July 14, 2010

Delaware Attorney Discusses Whether An Employer Whose Car Is Being Driven By An Employee Is Liable If The Employee Hits Another Car And Injures Someone

There are times when an employer is held vicariously liable for the negligent acts of his employee. Vicarious liability comes into play under a doctrine known as “respondeat superior.” In order for an employer to be held liable under the doctrine of respondeat superior, the employee must be acting during the course of and within the scope of his employment at the time of the accident. The meaning of the phrase “scope of employment” has been the subject of many lawsuits.

The Delaware Courts which have dealt with this issue say that the conduct of an employee is within the scope of his employment if:
(a) the employee’s actions are the kind of conduct he is employed to perform;
(b) the employee’s actions take place within the authorized time and space limits; and
(c) the actions are taken, at least in part, for a purpose to serve the employer.

Using these guidelines, the mere fact that an employee happens to be driving his employer’s car at the time of the accident is not enough to make the employer liable for the employee’s negligence.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that an employer can never be held liable for an employee’s negligent operation of a car unless the injured person can prove scope of employment. I bring this up because an employer, or for that matter, any owner of a car can be held liable for the driver’s negligence under a doctrine known as “negligent entrustment.” An employer or any other owner of a car will be held liable for injuries caused by the driver’s negligence if the injured party can prove the following:
(1) entrustment of the automobile by the owner;
(2) to a reckless or incompetent driver such that in said driver's control the automobile becomes a dangerous instrumentality;
(3) the owner knows or has reason to know that said driver is reckless or incompetent; and
(4) said driver causes damage to the property or person of another by his operation of the automobile.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident, you should probably contact a Delaware personal injury lawyer to discuss your rights.

Posted by Charles Snyderman | | Email This Post

Posted In: Personal Injuries

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May 2, 2010

Slip & Fall Injuries - Premises Liability - Delaware Attorney

Let’s face it. People fall and get hurt. But if you want to hold someone else accountable, it’s important to contact a Delaware slip and fall attorney. Most people think if they fall down and see something on the ground near where they fell, that’s all they need to prove when they go to Court. It’s actually much more complicated than that.

Let’s consider some of the arguments the property owner will make in court. Here’s a short list of what we hear in slip and fall cases:
1. The accident was the customer’s fault.
2. There wasn’t anything dangerous or defective on the property.
3. If there was something dangerous or defective, the owner didn’t know that it existed.
4. The owner knew about the dangerous condition, and he took reasonable steps to warn his customers.
5. Even if the owner didn’t put up a warning, the customer should have discovered the dangerous condition.

There are things you can do to assist your Delaware slip and fall attorney.

Make sure you write down what the weather conditions were at the time you fell, even if you fell indoors.

Set aside and save the clothing and shoes you were wearing

If you have diabetes, tell your slip & fall attorney. The defense will find out and will most likely say your low blood sugar caused you to lose your balance and fall

Take pictures of the area where you fell

If you know what caused you to fall, such as food on a supermarket floor, take it with you.

If you’ve been injured in a slip and fall accident, contact a Delaware slip and fall attorney for a free consultation.

Posted by Charles Snyderman | | Email This Post

Posted In: Personal Injuries

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April 28, 2010

Delaware Injury Lawyer Explains Slip and Fall Cases

As a Delaware personal injury lawyer, I talk with many clients who are interested in knowing whether they have a case after slipping and falling. A slip and fall injury case is not as simple as it might seem. This is the first in a series of articles explaining slip and fall cases in Delaware.

A 50-year-old woman went into a store on a rainy day. As she stepped off of a floor mat, her foot slid on the wet floor and she fell, resulting in a fractured hip. There weren’t any wet floor signs in the store. An employee had mopped the floor on the morning of the accident and, based on his inspections of the floor every half hour, he decided that the floor wasn’t wet enough to require additional mopping.

In Delaware, the law relating to these kinds of accidents is as follows:
When a business owner invites customers onto his property to conduct business, he has to exercise care to keep the property in a reasonably safe condition. He has to warn customers about any unreasonable risks which he knows about. Even if he doesn’t have actual knowledge of the risk, he has the same duty to warn if he should have known about it. One other requirement regarding the duty to warn - the risk has to be something that the customer would not be expected to discover for himself.

