Houston Personal Injury Attorneys – Smith & Hassler

When people think about a judge they often think of a stern, black-robed figure who does a lot more talking and reprimanding than he does listening (think Judge Chamberlain Haller played by the late Fred Gwynne in My Cousin Vinny). That’s why Harris County jurors find it refreshing to perform their civic duty in the 215^th Civil District Court, presided over by Judge Steven Kirkland.

During a July 2011 event launching Judge Kirkland’s re-election campaign he described his position as Judge of the 215^th as a “job of learning.”  What Judge Kirkland was referring to was the Judge’s continuing role as a student of the law who looks to the attorneys in his courtroom to educate him regarding the specific laws in play in a given case.

Those who have had little exposure to civil lawsuits may imagine a judge to be all knowing, and think it’s the judge’s job to know the law and tell the lawyers what the law is.  Well of course a judge can’t possibly know each and every law and statute in the State of Texas or have instant recall of every appellate opinion or Texas Supreme Court case interpreting the law.  The reality is a judge has to rely on the lawyers involved in a case to research the applicable law and then educate the judge on that law.  Or put another way, part of a Judge’s job is to listen and learn.

Simply put, Steven Kirkland gets that. Judge Kirkland serves the citizens of Harris County efficiently and effectively by expecting the lawyers appearing before him to be prepared, know the law and discuss it with him, all in the interest of keeping the particular case moving along.  This keeps the trial docket moving in the 215^th District Court, which is good for all.

Prior to taking the bench of the 215^th District Court in 2008, Judge Kirkland served as a Judge in the Houston Municipal Court system for 8-years and has presided over 800 plus jury trials in his career, a huge number.  In Judge Kirkland’s view, anyone called for civil jury service in Harris County (whether they end up serving on a jury or not) should leave the experience having learned something about the civil justice system.  If you are called for jury service and find yourself in the 215^th, Judge Kirkland will make sure you understand who’s who, what’s going on and why.

Judge Steven Kirkland will run for re-election as the incumbent judge of the 215^th Civil District Court in November 2012.

Fortunately for Harris County, Judge Steven Kirkland is more of a listener than Fred Gwynne's Judge Chamberlain Haller!

Texas Governor and presidential-candidate-in-contemplation Rick Perry will be in Houston today to meet with Houston-area Republicans for the ceremonial signing into law of HB274, a bill that came to be known as “loser pays.” The stated intention of the law, which was sponsored by state representative Brendan Creighton, is to cut down on junk lawsuits. The law will go into effect September 1st, 2011 and will allow Defendants to push off court costs, deposition costs, expert fees and reasonable attorneys fees onto a Plaintiff. As Smith & Hassler has blogged about previously however, a Plaintiff can take their case to a jury trial, their case can never be deemed “frivolous“, and the jury can still find the Defendant at fault for the Plaintiff’s damages, but if the jury awards less than 80% of a settlement offer made by the Defendant the Plaintiff can be left recovering nothing.

Governor Perry declared the loser pays tort reform a legislative emergency thereby pushing it to the top of the legislature’s agenda during the most recent session. Amid all the back-slapping and grinning during the ceremonial bill signing today it will be interesting to hear if any specific examples are given of the frivolous lawsuits HB274 is meant to deter. We can’t remember a single example being given during hearings when HB274 was voted on by the legislature. You would think if frivolous lawsuits in Texas was a significant enough menace that they constituted a legislative emergency, every state representative who voted to pass loser pays could give you several examples.

The truth of it is, the loser pays law helps insurance companies and big business interests, and hurts access to the courthouse for legitimate lawsuits filed by Texas families and small businesses.

One morning on the way to work you are rear-ended while waiting at a red light.  You are hurt and your car is badly damaged.  Your car was not safe to drive and has been towed to a storage lot.  The driver who rear-ended you apologized at the scene and told you she was at fault.  The police officer who investigated the accident issued the driver who hit you a ticket for rear-ending you and told you the other driver is at fault.

