The Texas balcony collapse attorneys at Denena & Points want you to know your rights to a safe and fit place to live. Section 92 of the Texas Property Code and the TX Attorney General’s website can provide you with good insight to your rights and your landlord’s responsibilities under the law.
For instance, as a tenant you have the right to a place free of any adverse condition that would materially affect your safety or health. A landlord that rents you a place to live essentially guarantees that the place is a fit place for you to live in quiet enjoyment of a safe and healthful environment.
A Texas renter that lives with an unsafe condition that the landlord won’t repair can go to the local Justice of the Peace to get a repair order against the landlord from the JP court. If the landlord still doesn’t repair the unsafe condition, you might have the right to end your lease. But you have to follow specific steps before you can validly end the lease. The Texas Attorney General’s website specifies the steps you can take and the remedies available to tenants suffering in unsafe leased properties.
See our Texas balcony collapse attorneys’ in-depth article on landlord responsibilities to learn more about what you can do if you’re living in an unsafe property.
The building collapse injury attorneys at Denena & Points note that on Thursday morning just before 8 a.m. at Broadway and West 130th Street, a 1915 warehouse structure that was being taken down to make way for new construction suddenly collapsed on top of workers at the site. Three workers were rescued from the rubble.
Two of the workers were partially buried in the debris. One of these workers has since died from his injuries. Another worker was completely buried by the building’s rubble in the northwest corner of the site. Rescuers had to tunnel through the building’s wreckage to reach the trapped workers. One of the surviving workers is listed in serious condition, while the other worker is classified as critical after the fatal building collapse in Manhattan.
Our building collapse injury attorneys point out that the 1915 two-story warehouse was being demolished as part of an expansion of Columbia University. The main campus of Columbia resides in West Harlem near Broadway and 125th Street. The new Manhattanville campus, for which this warehouse was undergoing demolition, has been plagued by problems from the start. The problems include: community protests, eminent domain lawsuits, and city code violations at the site.
The New York City Department of Buildings had already issued citations earlier this month to the site. Other citations were issued the very day of the building collapse. The safety violations included:
Reportedly, demolition workers were taking down the warehouse one floor at a time. A structural beam was cut, and moments later, the entire structure suddenly collapsed on the unprepared workers.
The fatal Manhattan building collapse has led the Manhattan Borough President to issue calls for a full investigation of the disaster by the Department of Buildings (DOB). DOB officials say human error is a possibility.
The closely packed structures of Manhattan make ordinary demolition activity using controlled explosives unusually dangerous. So some building demolitions require structures to be taken down the old-fashioned way, by careful disassembly of bricks, mortar, and beams.
Our building collapse injury attorneys note that cutting of structural members, even in a careful demolition process, is an activity always fraught with danger. And in older buildings, where connecting beams and other structural members might already be in weakened or compromised condition, the activity becomes even more dangerous.
Learn more about the dangers of building collapses. Read our building collapse injury attorneys’ article on weak structural connections as a cause of deadly building collapses.
Houston injury lawyers point out that not all incidents involving child endangerment by a driver involve drunken driving. The penalties from a drunken driving conviction are more severe if the driver had a young child in the vehicle with them at the time of their arrest. Driving drunk and endangering a child is considered a particularly serious crime under Texas law.
But other reckless and foolish behavior that endangers a child is also subject to penalties. For example, Houston police just arrested a man for driving around a crowded parking lot with his 7-year-old stepson on the sunroof of his car. Apparently Abelardo Araujo and his stepson were in the Acres Homes parking lot to attend a “makeshift car show” when Araujo decided to put his stepson on the roof of the car and drive around so that the boy could get a good view of the vehicles.
Concerned parents who might be reading this article can probably imagine all the accidents that could have happened and all the injuries that could have resulted to the boy from his ride aboard the car’s sunroof. Or Houston injury lawyers note that among other considerations, sunroofs present weak points in a car’s structure; they aren’t designed to carry any extra weight. The glass in sunroofs occasionally will give way from slight impacts to a vehicle.
Other vehicles were likely driving through the parking lot at the time. The boy could have slipped off the roof at any time.
Fortunately, a Houston police officer driving along W. Little York noticed the child perched on the roof of the moving car. The officer put a stop to the reckless and dangerous activity and arrested Abelardo Araujo before any injury accident could occur. The officer charged Araujo with child endangerment.
It’s one thing when an adult endangers himself. But when his recklessness endangers others, particularly when it endangers a child, our Houston injury lawyers emphasize that the law takes an interest. Learn about some reckless driving behaviors and what you can do in the event of injury.
Texas work accident attorneys point out that many crane-related work accidents can be prevented if crane operators, owners, and site supervisors take the time to inspect and test a mobile crane’s components and operations prior to placing the equipment into service on a job site. To ensure safety of workers at the site, they need to know the crane’s operation, load, and counterweight capacities; the area through which the swing arm will operate and its load move; the location of above-ground power lines, cables, and other structures that could interfere with crane movement; and any job site restrictions.
