Some of the hardest cases we have worked on include sexual assault lawsuits arising out of the sexual assault of minors here in San Antonio. These cases are difficult legally and emotionally. One such case we took led to a change in Texas law that we are very proud of because it helps all Texans.

Transcript:

Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis. [music] A lot of people we meet with, we have to explain that the law is not made to right every wrong, but the law is written the way it is written due to legislators and courts who have interpreted it a certain way and decided that certain things would be actionable in the civil system. Sometimes the laws need to change because they, by operation, are unfair.

One of the early cases I worked on, which I've talked about in this podcast, involved the sexual assault of a minor. I got involved in that case because at some point along the way, a sexually-oriented business establishment, a strip club, had sued her. When she was being trafficked, she was taken to a strip club at one point. After she was rescued, the strip club sued her and the attorney for the strip club got on the news and said that she looked like Miss America and looked like she wanted to be there even though she was 14 years old. The strip club sued this 14-year-old girl for, according to them, jeopardizing their TABC license.

Somehow or another, this young lady was referred to me because nobody knew how to help her. Two years out of law school, I can't say I really knew how to help her at that time, but I was going to help her. I represented her as a defense attorney first, the one time in my career I was a defense attorney, and then the strip club decided that was a really bad idea on their part and they wanted out of it, but it was too late at that part. We pursued them for allowing this to happen in their bar for not using diligence, and what we felt was something they knew was happening and they just turned a blind eye to it. They filed a motion to dismiss our case in the court.

The law at the time was that if somebody suffered mental injuries without physical injuries, that they don't have a claim in Texas except for a few limited circumstances. This was not one of them. The trial judge told us that that was the law and he didn't feel it was just, but he had to grant their motion, so the case went up on appeal. On appeal, the appellate court said that they thought the law was unjust as well, and they wanted the Supreme Court to give guidance, but for now they were going to change the law and say that if a minor was in a sexually-oriented business, and the law protects minors from entering those businesses, that the court was going to recognize that she would have suffered a mental injury.

This was new law in Texas. The Supreme Court chose not to decide this, so for now, in one appellate division in the state of Texas, we were able to change the law and make new law. This is new law that protects minors. It protects children. It protects them against predators. In this sexual assault case, I was able to represent my client in a way that, not only at the end of the day, stood up for her rights, but due to her courage, we were able to change the law in the state of Texas, at least in one appellate division, so that children are more protected now than they were before. [music]

Josh Fogelman of Austin and Justin Hill teamed up to represent a nice lady injured when a ceiling tile fell and hit her on the head. The ceiling tile had become soaked with water due to an improper AC repair. This leak was known and never fixed. When the tile hit her in the head, she suffered serious psychological and neurological injuries.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.

[music]

Justin Hill: Occasionally, on this podcast, we get to have our friends, our colleagues, our co-counsel/co-workers on to join us and discuss cases and issues and other things we've worked together. I have Josh Fogelman here with me today who's an injury lawyer in Austin, a really good friend of mine and classmate from Baylor Law School. Him and I had the occasion over time to work on a few things together, but today, we're going to talk about a case we worked on out of Austin. We're not going to say the name, Josh. We're not going to say any amounts. It was a really fascinating case with a really fascinating client that had a really fantastic result. Tell me what you remember about the factual scenario.

Josh: This was definitely an interesting one. We represented a woman who was visiting Austin from out of state with her husband. They were staying at a hotel in Downtown Austin. Our client was sitting in the lobby of the hotel waiting to speak with the concierge desk and a ceiling tile collapsed and fell and struck her while she was sitting there in the lobby. It was an interesting injury case because this particular client had a pretty extensive history of some physical and psychological injuries.

She'd actually been a civil rights activist who was very involved in the civil rights movement. Because of her involvement in the civil rights movement, she had actually been subjected to a number of physical attacks that had left her with permanent injuries, as well as some pretty serious post-traumatic stress syndrome. When she was hit by this pretty heavy falling object, she was not expecting to strike her. It triggered both her physical and psychological injuries in a permanent manner.

Justin Hill: One of the things that was interesting about that case was the incident was on video, correct?

Josh: It was. There was some security camera footage of the incident. It was pretty alarming.