That afternoon you called the other driver’s insurance company and set up a claim.  They said they cannot provide you with a rental car right away.  The accident was clearly the fault of their insured, so why no rental car? You’re without your car through no fault of your own and you are frustrated…is the insurance company giving you the run-around?

The answer is that they are probably not giving you the run around.  Before an insurance company will accept liability for a claim and start doing things that cost them money (like providing you with a rental car), they will want to investigate the claim.  At a minimum they will want to speak to their driver and ask them how the accident happened.  The insurance company will also want to verify coverage, by making sure that their driver’s insurance policy was in effect on the date of the accident and that the person driving was a covered driver under the policy.

Even the most efficient insurance companies typically cannot complete an investigation within hours of a car accident, for example: they may have trouble reaching their insured to get their version of events.  While you have called and reported the claim, and you may have provided your version of how the accident happened which is completely correct and truthful, the insurance company will not make a decision to part with their money based ONLY on your version of what happened.

It is frustrating to suddenly be without your vehicle due to someone else’s carelessness and you have ever right to feel frustrated. But…think of it this way: if you got a bill in the mail from someone you didn’t know saying you owe them $1,000 and you need to mail them a check, you would want to know why they think you owe them money.  You wouldn’t just assume you owe them money because they say so and mail out the check.  You would try to figure out if you really owed the money before you paid.

Try to be patient. Even if you are frustrated, don’t take it out on the insurance adjuster.  There is an old saying: “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”  Adjusters are people too, and they are more likely to help out people who are patient and polite than people who scream at them or behave unreasonably.

If you have been injured as a result of a motor vehicle accident, typically the earlier you get sound legal advice, the better. For example, Smith & Hassler strongly recommends you do not give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurance company.  You can call Smith & Hassler for a free consultation regarding your motor vehicle accident claim and speak directly to our attorneys.  We can help you by talking you through the process and helping you understand what to expect.

Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch, has filed a lawsuit against Casey Anthony seeking to recover the $112,000 it spent on the search for 2-year old Cayleigh Anthony. The suit was filed Tuesday July 12th, 2011 in Orlando, Florida. Tim Miller spent a month in 2008 searching for Cayleigh. Miller and nearly 4,200 workers and volunteers traveled to Florida to participate. Casey Anthony didn’t report her daughter missing for 31-days and claimed she didn’t know what happened to her little girl. EquuSearch went to Florida to search for Cayleigh because they were asked to come by Cindy Anthony who is Cayleigh’s grandmother and Casey Anthony’s mother. Texas EquuSearch relies on donations for funding and Mr. Miller said he owes it to those who donated money to recoup the approximately $112,000 spent on the search for Cayleigh, which he says is about 40% of the organization’s annual budget. The lawsuit also says that Texas EquuSearch turned down requests for help from 15 other families because they had committed so many resources to searching for Cayleigh.

There has been some speculation as to whether Casey Anthony, acquitted last week on charges that she murdered Cayleigh, may profit from the tremendous media attention to the murder trial, perhaps through film rights to her story or a book deal. So-called Son of Sam laws exist to stop criminals from profiting financially from their crimes, including by selling their stories. These laws often allow states to seize the proceeds of such sales and use the profits to compensate the murderers’ victims. The catch with Son of Sam laws as applied to the Casey Anthony case however is that the accused criminal must be convicted of the crime for the laws to apply. Casey Anthony was convicted of lying to investigators, but whether that conviction is sufficient to invoke any Son of Sam law that applies remains to be seen.

Son of Sam laws notwithstanding, any media outlet that pays Casey Anthony for her story, her time, or anything else, should prepared themselves for a significant public backlash.

The Casey Anthony trial and her acquittal has highlighted a problem. In many states it is either not a crime, or is only a misdemeanor, to not promptly report one’s child to authorities as being missing. Outraged lawmakers are responding to the verdict by proposing Caylee’s Laws that would allow prosecutors to bring felony charges against parents who do not promptly notify law enforcement their children are missing.