We provide a short list of some important safety considerations in mobile crane operations on a site:
Crane owners, operators, and site supervisors can help prevent dangerous accidents resulting in injuries and fatalities. Their careful planning, inspections of the mobile crane’s components and structural integrity, and understanding of the crane’s capabilities and limitations could save lives and compensation costs from needless injuries. Our Texas work accident attorneys emphasize that a solid safety plan and thorough training of site employees in safety procedures costs less in time and dollars than the aftermath of a serious work accident.
Learn the steps to take after a serious work accident if you or a family member suffers injury. Contact the experienced Texas work accident attorneys at Denena & Points for a free and confidential legal consultation. We could explain your available legal options to you and help you understand your potential for a full financial recovery for your injuries. Contact us online or toll free at 877-307-9500.
Texas accident attorneys highlight TxDOT’s focus on a long-term and increasing crash trend in our state: wrong-way driving crashes. TxDOT says that in 2011 our state suffered 329 wrong-way crashes. 79 of those occurred in 4 North Texas counties. More than half of the 79 North Texas wrong-way crashes happened in Dallas County. (Possibly another reason that Dallas features so prominently on Men’s Health Magazine’s list of the most dangerous cities in which to drive.)
Studies of wrong-way crashes by the Texas Transportation Institute reveal that up 75% of these wrecks are caused by drivers under the influence of alcohol. In the last few days, at least two major wrong-way crashes occurred in North Texas. Wednesday morning in Irving, TX, an accident caused by a wrong-way driver led to a second wreck involving a Fire Department vehicle. Another wrong-way wreck between a car and pickup truck in Fort Worth led to a DWI charge for the wrong-way driver.
So TxDOT has slated a new research project beginning in September to look at ways to deter wrong-way driving and prevent crashes. The project will focus on ways to get the attention of possibly impaired wrong way drivers, types of countermeasures effective in properly orienting wrong-way drivers, and ways to alert wrong-way drivers to the fact that they’re driving the wrong way down the road before a crash occurs.
If you’ve been injured in a crash caused by a wrong-way driver, contact our experienced Texas accident attorneys for help. They know how to pinpoint liability in a complex accident scene, and help you obtain the financial compensation your deserve for your traumatic injuries. Call 877-307-9500 (toll free) or use our online contact features to schedule your free legal consultation.
Houston personal injury lawyers discuss the lingering effects of a 1988 mass water poisoning incident. In Camelford, U.K. in 1988, a relief truck driver negligently dumped some 20,000 tons of aluminum sulfate, a highly toxic substance, into the wrong tank at the local water supply for a Cornish town. Some 20,000 customers were affected by the toxic aluminum spill, but it took two weeks before local water authorities even alerted locals to the danger. The water authorities had insisted that the water was safe to drink, and even suggested that customers boil the water (which actually concentrates the aluminum even further).
In the days that followed the toxic aluminum sulfate dump, customers began complaining of vomiting, rashes, mouth ulcers, and other health ailments. One customer, Carole Cross, showed successively worse symptoms over the ensuing years, some of which mimicked Alzheimer’s disease. She died in 2010 and was found by a coroner to have the highest concentration of aluminum in her brain that he had ever seen. Our Houston personal injury lawyers point out that a coroner’s report read at the inquest into her death indicated it was highly likely that her neurological condition and progressive deterioration were results of the negligent aluminum sulfate spill.
Dr. Cross, the widower of Carole Cross, believes that there may be lingering danger for all of the customers affected by the 1988 water contamination, and that authorities should come clean about the dangers. Various experts involved in the inquest have put the blame on the water authority for the hazard, saying that its lack of reliable safety policies and procedures created an environment where a major accident was just waiting to happen. Our Houston personal injury lawyers notice that they also add that the procedures of the water authority responsible for the Camelford water supply did not differ significantly from those of other U.K. water authorities of the era.
Learn more about the contaminants that may be in your current U.S. water supply. Read our article on water safety standards in the United States.
The amusement ride accident attorneys at Denena & Points note that theme park owners and some safety experts claim that about 80% of theme park ride accidents can be attributed to rider misconduct. Rider misconduct includes actions like standing up on moving rides when you’re supposed to remain seated; sticking arms and legs out of ride cars when you shouldn’t; throwing objects out of moving rides, messing with ride hardware, and other dangerous activities.
Kathryn Woodcock is the Director of the “Tools for Holistic Ride Inspection Learning and Leadership (THRILL) Laboratory at Ryerson University in Ontario, Canada. The THRILL Labfocuses on the study of the human factors in amusement rides. The Lab studies how human factors related to rider behavior, accident inspections, and ride control interfaces. Woodcock maintains that the human factors present the most dangers and unpredictable events of an amusement ride.
For instance, Woodcock says that when riders become overexcited by the thrill of a ride, they’re likely to forget any safety warnings they might have read or heard. When riders are bored, they’re more likely to purposely disregard safety warnings and try something risky to feel the extreme rush they’re missing.
