Houston Personal Injury Attorneys – Smith & Hassler

Tuesday February 8, 2011: A midday fire caused an explosion at Enterprise Products‘ west storage facility 35 miles east of Houston in Mont Belvieu, Texas. The fire burned well into the night Tuesday and company officials are uncertain how long the fire will continue to burn. It could not be ruled out that the fire was being fueled by gas products stored underground: if that is true the fire could be kept burning indefinitely. Fortunately no injuries are known at this time. The fire caused a plume of smoke long enough to be detected on the National Weather Service radar. A contract worker who may have been in the vicinity of the explosion has not yet been accounted for.

The Enterprise Products plant processes and stores liquids that are separated from natural gas. At the moment emergency workers are not trying to extinguish the flames, rather they are concentrating on keeping nearby parts of the plant as cool as possible. Enterprise Products spokesman Rick Rainey says that nothing burning at the Mont Belvieu plant is toxic. Rainey said that 8-10 workers are typically in the facility and all of them got out safely, except for the one contract worker who hasn’t been located. The man is a maintenance worker for Turner Industries and still had not been found as of 7:45PM Tuesday. Rainey said that the company are in touch with the man’s family but no further details were released.

Click here for Channel 2’s report of the Mont Belvieu, Texas Enterprise Products gas plant explosion

Click here for the Houston Chronicle’s report of the Mont Belvieu, Texas plant explosion

Click here for Fox News Houston’s story on the Mont Belvieu, Texas gas plant explosion at Enterprise Products

If you or a family member have been injured at work, such as in a plant explosion, call Houston-based personal injury attorneys Smith & Hassler for a free consultation regarding your legal rights. Smith & Hassler has represented hard-working Texans injured on the job for more than 20-years, including workers injured in the Texas City, Texas BP plant explosion in 2005.

February 8, 2011: Two women were injured and sent to hospital and another woman died in a car crash Tuesday evening. The driver apparently lost control of her car around 7:00PM along Westpark near Buffalo Speedway in Houston according to the police.  The three women, all of whom were elderly, were in a Lexus sedan. The driver crashed through two gates at a senior living center, traveled across Westpark and went off the road, ultimately landing in a ditch after striking a fence. Witnesses told police that it appeared the Lexus was traveling at 70MPH when it left the roadway and crashed through the senior center. The women in the car were taken to Memorial Hermann Medical Center where the back seat passenger was pronounced dead. Police plan to question the driver to see if she has a medical condition that would explain her sudden loss of control of the vehicle.

If you are searching for a Houston personal injury attorney to represent you, call Smith & Hassler at 713 739 1250 or 1-800-WIN-WIN1 and ask to speak directly to an attorney for a free consultation. Houston personal injury lawyers Smith & Hassler have more than 20-years in Houston representing injured Texans and their loved ones.

February 7, 2011: A driver may be facing charges after a wrong way collision on Houston‘s East 610 Loop killed another driver. According to Houston police, a 37-year old man drove an Isuzu pickup truck northbound in the southbound lanes in the 1900 block of the East Loop at approximately 1:55AM on Sunday. A Dodge Ram Charger that was traveling in the correct direction collided with the Isuzu. The driver of the Isuzu died at the scene of the accident, his name has not been released. The driver of the Dodge pickup was transported to hospital to be treated for his injuries: police say he may face a charge of driving while intoxicated.

Smith & Hassler has been based in Houston for more than 20-years representing injured Texans. If you are searching for a Houston-based personal injury attorney, we encourage you to read online reviews from our former clients, research the background and experience of our personal injury attorneys at www.smithandhassler.com and call us for a free consultation regarding your personal injury case.

