personal injury

Published on: December 27, 2018

Mesquite Personal Injury Lawyers

Guest and Gray Law Firm has helped countless injured Mesquite residents receive compensation for the injuries they sustained in automobile, motorcycle and trucking accidents. We are committed to serving Mesquite and the surrounding Garland and Balch Springs area residents who have been injured through no fault of their own.

Mesquite is crisscrossed by highways and interstates, with 635 and I-30 being the most well known, but I-20 and several smaller highways cross through the city. 635 is by far the busiest as it is a thoroughfare for Mesquite and surrounding areas to Dallas and beyond. It is also the connection to highway 175 and I-20 going East. Constantly, 635 is plagued by major accidents and delays. Hundreds of thousands of people travel on 635 through Mesquite every single day. As a result, the 635 and I-30 corridors have major accidents on what seems like a daily basis.

Mesquite is also a major commercial trucking route. Mesquite is a highly commercially developed city with retail shopping, eating and other commerce throughout the entire city. This means that big 18-wheelers with tractor trailers are constantly flooding the highways and through streets to get to those areas. In addition to that, commercial vehicles use the highways to get in and out of Dallas and the surrounding areas. As a result, Mesquite has seen a major uptick in commercial traffic accidents over the last several years, thanks in large part to the cities renewal program and North Texas booming economy.

Published on: December 27, 2018

Rockwall: Big Houses, The Lake and Traffic

by Guest and Gray Law Firm

Rockwall is known for a lot of things. Everyone knows that Rockwall is usually acclaimed to be the Wealthiest County in Texas. Although there are short periods, often during oil booms, that Rockwall is unseated from that throne, Rockwall is always near the top. Why? Because it is close to Dallas and other major business hubs, and it is located in a beautiful area overlooking Lake Ray Hubbard. People like that.

Rockwall is also known for Lake Ray Hubbard. A great lake for catching bass and perch. Occasionally, you will hear of reports of an Alligator swimming around. We live in North East Texas. It happens. The lake has drawn a lot of people and retail shopping to the Rockwall area. Theoretically, it is easy to get to Rockwall with access from I-30, the tollway, Highway 67, Highway 205, you name it. The problem is the third main thing that Rockwall is known for: Traffic.

ROCKWALL TRAFFIC IS NOTORIOUS

Published on: December 19, 2018

Guest and Gray: Dedicated to Serving Kaufman County

by Guest and Gray Law Firm

Guest and Gray Law Firm is committed to serving Kaufman county and its residents who have been injured as a result of someone else’s negligence.

We get it. Lawyers, in general, get a bad rap. We are portrayed on TV as money hungry people who will do anything to get ahead. We readily admit that there are those in this industry that are that way, especially in personal injury. But, let me ask you this: are there people like that in your industry? I bet there are. There is probably a lot of them, and I would not for one second automatically think that is what you were simply because you work in the same industry as those people. At Guest and Gray, we work hard for our clients.

At Guest and Gray, our goal is to serve the people of our local community and protect them from being taken advantage of by insurance companies, hospitals and medical providers. That is our number one priority. After you have been injured in an accident, a lot of things happen: you are hurt. You need treatment, so you go to the hospital and then probably follow up treatments, etc.. That is expensive. Emergency hospital care can cost upwards of $100,000 depending on the types of treatments performed. On top of that, your car is messed up and either needs to be fixed or replaced. Your own health insurance company will pay for a lot of the medical bills, but they will want a cut out of any personal injury settlement you get. So, they will be hounding you about settling. The at-fault insurer will give you LOTS of run around about how much they are actually going to cover and what amounts they will not. You may be missing time from work.

Published on: December 17, 2018

Dog Bites Are The Worst: An Overview of Texas Law on Dog Attacks

by Guest and Gray Law Firm

Ever been bitten by a dog? It is not very much fun. The personal injury lawyers at Guest and Gray Law Firm are keenly aware of this fact. Over the years, Guest and Gray Law Firm has helped victims of dog bites recover top dollar against negligent dog owners.

