular income. Uber, Lyft and the rest may sound fine, but is taking a ride in an Uber vehicle really safe? What happens if you do some Uber driving yourself and are involved in an accident? Who is liable? Before we explain some of the details behind rideshare liability, here is some more explanation of how these rideshare schemes work. Uber, Lyft and other rideshare companies do not directly employ the drivers who use their app. If you are an Uber driver, it makes it easier to use the app to get rides and make money. There is a trade-off. You have to pay a percentage to Uber of every ride you get, but the rest is yours to keep. The same report that mentioned that on average...
