Heavier limits weighed for big rigs on Texas highways

IRVING - Heavier trucks could soon be allowed on Texas highways as the state prepares for a potentially massive increase in freight shipments across its roadways caused by the expansion of the Panama Canal.

State officials plan to ask federal officials as well as state legislators permission to allow trucks with six axles weighing up to 97,000 pounds on Interstate 45 from Houston to North Texas, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said Wednesday. The current truck weight limit is generally 80,000 pounds on vehicles with five axles, although trucks heavier than that can -- and frequently do -- legally roll on Texas highways if they first pay for overweight permits.

Speaking to a panel at the 15th annual Transportation and Infrastructure Summit in Irving, Jenkins said Texas officials also would seek higher truck weights on a planned outer loop around Dallas and Fort Worth known as Loop 9 - a project that is expected to be built in the Metroplex over roughly the next 20 years. Parts of the loop are already being built in the eastern part of the region.

The idea would be to take advantage of larger container ships moving through the Panama Canal beginning in August 2014, and have those ships make call at ports in Texas instead of their traditional destinations, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif.

"When the new Panama Canal opens up, somebody's going to be a winner and somebody's going to not be a winner," Jenkins said. "We're already behind."

Working together

Jenkins said he and Texas Department of Transportation executive director Phil Wilson had already broached the subject of designating I-45 as a heavy-truck corridor with their counterparts in Washington, in a test project of sorts. However, he said later, no official decision had been made about the test project, and no timetable was set for possibly rolling out the heavier trucks.

State lawmakers also might be asked to approve the higher weight limits during the next regular session that begins in January in Austin, Wilson and Jenkins said.

Taking advantage of increased freight traffic coming to through Texas from the Panama Canal fits in with the state's mission of creating jobs and expanding economic development in and around ports, Wilson, who also spokes at the summit, said later in the day.

"I-45 and Loop 9 is an opportunity to get this state and the Panama Canal working together," Wilson said. "Obviously Dallas-Fort Worth and the Metroplex is going to be a key part of the distribution system. Load limits is something we're exploring right now and would most likely require a federal fix and action from the state Legislature as well."

The Panama Canal is undergoing its biggest expansion since it was completed in 1914. It currently can handle ships up to 106 feet wide, 965 feet long and 39 feet deep, but after expansion will be able to handle ships up to 161 feet wide, 1,200 feet long and 49 feet deep.

Once expansion is complete, ships will be able to carry nearly triple their previous loads. But experts are debating whether those ships will stop in Texas, or instead stick with their traditional stops in the east or west coasts.

Level playing field

Not everyone agrees that canal expansion will be a major benefit for the Gulf Coast. Officials at Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway, for example, believe the impact will be minimal because of time factors. Given the United States' current infrastructure, a shipment going through the canal and arriving at Houston would take 10 days to two weeks longer to reach its destination than a shipment arriving at a West Coast seaport with a rail connection, one BNSF official has said.

A deep-water port is lacking on the U.S. southern shores, with few options for shippers between Los Angeles and Norfolk, Va. The Port of Houston, for example, plans to deepen its berths in front of its container terminals to 45 feet by 2014.

The state transportation department has created a canal stakeholder working group to help with the planning. The group includes BNSF, the Texas Association of Manufacturers, Texas Farm Bureau and Texas Motor Transportation Association.

Although allowing heavier trucks on I-45 could provide an advantage to the Port of Houston -- possibly making it the port of choice for shippers seeking to get their goods to the central U.S. -- other Texas officials have said that any action taken by the state in response to Panama Canal expansion should create a fair competitive environment for all state ports.

"Texas doesn't need to be picking between Corpus Christi and Houston," Texas Transportation Commissioner Bill Meadows of Fort Worth said in May. "Let them all have their competitive gigs going on."

The working group is putting together a document over the next few months that will spell out the investment needed in Texas to take advantage of Panama Canal expansion - including a possible injection of $1 billion to $3.5 billion to prepare roads, rail lines and other components for additional freight.

Critics have said heavier trucks are a safety hazard because they need longer distances to brake in an emergency. But others say that trucks with a sixth axle carrying 97,000 pounds have the same stopping ability as a five-axle truck carrying 80,000 pounds.

Critics also say that the nation's crumbling roads and bridges will decay quicker if exposed to heavier vehicle weights.

The U.S. has a $70.9 billion backlog of bridge work, and heavier trucks could make the situation much worse, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.