Four days after Caylee Anthony went missing, her mother Casey Anthony entered a hot body contest at a Florida nightclub. For the thirty days or so after Caylee was last seen, Casey Anthony spent her time shopping, hanging out with her friends and going to parties. It was Caylee’s grandmother (Casey’s mother) who called investigators when Casey could not produce her daughter, after which Casey lied to investigators and said Caylee had been kidnapped by an imaginary nanny, and Casey was conducting her own search for her child.

Casey Anthony participating in a hot body contest at a club 4 days after her 2-year old went missing

By Friday July 8, 2011 an online petition at Change.org boasted an incredible 700,000 signatures of people calling for changes to states’ laws on reporting missing children. Lawmakers in at least 16 states have proposed new laws to address the problem, including Texas lawmaker State Senator Chris Harris who says he will introduce a new law for Texas making it a felony to not report a child missing within 48 hours. Under current Texas law it is a misdemeanor only for failing to report abuse or neglect. Senator Harris has said he will introduce a version of Caylee’s Law for Texas during the next legislative session in Spring 2013.

You should support the passage of Caylee’s Law in Texas and when it is proposed call or email your legislative representative and tell them you think Caylee’s Law should be passed in Texas.

The last known picture of Caylee Marie Anthony

Casey Anthony smirks as she speaks with one of her lawyers after her acquittal on murder charges

As personal injury trial lawyers we are thankful for the hard work and dedication of ALL the incumbent Harris County Civil District Court Judges and their dedication to the administration of speedy and fair justice. Judge Larry Weiman of the 80th Civil District Court is particularly deserving of a pat on the back for the speed at which he gets cases on his court’s docket to trial.

Harris County, Texas has a very busy civil district court system. For example, yesterday (Wednesday July 6, 2011) there were 67 new civil lawsuits filed in Harris County District Court. Assuming that is a fairly typical number, that’s 24,445 new suits filed in a year. There are currently 24 civil district judges in Harris County, so that’s just over 1,000 new lawsuits annually for each judge.

In civil litigation delay doesn’t do anybody any good. Lawyers want to move their clients’ cases toward resolution and the parties involved typically want to get the case over and done with so they can have some closure and put it behind them. Judge Larry Weiman is a standout in making that happen. Using the one year period beginning June 1, 2010 and ending June 1, 2011 as a sample, statistics on the Harris County District Clerk’s web site show that Judge Weiman tried more jury trials in his courtroom than any of the other civil district judges.  Judge Weiman had 23 jury trial in his courtroom in that time period, as compared to the average number of jury trials across all courts of 12 trials, nearly twice the average.

Judge Weiman also uses a novel method to set cases for trial. After a lawsuit is filed, courts issue what is called a Docket Control Order (DCO) that notifies the Plaintiff and Defendant of important deadlines in the lawsuit, including the trial setting for the case. The parties have no input into when their case is initially set for trial. What Judge Larry Weiman does when a new suit is filed is informs both sides of the lawsuit in writing that they are to work together and create their own Docket Control Order, then present it to the court by a certain date. This gives the parties to the lawsuit the chance to set deadlines and choose a trial date appropriate to the case. For example: in a simple automobile accident case less time for discovery and an earlier trial date would probably be appropriate and would benefit both sides in getting the case resolved sooner. On the other hand a complex commercial dispute with multiple parties will need more discovery time and a trial date that is further out to allow an opportunity to fully develop the case before trial.

Thanks are due to Judge “Flyin” Larry Weiman of the 80th Civil District Court for his hard work and innovations in making the civil justice system in Harris County better for lawyers and parties alike.