For the most part, dogs are man’s best friend. Not like those useless cats that just lay around the house and look at you in disgust. Dogs are sweet and caring and love you unconditionally. However, dogs have it in their system the capacity to become dangerous. Certain breeds more-so than others. Pit Bulls, Bull Dogs, and Rottweilers are some of the main dog breeds that people associate with a dangerous capacity to injure people.

However, in Texas, you really cannot just use a dog’s breed as a means of proving your dog bite case. It must be dog specific. This is a good and bad thing. Texas does not have a statute that covers civil liability for dog bites. Rather, in Marshall v. Ranne, 511 SW 2d 255 (Tex. S.C. 1974) the Texas Supreme Court adopted the view of dog bite law contained in the Restatement of Torts section 509. That means Texas is a “negligence” or “one bite rule” when it comes to dog bites. In order to recover damages for a dog bite, the injured person must show that:

Published on: December 17, 2018

2017 Texas Fatal Accident By Holiday Statistics

by Guest and Gray Law Firm

The headline is a misnomer. Lets just scratch that, its pretty much bad and ugly. Texas has some pretty bleak accident statistics when it comes to the holidays, especially Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Thanksgiving.

The Texas Department of Transportation collects fatal crash statistics for travel periods, not just the Holiday itself. For instance, for the Memorial day holiday, they collect crash data from a 78 hour period and for Christmas it is a 102 hour period. It allows them to cover the travel period for when people are traveling to destinations to celebrate the holiday.

In 2017, Thanksgiving was the single deadliest travel holiday of the year with 73 fatalities in a 102 hour travel period. That is up nearly 20 deaths from 2016 and an increase of 31 additional fatalities from 2015’s total of 42 from the same travel period. Overall, 2017 saw 296 fatalities during major holiday travel periods that included Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. That is an increase of 49 deaths year-over-year from 2016’s total of 247. Thanksgiving alone had 19 more fatalities during its travel period year-over-year.

Published on: December 14, 2018

Kaufman and Rockwall UPS Truck Accident Lawyer

by Guest and Gray Law Firm

This time of year, it is not uncommon to see UPS drivers dashing from stop to stop delivering packages, like Santa trying to make it to every child before Christmas morning. Just last week I was driving on Highway 175 towards Kemp and I saw a UPS delivery truck driving faster than I was on the highway and HE WAS ON THE SERVICE ROAD.

That kind of dangerous driving leads to accidents. UPS puts a lot of pressure on these drivers to deliver an almost impossible amount of packages during the Christmas season. That is why you hear about so many drivers simply dumping out packages on the side of the road because they simply couldn’t make their delivery times and were desperate.

By the way, those UPS trucks are big, commercial vehicles, so if that driver doing 75+ mph on the service road had struck another vehicle at that speed, its pretty much guaranteed that there would be significant injuries, and possibly fatal.

Published on: December 12, 2018

Kaufman County Personal Injury Lawyers

by Guest and Gray Law Firm

Guest and Gray is Kaufman County’s premier personal injury law firm. Our team of experienced personal injury lawyers and knowledgeable staff work hard on a daily basis to fight for the rights of Kaufman county’s injured accident victims.

As Kaufman county continues to grow at a record pace, Guest and Gray has been here since the beginning. We have recovered millions of dollars over the years for local Kaufman county residents after they have been injured in automobile, motorcycle, trucking accidents, dog bites, and many other types of injury cases. We work closely with providers, health insurance companies and the at-fault insurance carriers to maximize our client’s recovery in each case.

Our attorneys take each Kaufman County personal injury case on contingency. That means that we take on the risk and you pay nothing unless we win your case. Our personal injury lawyers are ready to take your case all the way to trial, if necessary.

Published on: December 7, 2018

Guest and Gray: Local. Client Driven. Results Oriented

by Robert Guest

Guest and Gray Law Firm is Kaufman and Rockwall county’s trusted, local personal injury law firm. We are a client driven and results oriented personal injury law firm. Our personal injury team is dedicated to serving the needs of the injured. Our personal injury practice is diverse, spanning from automobile accidents and 18-wheeler wrecks to dog attacks and beyond. No matter the case, our experienced attorneys and knowledgeable staff are prepared to take on the at-fault party and their insurance company.