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Source: Star-Telegram (Dickson,8/15)

Infographic: Workplace Fatality Data

Please check out this info graphic, courtesy of Compliance and Safety, on safety in the workplace and the companies responsible for helping to keep you safe on the job.

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The Cole Legal Group has the experience required to handle your accident/injury case, along with a compassionate approach and individual focus that allow you to only worry about getting well. We work aggressively for every single client we accept. We know that personal injuries are just that - personal. They affect not just you, but also your family, friends and loved ones.

Contact Us immediately if you've been injured by the negligence of another.

Featured By: Compliance and Safety LLC

Texas takes tort reform too far

By Patricia Kilday Hart

Of all William Shakespeare's enduring lines, perhaps the one that has resonated most through the generations comes from "Henry VI": "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Taken out of context, it's a great lawyer joke, as if the Bard knew modern society would blame lawyers for everything from inscrutable contracts to ridiculous consumer warning labels. (My favorite: an admonition against running at night on my son's glow-in-the-dark Frisbee.) A lawyer-free world conjures a society free of hair-splitting and hucksterism - in other words, Utopia.

Or does it? In Texas, we're learning what happens when you can't turn to a lawyer for help. Two strong forces are making it nearly impossible to seek redress for injury in state courts: sweeping tort reform laws and a Texas Supreme Court with an activist conservative bent. The results aren't pretty.

Consider the case of Michelle Gaines, who in June 2006 was a popular Palestine teenager with a bright future when an 18-wheeler hauling an oil rig smashed into her car, causing severe brain damage. A Tyler jury ordered the driver who caused the wreck and a businessman involved with the oil rig to pay her $8 million - money Gaines' family desperately needs to provide for her rehabilitation and care for the remainder of her life.

A Tyler appeals court overturned the jury's decision, claiming there was no evidence to support the verdict, and the Texas Supreme Court recently declined to consider Gaines' appeal.

And yet trial testimony showed that the men had destroyed crucial evidence demonstrating joint ownership of the rig and that the driver had been bribed to alter his story. Gaines' attorneys say the court's decision violates precedent that evidence should be construed in a light favorable to a jury's verdict.

Right to jury trial

"It's an outrageous decision," said University of Texas law professor Steve Goode, a member of Gaines' legal team. (The Gaineses' attorneys have asked the court to reconsider.) "It's astounding that they refused to consider this as evidence against this defendant."

But it's not just attorneys involved in specific cases who believe the court is engaging in wrong-headed activism. Tea party activists are beginning to question whether Texas Republicans have dismantled the Seventh Amendment - the right to a jury trial - in their slavish devotion to limiting lawsuits.

Former Harris County District Judge John Devine, who recently defeated Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina with tea party support, has criticized the court's willingness to overturn jury verdicts. And two independent studies suggest that the Texas Supreme Court - once criticized as biased for trial attorneys - has swung to the opposite philosophical pole.

UT law professor David Anderson, in a 2007 study of 69 opinions written by the court in 2004 and 2005, found that defendants - the parties accused of causing injuries - won 87 percent of the time.

Contempt for juries

Is that different from other states? Anderson examined all state appellate cases involving Wal-Mart between 1998 and 2005. The Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of the discount chain in all 12 cases it received. There were 81 other cases in other states, but Wal-Mart prevailed in only 56 percent of them.

Texas Watch, reviewing cases involving consumer complaints from 2004 to 2010, found the court overturned jury verdicts an amazing 74 percent of the time. Wrote the study's authors: "The Texas Supreme Court is expected to respect reasonable jury verdicts. … In the final analysis, the court fails this test, impermissibly usurping the authority of juries and demonstrating contempt for their verdicts."

Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips uses Texas as a cautionary tale against Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's plan for federal tort reform. "Texans are losing their Seventh Amendment rights because they can't get lawyers to take cases anymore," Phillips wrote in a recent blog post.

He cited the case of Charles Caldwell, who died in October 2008 in a Dallas-area nursing home when attendants tried to force medications down his throat, but instead filled his lungs. When his son tried to sue, he could not find a willing lawyer.

Why? Texas tort reform legislation put such low caps on damages that no lawyer could afford to take the case. Yet, earlier this year, the Texas Board of Nursing issued a reprimand against the nurse for committing major medical errors.

Houston attorney Mark McCaig, has been warring with Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which lavishes campaign contributions on friendly politicians, by urging the Republican Party to rethink its stance. He's often dismissed as a phony conservative since he works for trial lawyer Steve Mostyn, a prominent Democratic campaign contributor.