Judge Larry Weiman of the 80th Civil District Court, Harris County, Texas

Last week the Texas Supreme Court issued an opinion in the case Aaron Glenn Haygood v Margarita Garza De Escabedo that will have a profound effect on many personal injury lawsuits in Texas.  The opinion is available online here. Before we discuss the Escabedo opinion, here is a little background to set the stage…

In 2003 the Texas legislature, as part of a sweeping round of tort reform, enacted a new statute: section 41.0105 of the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code. The statute reads as follows: “In addition to any other limitation under law, recovery of medical or health care expenses incurred is limited to the amount actually paid or incurred by or on behalf of the claimant.” Since taking effect September 1, 2003 that one sentence long statute has caused all manner of confusion in the area of personal injury litigation in Texas.

The way the statute came to be interpreted by the majority of Texas courts was that in a personal injury lawsuit where the injured person’s medical bills were paid (in whole or in part) by health insurance, the defendant who caused the plaintiff’s injury was only required to pay the plaintiff the amount paid by health insurance, plus any co-pays and outstanding balance, and was NOT required to pay the plaintiff the amount the plaintiff was billed by her medical provider.  Here are two examples:

Scenario A, prior to CPRC Sec. 41.0105 being enacted: Dan Defendant rear-ends Paul Plaintiff at a red light. Paul goes to the hospital for treatment and the hospital bills Paul $1,000. Paul has private health insurance. The health insurance company pays the hospital $500. Paul has a co-pay of $100. The remaining $400 of Paul’s bill is written-off by the hospital as a discount to Paul’s health insurer, who has a pre-negotiated rate with the hospital. Dan owes Paul the $1,000 that the hospital billed Paul. If Paul has to repay his health insurer the $500 they paid on his behalf (as commonly happens), and Paul is reimbursed the $100 co-pay he paid, then there is a $400 upside. That upside goes to Paul.  Prior to CPRC 41.0105 the reasoning was, if an upside should go to anyone it should go to the injured plaintiff, rather than allowing the negligent defendant to benefit from the plaintiff’s private health insurance.

Scenario B, after CPRC Sec. 41.0105 was enacted: Dan Defendant rear-ends Paul Plaintiff at a red light. Paul goes to the hospital for treatment and the hospital bills Paul $1,000. Paul has private health insurance. The health insurance company pays the hospital $500. Paul has a co-pay of $100. The remaining $400 of Paul’s bill is written-off by the hospital as a discount to Paul’s health insurer, who has a pre-negotiated rate with the hospital. Dan owes Paul $600: the $500 paid by Paul’s health insurance company plus Paul’s $100 co-pay. After CPRC 41.0105 was enacted the ultimate effect of the statute was to allow a defendant to benefit financially from having the good fortune to hit a Plaintiff who had private health insurance.

So….CPRC 41.0105 (often referred to as “paid versus incurred”) limited the amount of money a plaintiff could recover for past medical bills when the plaintiff’s health insurance paid their bills. But: did the statute limit what evidence of medical bills the plaintiff could present to the jury? Could the plaintiff present the jury evidence of the full amount the hospital billed, or could the plaintiff only present the jury with the amount paid by health insurance, plus co-pays and balances owed? Prior to the Texas Supreme Court issuing the Escabedo decision last week, the answer was “We’re not sure.”  After the Escabedo decision, the answer is: a plaintiff may only present a jury with the amount paid by health insurance, plus co-pays, plus balances owed, and MAY NOT present the jury with evidence of the amount that was originally billed by the hospital (or other medical provider).

Prior to Escabedo what most civil trial judges in Texas did was to allow the plaintiff to present the jury with evidence of the full amount billed by medical providers, and if the jury awarded the past medical bills in full, the defendant could make a motion with the court post-verdict to reduce the award of past medicals to the amount paid by health insurance, plus co-pays, plus balances owed. After Escabedo however, personal injury Plaintiffs must now redact their medical bills to remove evidence of the full amount charged by the medical provider, and also (presumably) remove evidence of any health insurance write-offs or discounts.

