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Lawsuit Filed Against Bar That Served Alcoholic Beverages to An Off Duty Police Officer Prior to Deadly Collision
March 08, 2010
Topic: Auto Accidents: Drunk Driving

The family of Sonia Baker, who was killed in a collision with Jesus Cisneros, an off-duty Fort Worth police officer, filed a lawsuit Thursday in Tarrant County against The Pour House, the bar where they claim the officer became intoxicated. The family's attorney said that while Officer Cisneros was at the Pour House, he was served four beers and four shots. According to police, Officer Cisneros was driving at least 70 mph in 35 mph zone in the 3800 block of Columbus Trail when his Toyota Highlander slammed into Baker's car. Mr. Cisneros blood alcohol level was reported to be 0.17 -- more than two times the legal limit. Cisneros is facing criminal charges of intoxication manslaughter.

The questions about why the servers contineud to serve alcoholic beverages to Mr. Cisneros at The Pour House are highlighted by the acknowledgment of the police department which indicates that Mr. Cisneros had been consuming alcohol even before his arrival at the Pour House. According to the Fort Worth Police, Cisneros started drinking while on-duty earlier at other bars that night as part of an unauthorized undercover bar detail. Typically, one would have expected the servers at the Pour House to have noticed that Mr. Cisneros was obviously intoxicated if he had been drinking prior to his arrival at the Pour House especially if he was served 8 alcoholic beverages by servers at the Pour House.

Cisneros was at a birthday party at The Pour House which was attended by a number of other officers, police have said. According the investigation conducted by the attorney for the Baker family,Cisneros was involved in an altercation with another off-duty police officer who was working security at the Pour House. That officer supposedly told Mr. Cisneros to leave the premises despite his intoxicated condition. The implication was that the Pour House knew Cisneros was obviously intoxicated and permitted him to drive without securing alternate transportation.

The attorney for the Baker family has also blamed the Fort Worth Police Department for not firing Mr. Cisneros because he had previously been involved in another alcohol-related incident about two years earlier. Instead, he was suspended for 20 days.

The family struggled to explain the death to Baker's 5-year-old son. "He had said that his mother had run away," Lopez said. "We had to explain to him that she loved him and there is no way she would run away from them. And we had to tell him the mommy's with Jesus now."

In Texas, commercial establishments that sell alcoholic beverages can be held liable for serving alcoholic beverages to a person who is under the age of 21 ("a minor" under Texas law) or for serving a person who is obviously intoxicated. Bars and restaurants that serve alcoholic beverages are supposed to have measures in place to ensure that only persons of legal age are sold and permitted to consume alcoholic beverages on the premises. Then, for those customers who are of legal age to purchase and to consume alcoholic beverages, the bar and the servers have a legal obligation not to serve their patrons so much alcohol that the patron becomes intoxicated. Further, if a patron does become obviously intoxicated that bar should take steps to arrange for alternate transportation to protect not only their patron from being injured but to also to protect the public from being involved in a collision with an intoxicated driver.

We strongly recommend that if you are the victim of a drunk driving accident, immediately contact Rachel Montes or Tom Herald of Montes Herald Law Group, LLP to discuss your case and to understand your rights. We are experienced and qualified attorneys. We handle drunk driving collision cases on a regular basis. Call us at (214) 522-9401 and visit our website www.MontesHerald.com for more information about our attorneys, our practice areas, and they way we approach cases such as this. While we are located in Irving, Texas, we handle cases against drunk drivers in Lewisville, Coppell, Dallas, Denton and all across the State of Texas. Montes Herald Law Group, LLP is a proud supporter of Mother's Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

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More Statistics on the Dangers of Texting While Driving
March 08, 2010
Topic: Auto Accidents: Drivers Distracted by Text Messaging and Using Cell Phones While Driving

The Texas Department of Public Safety has released records which show hundreds of car crashes in North Texas last year were linked to a cell phone in the hand of the driver. Drivers on cell phones caused nearly 700 crashes in North Texas last year. Four of those wrecks resulted in fatalities. In the last five years, a direct link has been shown in more than 1,700 wrecks caused by drivers using their cell phones.

While Texas has enacted some laws against Driving While Texting or DWT, during the 2009 legislative session, lawmakers failed to enact laws that would make it illegal to text while driving. To date, twenty states have already banned texting while driving. As Dan Ronan, of AAA Texas explains the distraction, "You're looking at the keyboard, looking at the screen, processing the information, going back and forth, and you're trying to do this at 70 miles per hour on the George Bush Turnpike."

The Montes Herald Law Group, L.L.P. is a law firm with offices in Irving and Dallas Texas. We are experienced and qualified attorneys who dedicate our practice to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of car accidents and other cases where people are severely injured through the negligence and reckless conduct of others. Please visit our website at www.MontesHerald.com for more information concerning our law firm and attorneys Rachel Montes and Tom Herald. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (214) 522-9401 or email us at Rachel@MontesHerald.com or Thomas@MontesHerald.com for a free case evaluation.