What do you think the result was? The Court agreed that the floor was damp or wet and slippery, and that this wetness caused this woman to fall. But this was not enough to show an unreasonably dangerousness condition or negligence on the part of the store owner. The Court explained that he was not required to use extraordinary care to keep the floor completely dry. Instead, his duty was to exercise reasonable care, and the Court believed that he did that by installing "walk off" mats in the entranceway to keep the floor dry by soaking up water from customers' shoes and by checking the floor every ½ hour on the day of the accident to see whether the floor was wet enough to require further mopping or the use of a sign.

The Court went on to explain that there wasn’t anything else the owner could have reasonably done to protect his customers from the tracked-in water. He couldn’t have stopped rainwater from being blown onto the floor by the wind or tracked in by other customers. The only way to have kept the floor completely dry is for him to have stationed an employee by the door all day for the sole purpose of mopping up each time a customer entered or left the store. A store owner is not required to do this.

The woman lost the case.

Slip and fall cases are not as easy as most people think. If you were injured in a slip and fall accident and have questions about your rights, call Delaware attorney Charles Snyderman for a free consultation.

Posted by Charles Snyderman | | Email This Post

Posted In: Personal Injuries

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October 30, 2009

Signed Releases From Liability Don't Always Matter

As a Delaware trial lawyer, I was recently called by an injured client who wanted to know whether she could file a lawsuit even though she had signed a release of liability. In her case, the answer was “yes.” A good example of this is a recent trial in Texas where a jury awarded $11.4 million to a boy who was seriously injured at a Texas Motor Speedway, a paved 1/5 -mile track designed for amateur adults and children as young as 8. The accident happened when another boy drove across the lot to enter the track, lost control of the car, narrowly missed a trailer and several parked cars and then slammed into the injured child as his parents, brother, and others watched. driving. He suffered a traumatic brain injury that’s so severe he will never live independently and will need help with basic daily tasks such as bathing, dressing and eating.

The boy’s parents signed releases that spelled out the risks and barred them from filing a lawsuit. Even so, the jury found that the race track should be held accountable because it did not provide barricades, signs, a kill switch on the car, and proper instructions to prevent an accident. After the trial, the Speedway added safety precautions to avoid future problems.

The moral of the story is that if you’re injured after you signed a release, you should consult with a Delaware attorney before you decide that you don’t have a case.

Posted by Charles Snyderman | | Email This Post

Posted In: Personal Injuries

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July 6, 2009

Head Injuries

As a Delaware personal injury lawyer, it still makes my blood boil whenever a doctor who's been hired by an insurance company claims that my seriously injured client didn't really suffer what's known as a traumatic brain injury.

This is the first in a series of articles that will explain how and why this occurs, and what highly skilled attorneys for brain injured clients are doing about it.

Let's begin with an example of what I'm talking about. I represent a young woman who was severely injured in a car crash here in Delaware. One of her injuries was a traumatic brain injury. A well known psychiatrist was hired by the insurance company for the other driver, and he tested my client over 2 full days. After the testing, he issued a report that said, among other things, that my client could not have suffered a brain injury because her MRI and CatScan were normal, she didn't hit her head, and she didn't lose consciousness.

During my 8 hour deposition of this so-called medical expert, I asked a series of questions which resulted in typical hogwash responses. Rather than accepting whatever he said as gospel, I continued to press this expert witness until he finally told the truth. Here's a sample of what he said after a lot of questions.

He started with the statement that "Her MRI and her CAT scan demonstrated no clinical solid evidence of a trauma to her brain."

So I asked:
Q. Tell me what literature you rely on that supports the notion that a negative MRI and negative CAT scan rule out brain injury.
A. There is none.

And later on, I asked:
Q. Let me go back to the MRI and CAT scan, for just a moment. Would you agree that a person can have a normal CAT scan and a normal MRI and yet have a brain injury?
A. That's possible.

He also finally admitted that just like a baby can suffer "shaken baby" brain damage without ever hitting its head, an adult driver can also suffer a brain injury if their head is thrown forward and backward hard enough.

And upon still more questioning, he admitted that a person does not have to lose consciousness in order to have a brain injury.

In my next article on this topic, I'll share more information about brain injuries caused by car crashes, and how insurance company doctors try to pretend that the injury never occurred.



Posted by Charles Snyderman | | Email This Post

Posted In: Personal Injuries

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