We are a Local Firm, Dedicated to our Local Community.

We are not a big name Dallas law firm. We like it that way. We don’t have call centers full of assistants. We don’t have claims specialists running your case. We have lawyers dedicated to each matter who personally reviews your case and handles the negotiations with the at-fault party and their insurer. If you call our office, you can speak to your attorney, not their assistant or a claims specialist. Our staff is trained to handle the needs of each case. We do it this way not because we can’t do what those guys in Dallas do. We do it this way because we want to provide the best possible service to our local community. Our main office is in Forney, Texas. We also have an office in Rockwall to serve Rockwall county clients. This is where we are from. Scott Gray, one of our founding partners, graduated from Forney High School. David HagEstad, our personal injury associate graduated from Crandall High School. Most of our staff and assistants are local and grew up in the Kaufman county area. We believe in staying local and serving the community where we grew up. We believe this makes us uniquely capable of serving this area because, well, we know the area. We know what areas are particularly dangerous for drivers and where the majority of accidents occur. We know why. We know that Kaufman county and Rockwall county are experiencing unprecedented growth and that the increased traffic in areas like Rockwall, Forney and Terrell are leading to more accidents. We know that Terrell’s commercial growth will lead to more truck accidents and Forney’s residential growth will lead to more injury accidents involving passenger vehicles.

Published on: December 6, 2018

Kaufman County’s Trusted 18-Wheeler Accident Attorneys

by Guest and Gray Law Firm

Guest and Gray prides itself in being the largest and highest rated law firm in Kaufman county. We are number one because we care about our clients and their situation. Personal injury cases are just that: personal. They happen to real people and it causes REAL problems in their lives. No accident situation can bring more drama to a family’s life than an 18-wheeler accident. These are simply the most destructive types of accidents that can occur on Kaufman county roads. Every year, Kaufman county residents and passers-through die on our local highways due to negligent truck drivers and as our roads become more congested and traveled as a result of development, the numbers will only go up.

Kaufman county is one of the fastest growing counties in Texas. Growth in cities like Forney, Terrell and Crandall will lead the way over the next few years. All three of those cities are corridors in and through Kaufman county with interstate highways and state highways leading right through them. Forney and Terrell have the highly traveled highway 80 and interstate 20 passing right through them and Crandall, as sort of the gateway to East Texas has highway 175. All three cities are gearing up for exponential growth over the next few years as pastureland is converted to shopping, retail and most of all, homes. Crandall has the Wildcat Ranch Development that plans to bring nearly 3,100 unites, which would effectively more than double the population of Crandall alone. Travel anywhere in Forney and you will see new community development and shopping and retail going in, and Terrell leads the way in commercial development. The result of this population increase will be an economic boom. Increased economic out put means an increase in commercial traffic. Commercial traffic means 18-wheelers and other commercial vehicles traveling on our roadways will only increase to meet demand.

At Guest and Gray, our personal injury lawyers see this as being a potential problem for our local citizenry and those who travel our major highways to get to and from home and work. The greater the number of commercial vehicles means that our current and future citizens will be at a greater risk of being injured due to negligent commercial truck drivers as they come into our area. A semi truck, without the tractor-trailer, weighs around 80 thousand pounds, without a tractor-trailer attached. In comparison, the average passenger vehicle weighs about 5,000 pounds. When the two meet at high speeds, the results can be absolutely devastating.

Published on: October 17, 2018

Wet Weather Accidents

by Guest and Gray Law Firm

As a Kaufman, Rockwall and Dallas county personal injury lawyer, I know that traffic accidents happen for many different reasons. It could be inattention, unsafe driving, texting, messing with the radio and everything in between- including weather, such as rain and snow.

Anyone who has driven in Dallas on a rainy or snowy day knows that people lose all ability to properly maintain their vehicles. It’s like they’ve suddenly forgot how to drive and any manual they have is written in Greek. It is totally bizarre. The other day I literally saw someone drive into a middle barrier on the highway, for what appeared to be, no good reason at all. The person got out “okay” and no one was hurt. The person just seemed a little confused and blamed it on the wet road.

You Can Make a Claim On Another Driver Regardless of Weather Conditions