Justin Hill: Yes, which takes away some of the defenses that we've seen. We talk about that on this podcast a lot. These frivolous defenses, made-up defenses, you see them in all the cases. I always have to tell clients, "No matter what your facts are, if it's on video, they're still going to have a defense to your case." In our case, it seemed like the defense ran the gamut from, "Okay, that happened, but blame all these other people," to then, "Okay, maybe it was our fault. Now, let's blame her pre-existing injuries and her pre-existing psychological issues." What did you find to be the toughest element of that case?

Josh: I thought the toughest element of that case was proving the extent of her harm. One of the things that we struggle with with personal injury lawyers is so many of the cases that we see, you can actually look at photographs of the physical injuries. It's very clear what has happened to a person. Oftentimes, they will walk into the courtroom with

Texas has a number of laws passed and created to protect people from the dangers associated with guns. Many of the laws are created to protect children and vulnerable populations from the dangers of guns. In our Law in 10 series, Steven Lopez and Justin Hill discuss some of these laws.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day to day basis.

Steven Lopez: Hi, I'm Steven Lopez here with Justin Hill, we are both attorneys here at the Hill Law Firm. We're going to talk today about a case that we're dealing with here at the firm, and talk about one of the laws that applies to that case, and it has to do with guns safety. We recently started working on a case, Justin, that involves gun safety. It's an unfortunate incident where a person left a loaded firearm in a place where an eight-year-old could readily access it. They ended up gaining access to that gun and losing their life. Today I thought we'd take some time and talk about gun safety and law under the Texas penal code that has to deal with not only a negligent use of a firearm, but what can happen when negligently using that firearm leads to the wrongful death of a child.

Justin Hill: Yes, I think that's a good point for us to move into some of the things that we get calls about at the law firm. Because we'll get calls where people just want advice on the law, which we can't really give advice on the law if we don't represent somebody. We can touch on some of the big parts of the law that we see in our day to day practice, and that's what you're doing here today. In light of this case you just filed up in Bell County. I think it's a perfect time to talk about,firearm safety, and the laws you're going to talk about. Because you yourself, you're kind of a gun guy and a gun owner.

Steven: I don't know if I'd call myself a gun guy. I do own a couple of firearms, I do hold a concealed handgun license. I'm not the person that carries a gun around every single day. I do have a license to do that, I do believe in the second amendment. I also believe that with owning a gun, and especially if you have a concealed handgun license that, that is an awesome responsibility. It comes with just a lot of responsibility in how you use and operate those firearms.

Justin: Yes, I never got my CHL. It's interesting to me to go to the class, but I've always thought it's either going to get stolen. Somebody else is going to get their hands on it. I have some guns, but I didn't mean you were crazy about guns, but you have guns. You're a supporter of the second amendment. You have your CHL. You've been to the class where they teach you a lot about these laws.

Even in light of that, the case where we're suing the man who had a CHL, and still just ignored some of these very important laws. What's the big criminal law we're going to be talking about in that case as we move forward on that Bell County case? So Our listeners can understand, and specifically our gun-owning listeners can understand that there's a lot of responsibilities about owning a gun outside of just what you're taught in the class.

Steven: The law we're going to be talking about today is Texas penal code section 46.13. That's a law that deals with where you can leave your gun when children are around. Just the plain text of the law says, "A person commits an offense if a child gains access to a readily dischargeable firearm, and the person with criminal negligence fails to secure the firearm or left the firearm in a place to which the person knew, or should have known the child would gain

Our client was rear-ended by a cement truck. The driver of that truck didn't have a commercial driver's license and he and his company knew that. Regardless, they let him have the keys to this large vehicle and put him on the road. He injured my client to the extent she had to have neck surgery.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases. A podcast discusses real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. or confidentiality reasons names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.

[music]

Justin: As the oil and gas boom in Texas has taken over the trucking industry, a lot of trucking companies that require their drivers to be licensed and safe have stooped to hiring truck drivers who maybe aren't licensed and maybe don't have a good driving record.

A couple of years ago, we were contacted by a young lady who was rear-ended by a cement truck. It was not that big of a hit, however, she was very seriously injured. Her injury required her to have surgery on her neck. Working on the case we were able to find out a few things: one that truck driver, the 18-wheeler driver, the cement truck driver that is, did not have a current commercial driver's license. Now, that seems pretty unheard of, and it is pretty unheard of.

Once we started digging into it, however, we found out that this man had been ticketed for not having a driver's license multiple times. When he was ticketed, his employer would pay those tickets. In this case, an employer knew they had a driver who did not have a commercial driver's license and was, therefore, illegal to drive. They gave him the keys to a fully loaded, very heavy cement truck, and sent him out on the road.