If you have followed along this far you may be thinking: so what? If all the plaintiff can recover is the amount paid by health insurance, plus co-pays, plus balances owed, what does it matter if that is all the jury hears evidence of?  Well it actually does matter, and here’s why.  Firstly Escabedo sets up a bizarre situation where two plaintiffs sitting next to one another in the back seat of a car rear-ended by a defendant get to put on significantly different evidence of past medical expenses at trial if one plaintiff has health insurance and the other does not. Here’s an example to illustrate:

Plaintiff Alpha is sitting in the right hand side rear seat of a car. Dan Defendant rear-ends the car. Plaintiff Alpha is taken to Memorial Hermann who bills Plaintiff Alpha $1,000 for their services.  Alpha has health insurance with Blue Cross Blue Shield.  BCBS pays Memorial Hermann $400. Alpha has a $150 co-pay. The remaining $450 is written off by Memorial Hermann as an HMO discount per Memorial’s agreement with BCBS. Alpha gets to present the jury with evidence of $550 of past medical bills at trial.

Plaintiff Bravo is sitting in the left hand side rear seat of the same car. Dan Defendant rear-ends the car. Plaintiff Bravo is taken to Memorial Hermann who bills Plaintiff Bravo $1,000 for their services; by coincidence Bravo gets the very same treatment and diagnostic tests Alpha gets.  Bravo has no private health insurance so his bill remains unpaid until the lawsuit over the car accident goes to trial. Alpha gets to present the jury with evidence of $1,000 of past medical bills.

Same accident, same hospital, same treatment, same original billed amount, same jury, same trial, but Alpha and Bravo get to present different evidence of damages for past medical expenses to the jury. When it comes to presenting evidence of past medical bills, the Escabedo decision creates two classes of Plaintiffs: those with health insurance and those without.

Here is another reason this matters: rightly or wrongly, juries are known to use the amount of a personal injury plaintiff’s medical expenses as an index or guide when trying to decide how much to award for “general damages.”  General damages include what are commonly referred to as “pain and suffering” damages, which would include physical pain, mental anguish, physical impairment and disfigurement.

Say a personal injury plaintiff sustained a severe back injury after being rear-ended by an overloaded 18-wheeler and had to have a lumbar fusion procedure. Factoring in the cost of hospital admission, anesthesia, hardware and surgeon’s fees, a major procedure such as a lumbar fusion can routinely cost in excess of $100,000.  However, due to pre-negotiated rates health insurers have with hospitals, surgeons, anesthesiologists and other medical providers, the amount ultimately paid for a $100,000 back surgery, factoring in patient co-pays and the amount paid by health insurance, may be closer to $30,000.

If a jury is presented with $100,000 or more in past medical bills for a plaintiff who had a major back surgery and whose spine will never, ever be the same again, and who cannot pursue the hobbies or family activities he or she once enjoyed pain-free, it is a less daunting task to ask that jury to award $100,000 for pain and suffering than if the jury heard evidence of $30,000 in past medical bills.

If the jury heard evidence of the $100,000 the plaintiff was billed by his doctors for the back surgery (as the jury would have pre-Escabedo) an award of $100,000 for pain and suffering would be an award that was the same amount as the past medical bills. If on the other hand the jury heard evidence of $30,000 in past medical bills (as the jury will after Escabedo) an award of $100,000 for pain and suffering would be more than three times the amount of past medical bills (at least, that’s how it would appear to the jury).

Escabedo was a 7-2 decision by the Texas Supreme Court.  The opinion was written by Justice Nathan Hecht and upends long-standing Texas jurisprudence that a negligent defendant who injures a plaintiff should not benefit from that plaintiff’s private health insurance.  Escabedo is a big win for liability insurance companies in Texas and it will undoubtedly save them millions of dollars annually that would otherwise have gone to injured Texans and their families.

So if a drunk driver slams into you and your family late one night in Houston and you’re rushed to the hospital, go ahead and turn over your health insurance card as soon as you get to the emergency room. Just think about all the money you can save the drunk driver or his insurance company, not just on past medical bills, but also on your pain and suffering damages at trial when the jury is presented with evidence of a fraction of the amount the hospital charged to treat you and your family.

