Under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 33.001-33.017, a defendant in a personal injury lawsuit in Texas can designate anyone who is alleged to have caused or contributed to injuries as a responsible third party. In Re Bustamante considered whether a trial court had appropriately denied a motion for leave to…
In Blevins v. Pepper-Lawson Construction, the plaintiff appealed after a jury awarded him $170,850 for injuries suffered when he hit a construction vehicle driven by an employee of a masonry company. The case arose one evening when the plaintiff was driving near a high school under renovation. A subcontractor of…
In Kalinchuk v. JP Sanchez Construction Co., a Texas plaintiff appealed summary judgment in favor of the defendant, a construction company. The case arose when a city hired a construction company to renovate one of its baseball fields. The city asked the construction company to move bleachers during the renovation,…
In Brown v. RK Hall Construction, Ltd., a 21-year-old plaintiff drank alcohol at a friend’s house and then tried to drive home shortly after midnight. The plaintiff drove into a construction zone, hit a piece of construction machinery that was parked in an area surrounded by a barricade away from the…
In Texas Department of Transportation v. Brown, the plaintiff was driving on Hwy 82, in an area that was a construction zone, when she crashed into an unmarked machine parked in the right-hand lane. Later, she would claim that the barricade drums that were put between the two lanes didn’t…
In Lopez v. Wildcat Cranes, a welder on a demolition project was injured. The welder was cutting a large steel beam, weighing thousands of pounds, which was located 25 feet above the surface of the roof, and removing it from the ceiling structure. The welder used a scissor lift to reach…
In Maldonado v. Sumeer Homes, the plaintiff appealed from three summary judgments in a personal injury action. The case arose from injuries the plaintiff suffered while working as a sheetrock installer on stilts during Sumeer Homes’ construction of a home. He tripped and fell on a stack of sheetrock. The…
In Joyce Steel Erection, Ltd. v. Bonner, a Texas appellate court considered a plaintiff who was pinned by an extremely heavy concrete tilt wall at a construction site. He suffered serious injuries and needed numerous expensive surgeries. He sued Joyce Steel Erection, Ltd., Caruthers Construction, and Self Concrete, Inc. Joyce…
In Hassan v. Rock, a plaintiff appealed from a judgment awarding him $212,136.64 in damages because he didn’t think the trial court should have reduced the award by his proportionate responsibility for the accident. The defendant had hired the plaintiff as a day laborer to clear brush out of an…
Exemplary damages (also known as punitive damages) are unusual, but may be awarded in personal injury cases involving gross negligence. In contrast to compensatory damages such as lost wages, medical bills and pain and suffering, exemplary damages are meant to punish a defendant for egregious behavior. In 4Front Engineered Solutions,…