Unfortunately for my client, she was in front of this trucker when he failed to stop and he rear-ended her vehicle. Now she has fixation in her neck, which means some of the spinal columns have been fused together. She'll never be the same again, due to the negligence of this truck driver and his company, she's been forever injured.

While working at this case the defendants tried to come up with any defense they could, but they could never get over the fact that they gave the keys to a truck, to a trucker who didn't have a license. In the end, we were able to resolve this case. In the end, I think, we were able to change the way this company did business.

Not only did that happen, this trucker was criminally prosecuted because what he was doing was illegal at the time. At Hill law firm we not only like to represent our clients in the civil matters for the monetary damages they have suffered, we also hopefully can use the civil matter to effectuate change in some of these companies that need to change their policies. This is one of those cases where we were able to change the policies of a company. While our client will never be the same and never fully recover from her injuries, she received a settlement that made her very happy, that she thought was fair under the circumstances, and she got to change the policies of a company to make sure it would never happen to somebody else again.

[music]

Hill Law Firm handles all types of personal injury cases in San Antonio and all over the State of Texas. In this episode, we discuss some of the cases we signed and filed in the past month or so. They include 3 different cases stemming from allegations of sexual abuse, a worker injured on the job, an 18 wheeler crash, and a case involving the negligent securement of a firearm. Hill Law Firm handles a very diverse docket of cases.

Transcript:

San Antonio Injury Attorney, Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.

[music]

All right, welcome to this episode of Hill Law Firm Cases. As I started this podcast, part of the reason to do it was so that I could explain to clients and potential new clients and people in our industry the type of work we do as a law firm. These are not things that we publish or put out there, but it's important, I think, that people understand what type of work we do for multiple reasons. One of which is, I can't say how many times I've had in town, reach out to me and tell me that they didn't know the type of work we did, or that they would have referred me somebody if they'd only known that was the type of case we handle.

I started this podcast with part of the idea of giving a little bit of background in who we are and what we do.

Today, I want to talk a little bit about just a general month. I want to talk about some of the cases that we filed over the last 30, 45 days or so to give you some flavor about the type of work we do. As a lawyer, really, my entire career is representing victims of sexual assault, sexual violence, sexual harassment. It's just always been something I've been very passionate about. It's something many lawyers won't take or handle, so I've gotten a lot of calls by people that have nowhere else to turn. This month is kind of different in that we've had a lot of those cases come in, and we filed three cases involving some sort of sexual assault or sexual harassment. We filed two cases. We brought in two cases involving allegations of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church.

One of those cases has been filed in Houston. One of those cases is here in San Antonio, and it's not currently filed. The one in Houston has been in the newspaper, the Houston Chronicle ran an article about it. We represent the victim who was assaulted when she was still a minor by the youth minister at the church. That youth minister ended up being convicted and is a registered sex offender. He was hired by the church just a very short amount of time before this assault occurred. In our lawsuit, we alleged that they failed to screen who they were hiring, supervise who they were hiring, or train them properly. On top of that, they put this man in close approximation with young children without knowing really anything about him. That case is filed in Harris County.

The one in Bexar County that we've yet to file involves a priest sexual abuse allegation for many years ago, involving a priest who's a well-known pedophile criminal, and the church has admitted as such about this priest. The third case we filed in Bexar County, Texas, involved the owner of a business who was running fake Craigslist ads to get women to come into his office for a fake interview. When they were there for the interview, he would assault, harass, and otherwise try to take advantage of these women who were trying to get a job in these tough economic times. He's now been arrested and indicted in Bexar County, Texas. We have filed a civil lawsuit against him for these actions as well.

Some of the other cases that we filed this month include a traumatic brain injury case...

Steven Lopez is going to chronicle his transition into the San Antonio, Texas personal injury law practice at Hill Law Firm. At recording, he has been at the firm about 3 weeks and will join a few times to discuss. Join Steven and feel free to send us questions.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.

[music]

Welcome to this episode of the Hill Law Firm podcast. Today, my guest is a previous guest. This is the first repeat guest on the Hill Law Firm podcast section. Now he's a member of the law firm. Steven works with us, so this is going to be meet the team and also get caught up on what Steven's doing and what he thinks and what he plans to do here. Thanks, Steven. Welcome.

Steven Lopez: Awesome. Thanks. Happy to be here. Happy to make history.

