General Personal Injury | InjuryBoard Austin

The Tillinghast Insurance Consulting practice of Towers Perrin (a large consulting firm) has just released its 2007 Update on US Tort Costs, their 11th study on the subject. This study, which has traditionally been criticized for being pro-insurance, concluded that tort costs went down 5.5% in 2006. Compare that with an annual increase in the US Gross Domestic Product as growing at 6.1% in...

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A Philadelphia area lawyer was charged this week with allegedly having associates fake personal injury accidents and make claims based on those fake accidents. That this is wrong, illegal, and a blight on the profession goes without saying. But I'm just curious how this could happen in today's world. We keep track of how various insurance companies, and even adjusters, treat cases, and I...

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Last August, the Texas Supreme Court handed down a ruling in a case involving an on-the-job accident. In the case, a property owner hired a company to perform maintenance and construction services on the plant located on the property. The owner also bought workers' compensation insurance to cover the company's employees. After one of the company's employees was injured in a worksite accident,...

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A new, scholarly study from two law and economics professors at Emory University finds that tort reform discriminates against women, children and the elderly:The results from our empirical analysis are consistent with our theoretical predictions. We find that the impact of tort reform varies substantially among demographic groups. When we consider the net effect of all the reforms in our study...

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Many personal injury victims have health insurance. And most health insurance policies have a subrogation clause. The clause typically says that if the company pays medical expenses that are caused by a third party's negligence or other conduct, then the health insurance company is entitled to be reimbursed for the expenses it pays in any resulting settlement or lawsuit. While the notion...

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The Consumer Product Safety Commission has once again issued their Halloween safety tips. Among other items, the CPSC has the following safety tips:Carry flashlights.Use reflective tape on your treat bag.Make sure masks or other parts of costumes don't obstruct your child's view.Watch out for candles and Jack O' Lanterns when approaching front doors.Warn children not to eat any candy until it...

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Injury Prevention magazine published a startling study about bicycle related injuries. The study, conducted by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital, estimates that 10,700 children are hospitalized each year for bicycle-related injuries. One-third of those were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries (many of which could have been prevented...

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The Texas Progress Council has just posted a short new video on YouTube. We encourage anyone interested in personal injury and civil justice issues to take a couple of minutes to watch.

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Anchorage, Alaska personal injury lawyer Michael Schneider has a great post today featuring a story about a client who lost a personal injury case because the client spoke to the insurance adjuster, trusted the adjuster, and apparently followed the adjuster's bad advice, which ended up hurting the claim.Mr. Schneider doesn't have specifics but only says that at trial the client couldn't explain...

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The firm was virtually closed today so that most of us could attend the Austin City Limits Music Festival, but even there we couldn't escape personal injury news. Unfortunately, one of the big news stories of the day was an explosion and fire that broke out around 2:30. The fire was quickly contained, but there were still four people that suffered severe burn injuries and were taken to the...

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