If you have recently been involved in an injury accident and have decided to search for a Houston-based personal injury attorney to represent you, the choice can be overwhelming. There are tens of thousands of licensed attorneys in the Houston area and of those, thousands practice personal injury law. Before the dawn of the Internet you would probably have to rely on a recommendation from a friend that a particular personal injury attorney had represented them and done a good job. Thanks to the information age however you can do some fairly effective initial research yourself. Below are a few suggestions on how to go about researching a Houston personal injury attorney to help you with your case:

1. Online reviews: There are a great many web sites that allow customers to post online reviews of products or services they have used and personal injury attorneys are no exception. Previous clients of a Houston personal injury attorney (or law firm) can write anonymous reviews and detail their experience with a lawyer or firm. Generally speaking, the more reviews that are posted the better, as you can take multiple considerations into opinion. Of course, don’t just focus on positive reviews, there may be neutral or negative reviews also. If you had a particular personal injury attorney in mind but noticed a negative review online, if you decide to interview the firm to possibly represent you, why not just ask the attorney about the negative review? Also take into consideration how far back the reviews go (e.g. does the firm have reviews going back 1 year or 5 years). Consumer review web sites worth checking into include Google Places and Citysearch.com

2. The law firm’s web site can provide you with background on the law firm’s history, how much of the firm’s practice is on personal injury and usually will include a biography for the lawyer or lawyers at the firm. It may be important to you that a law firm focuses exclusively on personal injury law. You may also want an attorney who is board certified in personal injury trial law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

3. Interview the firm and/or ask for a free consultation, even if it is over the phone. Your personal injury case is the most important case in the world to you, and you want to feel comfortable with your choice of personal injury attorney. Many (if not most) Houston personal injury firms will offer potential clients a free consultation, either in person or over the phone. This is a great opportunity for you to get some free legal advice about your particular personal injury case, but also to get an impression of the attorney or the firm. You will probably want to come away from the consultation feeling the attorney understands the issues in your personal injury case, has a plan of action and has answered your questions. Particularly in a contingency fee arrangement, you and the attorney are entering into a relationship similar to a partnership: its important that you and your personal injury attorney are on the same page.

Smith & Hassler has been based in Houston representing injured Texans for over 20-years. We encourage you to run a Google search for “Smith and Hassler” and read our reviews from former clients and visit us online at www.smithandhassler.com If you like what you see and want to learn more, call us at 713 739 1250 or 1-800-WIN-WIN1 for a free consultation regarding your personal injury case.

Monday February 7, 2011: Police are investigating a fatal hit-and-run car accident in Houston that left a pedestrian dead. The collision was at Texas 6 south near Westheimer at about 3:30am on Sunday. Police said the man was walking northbound in the roadway of Texas 6 when the vehicle struck him; he was pronounced dead at the scene. No description of the vehicle was available and witnesses have yet to be identified. Anyone with information on the case should contact the HPD hit-and-run division at 713 247 4065.

February 6, 2011: ABC Channel 13 eyewitness news is reporting that a Harris County deputy crashed his patrol car into a tree after swerving the vehicle when he was fired upon by occupants of a vehicle he was chasing. The chase started when the deputy tried to pull over a vehicle for not having a license plate in Meyerland on Beechnut near the West 610 Loop in Houston. A chase ensued that ended on Holly in Bellaire. The suspect vehicle came to a sudden stop and the deputy took action to avoid a gun battle according to J.J. Laine of the Harris County Precinct 5 Constable‘s Office. The suspect vehicle fled the scene after the deputy crashed: police are still looking for the vehicle. The vehicle is described as a silver or dark gray Ford Taurus type vehicle; the deputy was transported to the hospital with minor injuries where he was treated and released.

Precinct 5 Deputy Constable sustained minor injuries in an accident during a chase.

Friday February 4, 2011: At least 3 people were killed in and around Houston in car accident caused by icy conditions on the roads. The number of car wrecks increased tremendously as drivers ran into unfamiliar conditions on their commute. The three people who were killed died in two separate wrecks within 10 minutes of each other. One wreck was in Houston, the other was in Montgomery County.

Two men were killed in Cut and Shoot when their pickup slid across the center line and into oncoming traffic on Texas 105 and was hit by an approaching truck. The accident on Texas 105 East at Willis-Waukegan Road was blamed on icy conditions. The men who died are Giovanni Gomes (age 31) and Jose Gomes (age 56), according to DPS. Giovanni was driving westbound in a 1993 Toyota Tacoma pickup when the vehicle slid into eastbound traffic colliding with a 2003 Chevrolet 3500 pickup truck, the driver of which was Richard Warren (age 38) from Conroe, Texas. Warren suffered cuts and bruises but fortunately is reported as being in good condition; the Gomes’ were declared dead at the scene.