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Southlake Woman Killed When Her Toyota Corolla Went Out of Control. Meanwhile, Toyota Tells Congress Its Vehicles Are Safe.
March 01, 2010
Topic: Defective Products: Product Recalls

While Toyota continues to assure Congress and the world that its vehicles are safe, police in Southlake, Texas are investigating another fatal collision involving a Toyota Corolla that killed Waynoka Ricord (77) of Southlake. Texas. On Sunday, February 28, 2010, as Ms. Ricord was driving home from work, her car veered off the road and hit a tree, bounced off and hit a second tree. Police have not had sufficient time to determine whether the crash is related to the recent recall problems that have been linked with so many Toyota vehicles. While the Corolla involved in this wreck was not on the list of vehicle recalls announced by Toyota, many critics of Toyota have been alleging that the scope of Toyota's recall is too limited and is not covering all of the vehicles affected.Waynoka Ricord. She died early Sunday at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Grapevine shortly after the wreck.

As far back as 2004, government investigators were looking at 2002-2003 Toyota Camrys and Solaras and Lexus ES 300s to determine whether they were defective, gathering information about 37 owner complaints of sudden acceleration, according to the Center for Auto Safety.

Last week, during Congressional hearings, James Lentz, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. testified, "We are confident that no problems exist with the electronic throttle-control system in our vehicles." Lentz claimed Toyota conducted extensive testing of the system's fail-safe mechanisms. But under questioning from Henry Waxman, Mr. Lentz conceded he was "not totally" certain that Toyota had fixed the problem. To safeguard against further occurrences, the company said it would install brake-override systems in its new North American vehicles by the end of year, and that Toyota would retrofit older models where possible.

Toyota's failure to include a brake override system in its design has been widely criticized, especitally since over vehicle manufacturers foresaw the need for this safety design and included a brake override system in their vehicles. The brake override systems allow a driver to stop a car with the footbrake even if the accelerator is depressed and the vehicle is running at full throttle. "If the brake and the accelerator are in an argument, the brake wins," a spokesman at Chrysler said in describing the systems, which it began installing in 2003. Likewise, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have also installed such systems in their cars as far back as 10 years ago. In addition, General Motors installs brake override in all of its cars in which it is possible for the engine at full throttle to overwhelm the brakes. "Most other automakers have adopted this technology," said Sean Kane, a former researcher at the Center for Auto Safety who now works at Safety Research and Strategies. Not adding the systems "is one of the mistakes that created this perfect storm for Toyota." However, Toyota did not respond to questions about its decisions not to include a brake override as part of the design of its vehicles.

The following year models have been added to the list of vehicles which will receive brake override upgrade: 2005-2010 Tacoma, 2009-2010 Venza and 2008-2010 Sequoia. Toyota previously announced that the system would be installed onto the 2007-2010 Camry, 2005-2010 Avalon, and the 2007-2010 Lexus ES 350, 2006-2010 IS 350 and 2006-2010 IS 250 models. The brake override feature is not an integral part of the recall remedy, but is instead being added as an extra measure of confidence for Toyota owners. It will be installed on Tacoma and Venza at the same time as the recall modifications are performed.

Meanwhile, owners of Toyota vehicles are still finding it difficult to determine how they should respond to all of the safety concerns concerning Toyota vehicles. Representative Edolphus Towns, Democrat of New York, is trying to force Toyota to extend to all owners of Toyota vehicles the same type of protections that the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, was able to get for citizens of New York. As part of that settlement, Toyota agreed that it would pick up cars and trucks at the homes of drivers, pay for out-of-pocket transportation costs and offer drivers free rental cars during repairs.

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How Important Is Safety to Toyota?
February 23, 2010
Topic: Defective Products: Product Recalls

How important is safety at Toyota? According to a document sent to a U.S. congressional committee investigating Toyota and its handling of the recent disclosure defects with so many of the Toyota line of vehicles, Toyota Motor Corporation was able to saved $100 million by "negotiating" recalls of its vehicles. According to internal Toyota documents, Toyota executives described their ability to negotiate around recalls as "Wins for Toyota." Toyota was able reduce or to delay the effect of proposed rules on roofs, door locks and protection in side-impact crashes, according to the document that was turned over to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and obtained yesterday. By delaying the rules, Toyota was credited with saving about $135 million. Yet Toyota continues to claim "Our first priority is the safety of our customers and to conclude otherwise on the basis of one internal presentation is wrong. Our values have always been to put the customer first and ensure the highest levels of safety and quality."

In contrast, over the past few years, when owners of Toyota vehicles complained about unwanted acceleration, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. said Toyota representatives "commonly responded ... by concluding that the events the consumer described could not have happened." Stupak also accused Lentz of misleading the public in television interviews in which he said Toyota studied the problem and the cause was the sticky pedals and floor mats. He said experts interviewed by the committee demonstrated that the report used an extremely small sample that would not get to the root of the problem. One of the primary authors of the Exponent report said they did not examine any vehicles or components that had the unintended accelerations.