On Monday June 27th, HBO will screen the critically acclaimed documentary Hot Coffee, a documentary that examines the effects of tort reform on individuals and families in Texas and throughout the United States. The documentary uses the story of Stella Liebeck, the plaintiff in the famous McDonald’s coffee case that many members of the public think they know the facts of (but typically don’t) and that is often held up by tort reformers as an example of frivolous litigation or juries making unjustified damage awards. Hot Coffee follows four people, including Stella Liebeck and also Jamie Leigh Jones, currently a Plaintiff against KBR and Halliburton

Anyone with an interest in the preservation of individual rights and the access of Texas families to the civil justice system would do well to watch this important documentary and educate themselves as to the dangers uncontrolled tort reform poses.

Smith & Hassler has previously posted to this blog about the importance of photographing your injuries for a personal injury claim. This post discusses photographing damage to your vehicle and how property damage photographs may be useful evidence in presenting an injury claim to an insurance company.

Generally speaking insurance companies think in a linear way when it comes to the interaction of property damage and injury claims. The worse the damage to your vehicle, the more likely an insurance company is to believe you that you were injured and need medical treatment (assuming you do not have an obvious or objective injury, such as a laceration or broken bone). On the flip side, if there is very little damage to your vehicle, an insurance company will question whether you were injured at all.  In fact it has routinely been our experience at Smith & Hassler that shortly after an injury claim is set up, insurance companies mail us photographs of our client’s vehicle showing minor damage with a letter enclosed stating that due to the minor damage, the insurance company expects that there would be very minor injuries and very little medical treatment.  State Farm Insurance particularly likes to mail minor property damage photographs.

The reality is that while there is a relationship between property damage and the likelihood of injury, the relationship is not simple or straightforward. Different types of vehicles react differently to collisions.  For example: you would expect to see different types and amounts of damage to the back of a Honda Civic than you would a Chevrolet Suburban: the vehicles are made of different materials, have different ground clearances and bumper heights and weigh different amounts.

Another example is when one full-size pickup truck rear-ends another full-size pickup truck. Texas is “truck country” after all, so at Smith & Hassler we see a lot rear-end automobile accidents involving pickup trucks. Because of the way pickup trucks are constructed many makes and models can weather a hard rear-end collision yet show very little damage for it, often not much more than a somewhat bent-down rear bumper.

There is also the fact that people react differently to impact forces. A person who has had decades of neck pain and a prior neck surgery may suffer significant pain and injury from an apparently quite mild rear-end collision, whereas the person sitting next to them who has never had neck pain may experience no injury at all.

Still: insurance companies know that photographs showing minor damage to the injured person’s vehicle can create problems if the injury claim winds up in front of a jury. Insurance defense attorneys use the photographs to characterize the accident as extremely minor…barely a tap…not the type of accident that could cause a person injury.

Some insurance companies, most notably Allstate Insurance, make a special effort to take plenty of photographs of an injured person’s vehicle that has little damage.  They will keep the photographs in their file and seek to introduce them as evidence if a lawsuit is filed on the claim. However: they go out of their way NOT to take photographs of an injured person’s vehicle that has been badly wrecked. They don’t want to take photographs of a badly wrecked car because they would be required to produce those photographs to the injured person’s attorney if a lawsuit is filed, and they know the photographs will help the injured person at trial. There is no guarantee that a judge will allow photographs of the vehicles into evidence at trial, but many many insurance companies try to skew the evidence in their favor from the beginning.