Woodcock mentions that ride accidents occur more often on the older-style, more sedate amusement rides than on the latest, multi-million dollar high-tech flights of fancy of the amusement ride world. This statistic might be due in part to the younger generations’ upbringing on extreme sports, “Jackass” risks, and ultra fast paced activity.
So the lab looks at ways to enhance the sense of speed and motion during a ride, provide activities like 3D video games and foam dart targets to occupy riders, and add color lights to distract in order to keep riders amused and occupied at all times during a ride.
The Lab is also exploring ways to improve ride safety inspections and make the ride inspection procedure more predictable, comprehensive, and efficient: comparable to aviation pre-flight inspections. Improved and standardized safety inspection procedures could go a long way towards improving ride safety. Investigations by our amusement ride accident attorneys often find that a failure to inspect or properly maintain a ride contributed to an injury or fatal accident.
If you or a loved one have been injured by a theme park ride and you have questions about how you could obtain fair compensation for the harm, contact our amusement ride accident attorneys for a free and confidential legal consultation. Learn how we can protect your legal rights. And learn your available options for winning just financial compensation from the ride owners responsible for your injury. Our aggressive and experienced amusement ride injury attorneys could guide you to a full recovery after your undeserved accident. Contact us toll free or online to schedule your free case evaluation.
Our Channelview truck accident lawyers just learned of a tragic and disturbing fatal accident caused by shifting truck cargo. Otto Tello, a truck driver from Channelview was hauling drilling pipe near Schriever, LA when the load shifted. The truck was owned by Brammer Engineering Inc., and Mr. Tello was driving it for New Energy Transport in Houston.
The drill pipes on the big rig suddenly slid backwards as Mr. Tello was driving across a narrow bridge. The sudden unbalancing of the truck pulled the rig backwards off of the bridge into a canal. The truck ended up submerged with only one tire emerging above water. Divers pulled Mr. Tello from the canal about 90 minutes after the accident; he died at the scene of the wreck. Police said this accident was the second wreck in recent weeks on the narrow, one-lane bridge above the canal.
This time, the shifting cargo caused the truck driver’s tragic and untimely death. But our Channelview truck accident lawyers emphasize that shifting cargo and an overturning truck could just as easily harm anyone else nearby on the road. The truck driver in Louisiana didn’t deserve his untimely end from shifting truck cargo any more than any other innocent motorist. No one should die because cargo loaders fail to take the proper care to secure a heavy load.
Our Channelview truck accident lawyers point out that surviving family of victims of shifting cargo accidents could hold the cargo loaders liable for their fault. They could hold accountable the company that employed them and failed to instill the proper safety policies and procedures into the employees. They could hold liable the trucking company that did not ensure safe handling and securing of cargo. Multiple parties could be at fault for the tragic accident.
But grieving family members might not know where to look for the culpable parties and the evidence that could prove their liability in court. Experienced Channelview truck accident lawyers like those at Denena & Points could help them in their quest for closure and just compensation following the accident.
With more than 12 years’ of experience successfully handling just such cases, Chad Points and Tony Denena could provide the legal insight and strategy victims’ family members need to ensure justice. If you’ve lost a loved one to a trucking accident, contact Chad and Tony for a free legal consultation. Learn your strategic legal options after a fatal truck accident and who can be held financially accountable for your loss. Call toll free at 877-307-9500, or use our online contact forms to schedule your free case evaluation/consultation.
Houston workplace injury lawyers mention that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) maintains an Injuries, Illnesses, and Fatalities (IIF) data program that you can consult to help understand your risks in your specific job. The IIF program tracks the annual numbers on rates and types of work injuries, work-related illnesses, and on the job fatalities. The program tracks this information and shows how the numbers vary by industry, location, particular occupation, type of incident, and other characteristics over time. The numbers show us not only when industries are improving (or relaxing) safety precautions, but also when various industries are declining in scope and importance within the United States.
Most of the BLS data comes through its Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System (OIICS). The System recently underwent comprehensive revisions for the first time since its inception in 1992. Recent numbers from 2010 reveal the following:
Transportation-related fatal work accidents dcreased slightly in 2010, but still accounted for almost 2 out of 5 fatal work injuries. The updated 2010 data, to be released this spring, are expected to show somewhat higher numbers after a final tally is made. Learn the steps you need to take after you or a loved one experiences a serious transportation-related accident.Download our free book on the process of making a successful injury compensation claim after a truck accident. The book is available free on this webpage to our readers. Just click and download.
Our Texas workplace accident lawyers note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains a Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) as part of its Occupational Safety and Health Statistics program. Numbers from the CFOI provide an informative look at the risks associated with various jobs within the United States.
If you’ve beeen injured in a workplace accident and you have questions about what compensation benefits you’re eligible to cliam, contact our experienced Texas workplace accident lawyers for a free and confidential consultation. Learn about your available legal options based upon the specific circumstances of your case, and learn what to do to obtain a just financial recovery for your work injuries. Our skilled Texas workplace accident lawyers could also help you prepare for potential obstacles you might face in the way of your fair recompense. Call today: 877-307-9500. Or use our online contact form at your convenience to schedule your free case evaluation/consultation.