Only 10-minutes after the Cut and Shoot wreck, at 6:55am, a 30-year old driver was killed in East Houston when he was pinned between his car and a concrete guardrail after he exited his car and another vehicle collided with his Nissan. The man (who has not been identified) was driving west on the East Freeway when he lost control of his Nissan 300zx sports car due to ice on the freeway overpass. He got out of his car after the crash and sat on the guardrail waiting for help. The driver of a dark pickup then also lost control on the overpass, struck another pickup, and that pickup spun into the Nissan. The driver of the first pickup then fled the scene, according to police.

Driver waiting next to his disabled Nissan 300ZX was killed by pickup that lost control on the ice

Houston Police Department officials are asking stranded motorists to wait in their cars if they have an accident, instead of stepping out to wait. HPD dealt with a large number of chain reaction style car accidents on Friday due to bad weather conditions. During a 13-hour period beginning 10:00pm Thursday and ending 11:00am Friday, Houston police responded to 750 car accidents, a 340% increase in the number of car accidents Houston police usually work on in a typical 24-hour period. Houston police normally respond to 170 car accidents during a normal 24-hour period (which averages out to 7 car accidents per hour).

Even police cars weren’t immune from the weather related car crashes. At 7:50am Friday two Houston police officers were investigating an accident in the 4700 block of Watonga in northwest Houston a tow truck slid on an icy bridge and crashed into the officers HPD patrol car, which set off a chain reaction collision resulting in a Ford pickup truck striking a pedestrian standing outside the cars.  The pedestrian suffered minor injuries and the police officers were not hurt.

A pickup truck falls victim to an accident in Houston's icy road conditions

February 4, 2011: As a major winter storm rolls into Houston, local news channels are reporting multiple freeway closures and car accidents all over the city. One accident shut down all of the northbound main lanes of the southwest freeway (US59) at the 610 Loop. Another crash at 249 and Beltway 8 was reported at around 5:00am that included an overturned vehicle. Officials are asking drivers to stay off the roads if possible and Houston police are making their presence known to encourage drivers to slow down to avoid additional accidents.

If you have just been involved in a car accident, particularly one in which you were injured, you’re about to get a firsthand lesson in a principle Smith & Hassler knows all too well: not all car insurance companies are created equal. Some automobile insurers are nationwide companies who process billions of dollars in claims each year and have thousands of employees working their claims. They probably advertise on television and you’ve heard of them before. Without commenting on whether they make reasonable settlement offers on injury claims, if nothing else, when you call one of the big insurers somebody is going to pick up the phone.

On the other hand there are some automobile insurers who write automobile insurance policies in only one or two states, usually only write minimum limits policies and typically write policies for driver who have a poor driving record, limited credit history, or both. This type of insurer tends to keep its overhead and costs down by overworking their employees and not having sufficient manpower to answer calls, handle claims, etcetera. You probably won’t have heard of the insurance company before, they don’t advertise on television, and each time you call you find yourself on hold for an unreasonable length of time (or your calls don’t get returned).

Automobile insurers also have different philosophies on how they handle injury claims, and a particular insurance company’s philosophy can change over time. Perhaps the most famous example is when Allstate Insurance hired the McKinsey consulting group to review how Allstate managed injury claims. In the 10-years after Allstate brought in McKinsey, the amount of money Allstate paid out in car accident cases went from $0.63 per premium dollar to $0.47 per premium dollar. McKinsey infamously created a presentation slide in which McKinsey recommended Allstate treat people making injury claims with “boxing gloves” instead of “good hands.”

Having prior experience with a particular insurance company and a good understanding of their claims practices is very valuable when making an injury claim. Beyond that it is also very valuable to have experience with the law firms and lawyers that handle lawsuits filed against people insured with these insurance carriers. When an injury claim cannot be worked out through settlement, a lawsuit is the next step, and knowing who will defend that lawsuit and how they will defend it is a strategic advantage. Smith & Hassler has represented thousands of injured Texas in claims and lawsuits in our 20+ year history. If you have been injured due to the negligence of a driver insured with any of the following automobile insurers (or any other insurance company) you can speak to a Smith & Hassler personal injury attorney at no cost for a free consultation: we’d be glad to discuss your case with you and give you some insight into what to expect from the particular insurance company you’ve found yourself having to deal with.