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Toyota's internal documents reveal:

Toyota saved $100 million referring to a 2007 investigation in which Toyota recalled 55,000 vehicles, including Camry and Lexus ES cars, citing the potential for floor mats to trap accelerator pedals, after an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Toyota was able to avoid investigations of the Tacoma pickup for rust as well as resolve a labeling recall without civil penalties, saving approximately $20 million in "buybacks."

Toyota saved thousands of hours of labor by delaying NHTSA's revamped consumer ratings, the New Car Assessment Program, according to the document. The program grades new models on a five-star scale based on how well they fare in crash tests.

As if Toyota was not already in enough trouble, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York issued a subpoena that requested Toyota and its units produce documents related to unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles and the braking system of the Prius, the automaker said in a regulatory filing to the SEC. This new development of being subpoened by a federal grand jury has far reaching implications. There is no doubt that it will create issues for Toyota executives who are scheduled to testify at hearings Tuesday and Wednesday. Not only is the subpoena an indication that Toyota may face large civil penalties and fines for the automaker, but that the United States government may even decide to issue criminal indictments against Toyota executives. Even a carefully crafted apology could be used against the company or the executive in a criminal trial.

Further, considering the scope of the problems Toyota has been dealing with and the public outrage, lawmakers are likely to press for direct answers to specific questions and to be unsatisfied if executives refuse to answer questions by asserting their Fifth Amendment rights. For example, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who will run Tuesday's hearing, said documents and interviews demonstrate that the company relied on a flawed engineering report and resisted efforts to link Toyota'selectronics to the problems with unintended acceleration in an effort to reassure the public that it found the answer to the problem and that the problem was limited in scope. In a letter to Toyota, Stupak said a review of consumer complaints shows company personnel identified sticking pedals or floor mats as the cause of only 16 percent of the unintended acceleration reports and that approximately 70 percent of the acceleration incidents in Toyota's customer call database involved vehicles that are not subject to the 2009 and 2010 floor mat and "sticky pedal" recalls leading Stupak to the conclusion that Toyota was not being up-front in its disclosures to the public or the handling of the problem.

In addition, the SEC is also beginning an investigation of Toyota and whether or not Toyota complied with SEC regulations since its stock is publicly traded. Quinn Gillespie & Associates, a prominent lobbying firm, meanwhile, said it had stopped representing Toyota because of a conflict that posed with another client. Quinn Gillespie officials would not identify the other client, but an auto industry official speaking on condition of anonymity to reveal private information said it was State Farm, the giant auto insurer that told federal regulators in 2004 and 2007 about reports of unexpected acceleration in some Toyotas.

It is not clear what laws Toyota might have broken. While the subpoena would specify why prosecutors sought company documents, Toyota would not comment beyond its disclosure with the SEC. Likewise, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment, saying it does not confirm or deny its investigations as a matter of policy.

The Politics Behind the Scene

As we mentioned in our previous post, it will be interesting to watch how the politics of this situation play out. Clearly there are safety issues involved, yet some political figures appear to be more concerned with the financial gains they or their constituents receive from doing business with Toyota than with the safety of Americans. Texas Governor Rick Perry is among those who seem to be more concerned with the business impact of Toyota than with the safety concerns over Toyota vehicles and whether Toyota is telling the truth to its customers and to the government. Last week, Rick Perry commented that ,"It does sometimes appear, however, that the negative news is being encouraged by plaintiffs' trial lawyers, union activists and those interested in cutting into Toyota's market share." This approach is not atypical as according to government documents, Toyota has been steadily increasing its lobbying efforts to obtain favorable legislation and treatment. For example, 10 years ago, Toyota spent $685,684 on Washington lobbying as compared to 2009 when it spent $5.2 million.

Stay tuned. We are sure that the hearings this week will definitely lead to more questions about Toyota's handling of this crisis.

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The Politics Behind The Toyota Problems
February 18, 2010
Topic: Defective Products: Product Recalls

There is no doubt Toyota is deep in a crisis and is not only facing a public relations nightmare, but also probably a long line legal problems over the widespread recalls of its vehicles over the past couple of months. However, not everyone wants to hold Toyota accountable for its actions that have been linked to numerous deaths and injuries.

While the safety of the public should be the primary concern and focus of everyone involved, Texas Governor Rick Perry appears to be less focused on safety and holding the car manufacturer responsible for its actions than he is in the financial gain the state generates through its relationship with Toyota. In a letter sent this week to Texas Congressman Joe Barton of Ennis, the ranking Republican member of the Energy and Commerce Committee - called for lawmakers to keep in mind next week when company officials testify before the committee the thousands of Texas families "whose economic livelihoods depend on Toyota, ... and to consider the integral role the Japanese automaker plays in the Texas economy." Discounting the need to protect the public from a manufacturer that may have known for years that its product was defective and dangerous and was linked to deadly accidents, Rick Perry commented that ,"It does sometimes appear, however, that the negative news is being encouraged by plaintiffs' trial lawyers, union activists and those interested in cutting into Toyota's market share."

Hopefully, when the hearings take place next week, members of Congress will be more focused on finding the truth, protecting the American public, and holding Toyota accountable for its actions than they are in protecting Toyota's profits.

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