SOUTHEAST TEXAS RECORD

There are 10 things every person injured in an accident should do. One of the greatest obstacles to personal injury lawsuits is missing or incomplete documentation from the time of the accident moving forward. It is impossible to overstate the importance of thoroughly documenting every key event from the time of your injury.

Recent events suggest that the pursuit of power may be as corrupting as holding power itself. It certainly makes hypocrites of most. Consider the Democrats today who have been saying that Trump must concede the election for the good of the country.

Texans have held a right to elect their judiciary for 150 years. Every few years, the legal elites and media start testing if now is the time they can take away this right. Now is another of those times. A group of politicians, the Texas Commission on Judicial Selection is meeting and again considering this issue and will again recommend that the right to elect partisan judges is too much freedom to grant non law licensed folks.

Democrats have a long history of refusing to talk about issues that are wildly unpopular with the American people.

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and President Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett as her successor have raised anxieties about a reconfigured court’s impact on our environmental laws. Barrett’s refusal to answer questions on climate change during her confirmation hearings has only increased worries about the future of climate legislation and environmental protection if she joins the court.

TCJL today filed an amicus brief in a matter pending before the Texas Supreme Court regarding a key provision of the 1995 reforms to the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA).

Amidst all the other tribulations visited upon these United States in 2020, we find ourselves—like a frog in the proverbial pot of boiling water—immersed in the suddenly-ubiquitous delusion of wokeness. With startling abruptness, concepts and terminology previously at the periphery of popular culture—“white privilege,” “systemic racism,” “unconscious bias,” and the like—have become household terms. Once seemingly limited to the fever swamp of academia, and even then mainly confined to a few humanities disciplines, the death of George Floyd catapulted the long-simmering (and frequently-ridiculed) rhetoric of wokeness into the headlines. Without warning, fringe organizations like Black Lives Matter unexpectedly became mainstream—complete with corporate sponsorships and celebrity spokesmen.

Our collective perceptions of trial lawyers comes from the golden era of television, where the practice of trial law was romanticized over decades. Whether the public’s perception of the lives and careers of trial lawyers were shaped by Mason, Matlock, Becker - or even Goodman, Chiles, and Hutz - these characters brought the lives of trial lawyers into our living rooms.

Sadly, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Beta Ginsburg passed away last Friday. Her death came the day after the country celebrated Constitution Day, fitting in a way. She is being appropriately honored for her service to the country. Who will replace her and when is a political question that will no doubt be a great battle. But, before that we should all remember the good judge.

Perhaps unfairly, most jurists are quickly forgotten when they leave the bench. Some are remembered only in infamy: the “Four Horsemen” who blocked the New Deal early on; Roger Taney for the Dred Scott decision; Harry Blackmun as the unlikely author of Roe v. Wade, and so forth. Justices with a literary flair tend to linger in the public mind, explaining the enduring influence of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Robert Jackson, among a handful of others.

Since the dawn of the COVID-19 era almost six months ago, the way we work as a nation and as a planet have been turned upside down. While many businesses no longer have employees gather together to work in the same physical office, in some ways, our inter-connectedness has improved as we refine our technology skills and allow the virtual world to help connect our business networks and professional relationships.

From The Lufkin Daily News “At long last, have you left no sense  of decency?” With that attorney Joseph Welch effectively ended Sen.  Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt against alleged “communists.” Americans  were able speak more freely, and we assumed “witch hunts” were a thing  of the past.Lawyers have always been in the forefront, protecting  freedom of speech.

The coronavirus has wreaked havoc on Americans’ health as well as the health of our economy over the past several months. The real estate industry is certainly no exception. Due to challenges and unpredictability ahead, combined with record unemployment and cost-cutting layoffs, many Americans have put their plans to purchase a home on hold.

The non-profit National Rifle Association, founded in 1871, describes itself as “America’s longest-standing civil rights organization.” With nearly five million members, the NRA is also one of the nation’s largest and most influential organizations, promoting the safe ownership and use of firearms. Through its affiliated foundation (a tax-exempt entity formed in 1990), political advocacy arm (the Institute for Legislative Action), publications, and programs, the NRA is widely regarded as the leading champion of the rights of gun owners. The NRA’s mission is “preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” Disclosure: I am a Life Member of the NRA.

The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us many things about how lawyers in the United States have traditionally practiced law. While we all had a strong sense that much of the daily practice of law was more antiquated than it needed to be, leave it to a global pandemic to really bring this into focus. The crisis has tested everything from how (or if) lawyers used technology, the nuts and bolts of how you ran your practice, how you interacted with clients and your own legal and support teams, to how realistic and current your risk management plans were.

“No shirt, no shoes, no service.” This is a sign we have seen in private businesses in the United States since the 1950s. So what about “No mask, no service,” as a sign of the times today?

Mark McCaig exposes a bit of the waste in the so-called Paycheck Protection Program that benefits Democratic candidates.

nsurance Council of Texas (ICT) Executive Director, Albert Betts Jr., offers a conversation around the call for “fairness” in paying insurance claims.

“My torts professor taught us that uncertainty about the standard of care creates what he calls a ‘cliff problem’… When we know there’s a liability cliff—some line that will be catastrophic to step across—but we don’t know exactly where the edge of the cliff is, we will avoid the ground near the cliff altogether.” That testimony, provided by Texas Christian University General Counsel Leroy Tyner to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, puts into clear focus the tremendously difficult decisions businesses across our state and nation are facing today.

Tuesday night, during another marathon session of Harris County Commissioners Court, Commissioners voted on party lines to appoint local attorney Christopher Hollins as interim county clerk. Hollins will take office on June 1, filling the vacancy left by Diane Trautman’s abrupt resignation. According to media reports, Hollins has pledged not to seek election to the office this November.