Justin: [chuckles] Welcome to the Law Firm as well and happy National Tequila Day.

Steven: Awesome. Thanks.

Justin: As a perk here, I have provided Steven a margarita that he's going to have later and I also provided myself to get a little bit about what's going on here. We've got a Q&A with you talking a little bit about where you're from. We put it on our website a blog post with a Q&A, more information on who you are as a background. I don't want to cover that, but I want to talk to you a little bit about your time here. You're in your seventh year as an attorney.

Steven: Seventh year.

Justin: In our world, the seventh year is the most marketable year for a lawyer. Five to eight-year lawyers are the most sought after. I got you at the peak of your career-

Steven: Price.

Justin: [laughs] Let's talk a little bit about first impressions. You got here, what are some of the first impressions you have of working here and your caseload and what you think?

Steven: Sure. Well, I met all the staff, got situated during that first week, and really what was really outstanding to me was the relationship that everybody seems to have here. It's a very small firm and everybody just talks to each other like normal people. You can tell that the staff feel respected and feel that their input's worthy and that people listen to them. There's not really a hierarchy, a boss-employee vibe that I got when I got here. It was very warm from all levels, from the top down. It's a flat aces and just dove in. I got a lot of interesting cases with some really hurt people that I was able to meet and talk to and get involved right from day one. For me, that's the most rewarding part is meeting our clients and getting to work on some interesting cases.

Justin: Our law firm is unique. I tell everybody that we meet and part of what we say on our website is you're going to get a whole bunch of individualized attention. We're very intensely focused on the cases and clients, and that's together, which is going to be exciting and fun.

Steven: Yes, which is great. It's always good to know that you've got someone in your corner, someone that's also familiar with the facts and the legal issues in your case and you're just not on an island out there fighting by yourself because 9 times out of 10, the defense firms and insurance companies have a whole squad of lawyers that are pitted against you. It just feels good to have a strong team and somebody in your corner.

Justin: You got involved and you got caught up on our file system, you got caught up on our document...

Due to future economic needs for babies injured in the birthing process, they are some of the only medical malpractice claims in Texas that remain viable. The causes of birth injuries due to medical error can stem from failure to screen the mother and baby prior to the birth to failing to monitor the health of the mom and baby during the process. Either way, these cases are hard to prove and require expertise. Expert medical malpractice lawyer Brian Steward joins us to discuss.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.

[music]

All right. We're back with another episode of Hill Law Firm Cases, and we're here talking with Brian Steward regarding medical malpractice lawsuits. Brian is a local lawyer in San Antonio, an injury lawyer, a mediator, and he has had a long history handling medical malpractice from plaintiff's and defendant's side and also pre and post law changes that made it almost impossible in the state of Texas to bring these types of cases.

One of the ways these types of cases have lived on though is in the birth injury context. That's mostly because if somebody is injured at birth, a baby is injured at birth, their medical needs into the future are so significant and so catastrophic really for their families that the claims are still viable and the crazy cost of paying for experts to work these cases up is justifiable in those situations.

Brian, one of the only ones I've ever had experience with, was whenever I was in one of my old law firms. We got a call regarding a terrible birth injury and the baby was going to be injured for life. It was going to have cognitive issues for the rest of its life. The issue was whether or not during birth, there were signs that the oxygen had been deprived to the baby as it was being born.

It turns out, after experts and all this, we didn't have a viable claim. The experts said, "This is a real risk that can happen," and the doctors did everything right in this particular situation, and it could not have been avoided is what we were told. We didn't have a viable claim, but I had spent enough time working up that case and started to realize just how catastrophic--

Before we talk about the law, when families go through a birth, it ends up with a baby that has a terrible injury, what are they looking at lifetime? Do the kids just bounce back or a lot of times they're looking at lifetime future medical needs?

Brian: Most of the children who are delivered and survive that initial 48- to 72-hour period will ultimately be diagnosed with cerebral palsy, which is a catch-all for brain damage as a result of diminished or total lack of oxygen for a period during the time of the birth.

Justin Hill: Let me just interrupt. You mean most of the babies that survive who have had some sort of hypoxic or lack of oxygen injury during delivery?

Brian: Right.

Justin: Okay, sorry.

Brian: When those children and those parents ultimately are trying to evaluate what's taken place, what happens is, unless they're told at that time, which most hospitals won't do, they're trying to look at three, six, nine, 12 months later and that child is failing to make certain...