By Kyle Roby, Attorney
English, Lucas, Priest and Owsley, LLP
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations apply to all tractor-trailers and truck drivers in the U.S., including those in Kentucky and Tennessee. These regulations cover every aspect of operating, maintaining, and driving a truck. One of the most important, but also most ignored, part of these regulations concerns how long a driver can be behind the wheel in a given day, called hours of service rule. The hours of service rule provides that a truck driver may work no more than 14 hours in a day, with only 11 of those hours actual driving time. The rule is intended to limit truck driver fatigue. A truck driver can only operate a vehicle for 8 consecutive hours before taking a break, which must be 30 minutes or longer. The truck driver must record his hours of service in a drivers log book that he or she must keep updated at all times while driving.
These rules are hard to enforce. Often, when we handle a truck accident case for a client, this is one of the first things we examine, and we often find that the trucking company and truck driver has violated this rule, falsified their log book, or exceed their hours of service. Having an experienced attorney examine the drivers log books and hours of services is critical when a truck driver has caused a wreck. Read More
If you drive or ride in an automobile, there's a pretty good chance that you will be involved in an accident at some point in your life. If and when this happens, it pays to seek legal counsel early in the process, even if the negligent driver's insurance company seems cooperative. This is because the legal process can be complex. This Tennessee injury accident case shows why it is important to have a qualified attorney involved in your lawsuit as soon as possible.
Unexpected issues such as the timeliness of service of process or the determination of whether a negligent driver is covered under a vehicle owner's insurance policy can pop up even in a seemingly simple car accident case in which fault is clear. Read More
By Nathan Vinson
Attorney, English, Lucas, Priest & Owsley, LLP
Tax season is behind us (ahh, it feels nice to type this…) but it’s never too early to remind folks what to look for in a tax preparer – particularly given the news out of the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year.
The U.S. Department of Justice banned a Kentucky man from preparing tax returns for life after auditing several of his clients’ returns. He offered a service in which he would go to the home of a client and prepare their tax returns on the spot, but he filed fake deductions, including using his own relatives as dependents on their returns and falsifying letters from churches indicating that people had donated money that they had not. He is banned from preparing taxes for life, and rightly so. The Internal Revenue Service takes incidents like this very seriously and has taken a necessary step to help keep the tax preparation industry free of con artists. Read More
When someone is injured in a car accident, there are several different types of damages that can be included in a settlement or judgment, assuming that a case of negligence can be made against the negligent driver. Depending upon the circumstances, possible damages include past and future medical expenses, lost wages, loss of future earning capacity and property damages.
Non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life, are more difficult to calculate than economic damages, such as medical bills and lost wages. Often, these are the most heavily contested elements of a car wreck case, once liability has been established. Sometimes, those types of damages are even the subject of an appeal. Read More
Most civil lawsuits involving personal injury are subject to a statute of limitations, or time limit, after which a party has no legal recourse unless a special exception applies. When this happens, it is often said that the statute of limitations has been "tolled." Both the length of the limitations period and the possibility of tolling can vary widely, depending upon the state in which the accident occurred.
The recent case of Beaumont v. Zeru discussed the extent to which an insurance company's payment of certain benefits affects the time period during which an injured motorist may file suit against the responsible party. Read More
Most drivers carry at least some uninsured/underinsured motorist protection, but many do not understand the difficulties that may arise when it comes time to make a claim under this coverage. Unfortunately, simply having an accident with an uninsured or underinsured motorist does not automatically result in a payout by the insurance company, even when the insured's injuries are catastrophic or fatal.
Instead, the insured person (or his or her family, in the event of a wrongful death), must negotiate a settlement with the insurance company or proceed to trial against the uninsured person and obtain a verdict. Even then, the insurance company has a right to appeal the verdict on the grounds that it was improper or excessive. This is exactly what happened in the recent Tennessee case of Monypeny v. Kheiv. Read More
