Congratulations to DP&S partner, Kirk Pittard, along with a trial team that included Steve Laird, Seth McCloskey, Tim Brandenburg, and Pete Kestner, who, after a two-week trial, secured a $12.5 million settlement in an 18-wheeler-motorcycle collision case in Rockwall County. The collision occurred when the plaintiff, who was alleged to be going 60 m.p.h. in a 40 m.p.h. zone and attempting to time the green light as he entered the intersection, hit a Mercer 18-wheeler that had run a red light. The plaintiff, who survived the accident, is now blind and paralyzed. It was an all-hands-on-deck effort that led to the settlement just before closing argument.
Congratulations to David Harris, Craig Sico, and Louie Cook of Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP on a $40.5 million verdict in a wrongful death trucking case in Santa Fe County against Werner Enterprises. DP&S’s Justin Kaufman and Rosalind Bienvenu assisted on the trial team through the course of the 2-week trial. The jury found Werner, one of the largest trucking companies in the U.S., negligent for causing the death of Kathryn Armijo in a 2017 crash. The jury also found Werner liable for punitive damages.
According to evidence, Werner, through its own inadequate operations and training programs for its student drivers via Roadmaster Drivers School, had a systematic disregard for basic safety policies and training of new drivers. Werner, a company with more than $2 billion in annual gross revenue, each year hires approximately 4,500 new drivers with no prior truck driving experience. This is the second significant verdict against Werner Enterprises in the past 18 months. In May of 2018, Werner was hit with $89.6 million verdict by a civil jury for systematic safety and training failures in a multiple fatality case involving a student driver. You can read the verdict here.
DP&S partner, Kirk Pittard, recently wrote a law review article that has been published in the Summer 2019 edition of the Texas Tech Law Review concerning the recovery of medical expenses under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 41.0105 subsequent to the 2003 Tort Reform legislation. See Recovery of Medical Expenses Under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 41.0105 – The Paid or Incurred Statute, 51 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 731 (Summer 2019).
DP&S is proud to announce that, on September 30, 2019, Lana Beverly joined its Dallas office. Lana brings significant appellate and litigation experience, coming from a litigation boutique that specialized in catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death matters in addition to complex commercial litigation cases. Lana received her B.A., with distinction, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2006, and earned her J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 2010. Immediately after law school, Lana was selected to be a judicial clerk for the Honorable Tom Price of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Lana has been recognized by Thomson Reuters in Texas Monthly as a “Texas Rising Star” in 2018 to 2019.
For the second day in a row, DP&S was proud to represent clients before the Texas Supreme Court. Dana Levy presented argument in In re Comaneche Turner, a case dealing with whether the deposition of a non-party doctor in a medical malpractice case still requires an expert report as a mandatory prerequisite, as if the non-party was, in fact, a party to the case. You can see Dana’s briefing here, and you can listen to her argument here.
Kirk Pittard presented argument this morning in LaDonna Degan, et al. v. Dallas Police and Fire Pension System Board of Trustees, a case certified to the Texas Supreme Court from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to answer whether certain changes made to the pensioners’ ability to withdraw money from their own accounts violate the Texas Constitution. You can read the briefing here, and you can watch Kirk’s argument here.
Congratulations to Dallas partners Kirk Pittard, Leighton Durham, Thad Spalding, and Rick Thompson for being named “Super Lawyers” once again in the Appellate category by Super Lawyers Magazine, a Thomson Reuters publication, for 2019. Kirk was also named to the “Top 100” list for Dallas/Fort Worth.
Congratulations to DP&S partners Kirk Pittard and Rick Thompson who were recently named “Best Lawyers in America” in Appellate Practice by Best Lawyers magazine. You can see Kirk and Rick’s listing here.
Congratulations to DP&S attorney, Dana Levy, who successfully defended a jury verdict in Houston’s First Court of Appeals! In addition to rejecting the defendant’s many challenges to the jury’s causation and damage findings, Dana also convinced the court of appeals to reject an evidentiary argument regarding the improper admission of liability insurance. You can see Dana’s briefing here and read the opinion here.
Congratulations to Rick Thompson who won an important insurance appraisal case in the Texas Supreme Court. The case, Barbara Techs. Corp. v. State Farm Lloyds, No. 17-0640, 2019 WL 2710089 (Tex. June 28, 2019), involved hail damage to a business and the appraisal provision in the business’s insurance policy, which is designed to provide the insurer and the insured a process for determining the value of damage to a property. In this case, the Texas Supreme Court rejected an argument that payment of an appraisal award on a rejected claim absolves the insurer of liability under the Texas Prompt Payment of Claims Act, but also emphasized that in order to recover such damages, there will need to be an adjudication of the insurer’s liability on the claim and a prompt payment violation. Importantly, this opinion preserves a cause action under the Act post-appraisal under certain circumstances, and disapproves of cases that have held otherwise. You can read a copy of the opinion here.