Before you take photographs of the damage to your vehicle you should keep in mind that if your injury claim goes into litigation (in other words, you hire an attorney and a lawsuit is filed over your injuries), the photographs will have to be produced to the insurance defense attorney if they request them (and they always do request them).   If there was severe damage to your vehicle you should take lots of good quality photographs from multiple angles showing the extent of the damage.  Here are a few bullet point suggestions:

1. Take plenty of photographs.  Digital photographs are free to take and easy to store on a computer, so it costs you the same to take 50 pictures as it does to take 5 pictures.
2. If the airbags in your vehicle deployed, take some interior photographs showing the airbags were deployed.
3. Look for “transferred damage” and photograph it. Transferred damage is damage to your vehicle that was not the result of a direct impact to the damaged area, for example: in a severe rear-end collision the rear roof pillars or the roof itself may become buckled from the force of the impact.
4. In a rear-end impact, particularly to a a large SUV or full-size pickup truck, look underneath the rear of the vehicle because bumper mounting brackets may be buckled or broken.  Take photographs.
5. In a rear-end collision involving a pickup truck, check to see if the bed of the pickup truck was pushed forward and damaged the rear of the cab. An example of this type of damage is inserted below.
6. Don’t just leave the photographs on your camera and assume they will be safe.  What if you lose your camera or there is a problem with the memory card?  Transfer your photographs to your PC or laptop and think about uploading them to a web site that hosts pictures for free, such as www.kodakgallery.com or www.photobucket.com – make sure that the photographs are private and not available to just anyone.
7. Don’t put the photographs on your Facebook or MySpace page! If you post the property damage photographs to a social networking web site and your injury claim goes into litigation, you open the possibility of the insurance defense attorney being able to get discovery of your Facebook page because you posted information related to the car accident.

This photograph is an example of damage from a rear-end collision to a pickup truck where the truck bed was pushed forward into the cab.

If you, a friend or a family member have been injured in a car accident, Smith & Hassler’s experienced personal injury attorneys are available to give you a free consultation either in-person or by phone.  Sometimes people injured in car accident wait before consulting an attorney. They have good intentions: not wanting to seem “sue happy,” waiting to see if their injuries will get better or because an insurance adjuster is discouraging them from seeking legal advice (that happens).  It is better to know your rights early in the process and have an experienced Houston personal injury attorney explain the steps involved in car accident injury claim and what you can do NOW to increase the chances of a good outcome.

On June 17, 2011 Governor Rick Perry vetoed a bill that if enacted would have banned texting-while-driving in Texas. Governor Perry said he vetoed the bill because he viewed it as “a government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults.” Car & Driver Magazine, which can hardly be viewed as a politically partisan media outlet, performed a study in 2007 on the dangerous effects of texting while driving: you can read the Car & Driver article here.  The conclusion Car & Driver reached through their experiment is that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving while intoxicated.

Results from Car & Driver Magazine's test comparing text-driving to drunk-driving

It is hard to imagine how the alleged “micromanagement” of adults’ lives would not be justified in banning a driving behavior that is known to create a potentially deadly distraction to drivers on Texas’ public roads. Obviously just because text-driving is banned doesn’t mean people won’t do it, but it certainly can’t hurt to try and remedy the problem and the possibility of prosecution may cause some people to think twice. Just ask Californian Ling Murray whose 2-year old daughter Calli was killed by a text-driving teen and the mother and child walked hand-in-hand in a crosswalk. Or the family of 32-year old Martha Ovalle, a nanny on her way to work in Newport Beach, California who was hit and killed in a crosswalk by a texting driver who was later convicted of felony vehicular manslaughter. And pedestrians are not the only potential victims of driver’s distracted by text messaging: 17-year old driver Alexandria “Alex” Marie Brown died November 2009 in Lubbock, Texas after she rolled her truck and was ejected while driving to school. Alex’ cell phone record indicated she replied to a text message moments before losing control of her vehicle and crashing.

During the same legislative session Governor Perry designated the latest round of tort reform a legislative emergency, moving it to the top of the list of bills up for debate and consideration. Banning a notoriously dangerous driving behavior that has undeniably cost Texan lives (and will continue to do so) did not merit such prompt attention however. What a shame.