Shakespeare knew it

But McCaig believes the rise of the tea party will challenge tort reform. "What you have seen happen is (that) it has taken away the rights of people with legitimate claims. It goes against the notion of personal responsibility." In our society, that means access to the courts, and to lawyers.

But Shakespeare knew that. The speaker of the famous line from "Henry VI" wanted to replace the rule of law with the personal whims of despots. In a society bereft of legal boundaries, there's no need for lawyers.

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Source: Houston Chronicle (Hart, 8/9)

Patio bistro sets recalled

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Midas Lin is recalling about 16,400 patio bistro sets because when the chair support bar is not fully engaged, the chair poses a fall hazard to a consumer who sits in the partially engaged chair.

The sets were exclusively sold at Lowe's stores nationwide from August 2011 through February 2012 for about $98 for the set.

The firm has received thirteen reports of consumers who fell from partially opened chairs, resulting in reports of back injuries, contusions and scrapes.

This recall involves folding chairs sold with three-piece patio bistro sets. Each set contains two folding chairs and a folding table. The chairs have a black steel frame and dark stained wooden seats and backs. Model #S658-01, item # 0355053 and "Garden Treasures" is printed on the cover of the instruction manual sold with the patio bistro sets.

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled chairs and contact Midas Lin for a new set of warning labels and supplemental instructions for the chairs. Do not return the product to the store.

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Source: KMTR (8/6)

Hyundai Jumps Ahead of Settlement With Latest Recall

The move by Hyundai over the weekend to recall about 200,000 of its 2007-9 Santa Fe crossovers for an air bag problem stemmed from an unlikely source: the proposed settlement of a lawsuit seeking class-action status.

As part of the settlement, owners will have an unusual fallback, if a federal judge approves it: Hyundai will buy the vehicles back if they cannot be fixed, Robert B. Carey, a Phoenix lawyer who filed the suit, said in an interview.

Since 2006, Hyundai has recalled almost 1.3 million vehicles for air bag malfunctions, but this is the first time it has done so as a result of a settlement, a spokesman, Jim Trainor, wrote in an e-mail.

The settlement is to be filed in the United States District Court Central District of California by Aug. 17. Mr. Trainor declined to comment on the settlement, saying it would be inappropriate because the judge had yet to approve it.

However, Mr. Trainor said, regardless of whether the judge approved the settlement, the Santa Fe models will be recalled.

Hyundai says it will fix a software flaw that could result in the front passenger air bag being turned off if a person of “small stature” is seated there.

The defect could increase the chance of injury in a frontal crash, Hyundai said in a report (PDF) to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on its Web site.

The issue is the so-called advanced air bag system required by the federal government since 2006.

The systems are designed to minimize the chance of a person being injured by an air bag. Sensors detect the severity of the crash, the seating position and the occupant’s size. A computer adjusts the force with which the air bag deploys depending on the input.

In addition, if a small child were seated there, which safety experts discourage, a warning light would say the passenger air bag was deactivated.

The thrust of the suit filed in 2009 is the assertion that some Hyundai advanced air bag systems were defective and turned off the passenger air bag when a person weighing as much as 120 pounds was seated.

Two of the named plaintiffs are a couple from Ohio who own a 2006 Sonata. The wife weighs “less than 120 pounds,” according to the suit.

The two others are a Texas couple whose 117-pound daughter’s head hit the windshield in a frontal crash. The suit says the injury occurred because the air bag did not deploy. Mr. Carey said she was wearing a seat belt.

However, the suit also asked to represent “all persons who currently own or lease a 2006–9 Hyundai vehicles with an occupant classification system in the front passenger seat.”

It says those vehicles include, but are not limited to, the Sonata, Tucson, Tiburon, Santa Fe, Elantra, Accent and Azera.

According to Mr. Carey, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, the suit was never certified. The lawyer added that the parties went directly into settlement discussions.

In an interview, Mr. Carey said he wanted the Sante Fe crossovers fixed, but it was Hyundai’s idea to do so with a recall through N.H.T.S.A.

Mr. Carey said the details of the buyback would be included when the proposed settlement was filed.

While the complaint asserted virtually all Hyundai models from 2006–9 had defective air bag systems, only the Santa Fes were being recalled as a result of the pending settlement.

In an e-mail, Mr. Carey wrote that as the case progressed “more robust data” were available and “further information indicated that some of those cars did not have a problem.”

Mr. Carey said he believed “the settlement addresses all vehicles with a problem.”

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Source: The New York Times (Jensen, 7/30)