I’m a trial lawyer for injured people and businesses at The Beasley Firm. Founded in 1958, we have recovered over $2 billion for our clients through hundreds of verdicts and settlements in excess of $1 million. We’re listed in Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America, U.S. News’s Top Lawyers, [...]
Thoughts On Liability For The Chesterfield, NJ School Bus Accident
Readers of this blog anywhere near New Jersey undoubtedly know the story; for readers elsewhere, here's NBC Philadelphia's coverage. Thursday morning, a dump truck hit a elementary school bus at the intersection of Bordentown-Chesterfield Road and Old York in Chesterfield, NJ, killing 11-year-old Isabelle Tezsla, seriously injuring two other students including one of her triplet sisters, and leaving 17 more students with minor injuries. I have written about some of the unique issues that arise in school bus accidents before — an issue that’s often on my mind now since my four-year-old twins rode a yellow school bus for the first time ... Continue Reading
Why Drunk Drivers File Lawsuits For Their Own Accidents
When I first start working as a personal injury lawyer, I didn't grasp how most "dram shop" lawsuits worked in practice. Most everyone agrees that, if a bar keeps serving a customer alcohol until they're intoxicated, and the customer gets in a car accident and injures someone, then that other person should be able to sue both the bar customer and the bar. But what about the drunk driver? Why would a jury believe that the bar, and not the drunk driver, is responsible? I thought about the answer as I read three separate stories of unsympathetic plaintiffs who played a ... Continue Reading
Pennsylvania School Districts Should Be Fully Responsible For Bus Accidents
From a safety standpoint, school buses are like commercial airlines. Mile-for-mile, they're one of the safest modes of transportation; as the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration noted a decade ago while reviewing whether or not to require seat belts in school buses (more about crashworthiness here), the fatality rate for school buses is 0.2 fatalities for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled as compared to 1.5 fatalities for cars. Like with commercial airliners, though, if a school bus accident does occur, then it's likely to cause a lot of damage, and the accident is likely the result of colossal negligence. Current ... Continue Reading
PA Workers Injured In Car Accidents Can Now Recover UIM Benefits
It's a common occurrence: an employee is out on the road as a driver, passenger, or pedestrian as part of their job when they are hit by a car. It’s particularly common for municipal employees like police officers and for delivery drivers and highway workers because they are, of course, out on the road and in danger a lot more than the rest of us. The next legal step is routine: the injured employee files a claim for workers’ compensation, which will cover some medical expenses and some fraction of their salary, and then files suit against the driver that ... Continue Reading
Driverless Cars And Crashworthiness Under The Common Law
In their first year, law students are introduced to a revered mythical beast: the Common Law. Calling the American legal system's devotion to the Common Law "religious" would be an understatement: people violate religious tenets all the time and then ask for forgiveness later, but no jurist deviates from the Common Law without explaining why, and typically they don't deviate at all unless the state legislature or the federal Congress has told them to. Why the heck were the West Memphis Three allowed to plea guilty and not guilty? Because the Common Law permitted nolo contendere, and not even the ... Continue Reading
Did Ryan Dunn’s Passenger Assume The Risk Of Riding With A Drunk Driver?
Big news across the internet yesterday after "Jackass" star Ryan Dunn and a passenger died in an early-morning one-car crash out near West Goshen, Pennsylvania: Dunn, 34, of West Chester, was reportedly driving his 2007 Porsche at 2:38 a.m. on the Route 322 bypass westbound in the area of Route 100 when he went off the road, according to statement issued Monday morning by West Goshen Township police. Police said that upon arrival they found the car off the road in the woods engulfed in flames. Scorch marks were still visible at the scene just before noon on Monday, as ... Continue Reading
New Jersey Drunk Drivers Can Sue Under Dram Shop Laws
Should drunk drivers be allowed to profit from the accidents they cause? If you frame the question that way, the answer is obvious: no. That's how many people online seem to have understood a case recently decided by the New Jersey Supreme Court, leaving them bewildered by the court's opinion allowing drunk drivers to sue the establishments that served them alcohol. But what if we phrase the question as: should bars and restaurants that negligently serve alcohol to visibly intoxicated people be responsible for the full scope of damage they cause? Then the answer is, of course, yes. To solve ... Continue Reading
Pennsylvania Legislature Puts Insurers Over Injury Victims
[Update: Unfortunately, the "Fair Share Act" passed. Stuart Carpey has some details.] It’s that time of year again. As The Legal Intelligencer and other sources report, Pennsylvania’s joint and several liability laws — which ensure that the economic damage caused by negligent companies falls on insurers and other defendants proven to have been at fault rather than on injured plaintiffs — are on the chopping block again at the Pennsylvania General Assembly: At press time, the state House of Representatives was on its third consideration of House Bill 1, called the "Fair Share Act." The act would change Pennsylvania's doctrine of ... Continue Reading
Proving Intoxication In Auto Accident Lawsuits Despite Legal Blood-Alcohol Levels
We personal injury lawyers see some recurring fact patterns, particularly for the spinal cord and brain injury cases. The fatigued tractor-trailer driver driving beyond the FMCSR hours. The fully loaded passenger van rollover. The scaffolding collapse at a construction site. Commercial vehicles and equipment drive our modern economy, but they do so with more than enough force to maim or to kill if not used carefully. But nothing beats alcohol, the “social lubricant,” which can turn even the most mundane situation into a crippling or fatal tragedy. Cars, guns, and bodies of water are inherently dangerous anyway — for any ... Continue Reading
Another Falsified Logbook, Another Preventable Truck Accident Death
Like with the patient safety violations at Gosnell's clinic, I hate seeing articles describing tragedies that mirror my cases, tragedies would have been avoided if we simply had better laws or law enforcement. Like the article in today's Inquirer: A truck driver who plowed his 77,000-pound rig into an Infiniti on the Schuylkill Expressway in 2009, killing a Fort Washington man, was charged by federal prosecutors yesterday with lying about breaks he was supposed to take on the road. Authorities said that Valerijs Nikolaevich Belovs, 57, of Northeast Philadelphia, falsified his driver daily logbooks between Dec. 20, 2008, and Jan. ... Continue Reading