ACCC Claims Service, Statewide Claims, 21st Century, Canal Insurance, Allied Insurance, esurance, MetLife, Progressive, Safeco, Gainsco, Liberty Mutual, Infinity, State Farm, GEICO, Allstate, Farmers, Chubb, Zurich, U.S. Auto, Santa Fe Insurance, Travelers, The Hartford, USAA, Mercury Insurance, Central Insurance, Germania, Texas Farm Bureau

If you’ve been involved in an automobile accident with another driver, once the adrenaline wears off and the dust begins to settle your first worry probably is: “Does the other driver have insurance?”  That is a very serious concern in the State of Texas, where recent estimates are that of the 20 million vehicles in Texas, roughly 22 percent are uninsured (even though the penalties for driving without insurance can be harsh).  That means on a state-wide level you have a 1 in 5 chance of being in a collision with an uninsured driver! TexasSure is the State of Texas‘ vehicle insurance verification program and was created by the Texas Departments of Insurance, Public Safety, Motor Vehicles and Information Resources as a system to help reduce the number of uninsured motorists.

These agencies have created a database that links every vehicle registered in Texas by its license plate, Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) and liability insurance policy. Law enforcement officers can access the database, including at the scene of a car accident by using the computer in their police cruisers, to verify the insurance status of any registered vehicle. Put another way: the police can check at the scene of a collision to see if the drivers involved have valid liability insurance.

The number of uninsured vehicles varies by Texas county.  The TexasSure web site publishes statistics on the number of registered vehicles that are not matched to a liability insurance policy in each county. As of the date of this blog post (02-03-2011) the most recent uninsured motorist statistics were released on 12/06/2010. Harris County, which encompasses the City of Houston, has 2,775,042 registered vehicles, of which 672,384 are not matched to liability insurance, meaning 24.23% of registered vehicles in Harris County are uninsured. That’s a scary, scary statistic! In Montgomery County the percentage is lower at 17.74% uninsured. In Galveston County, 18.52% are uninsured. In Fort Bend County, 16.98% are uninsured.

What you can do to protect yourself from the cost of the damage and injuries caused by uninsured drivers: Obviously the fairest solution of all would be for everyone driving on Texas roads to be responsible and carry the automobile liability insurance Texas law requires.  Unfortunately and despite the best efforts of law enforcement, that isn’t about to happen any time soon.  There is something that you can do TODAY to ensure you are protected from the damage that an uninsured motorist can cause in a car accident, including damage to your vehicle, lost wages and medical bills. Check your own automobile insurance policy to see if you have either of two types of coverage: Personal Injury Protection (PIP) or Uninsured Motorist coverage (UM). Personal Injury Protection is a no-fault (it doesn’t matter whose fault the car accident was) benefit that can cover medical bills and lost wages. The minimum PIP coverage is $2,500, the next step up is $5,000 and the next step up is $10,000 (and some people carry more than that). PIP is not very expensive to add to your policy.

Uninsured motorist (or “UM“) coverage allows your own insurance company to “stand in the shoes” of the uninsured motorist who caused the accident. Your insurance carrier will evaluate your injury claim just as if they insured the other driver, and will make a settlement offer based on your medical bills, lost wages, injuries, physical pain, mental anguish, physical impairment, disfigurement, anticipated future medical costs and other factors that should go into evaluating an injury claim. The minimum UM coverage you will have on your policy is $30,000 (if you have UM).

Smith & Hassler has all too often seen the financially devastating consequence of car accidents and personal injury (and even death) where an uninsured motorist causes a car accident, and the victim of the car accident does not have PIP or UM. Smith & Hassler strongly recommends that EVERYONE check their automobile insurance policy or speak to their insurance agent to find out if they have PIP or UM coverage. If not, we absolutely recommend that in the City of Houston, in a county with almost 25% OF DRIVERS UNINSURED you take out UM and PIP coverage to protect you and your family. If you have been in an accident with an uninsured motorist, you can call Smith & Hassler today and speak to an attorney for a free consultation.