Young Law Blog

Amarillo Businesses Should Rethink How They Pay Their Lawyers

Amarillo businesses may want to rethink how they pay their lawyers in certain cases.

Some of the America’s top firms are embracing the concept of hiring clients on a contingent fee or flat fee. This allows businesses to share risk with their lawyers when pursuing what if often extremely expensive litigation and in which there are no guarantees of recovery.

According to a March 7, 2006 Wall Street Journal article, there is a growing number of cases in which the contingent fee was used. For example, Research in Motion, which makes the popular Blackberry phone, hired Wiley Rain, LLP in Washington to represent them in a multi-million dollar patent infringement case. Similarly, Bran Cave LLP in St. Louis won a $75 million dollar verdict in a case on behalf of Biomedical Systems Corp. of St. Louis.

Although paying lawyers by the hour is the traditional approach, and one that is well-suited to many types of case (particularly where a company is defending, rather than prosecuting a lawsuit), the contingent fee arrangement can be a boon to both lawyer in client under the right circumstances.

Watch for Truck Drivers on Amarillo's Interstate

Tougher regulations are needed in the notoriously dangerous trucking industry.  Often paid by the mile or by the load, truckers are pressured to drive as fast and as far as possible, often going many hours without rest and doctoring log books to show only a fraction of the actual hours spent behind the wheel. 

Anyone who has driven on Interstate 40 in

Amarillo

has undoubtedly had “close calls” with a truck. According to industry analysts quoted in the March 13, 2007

Wyoming

,

Arkansas

and

Oklahoma

were the deadliest states for truck crashes in 2005.

5,380 people died in 1999 in crashes with big trucks. In 2005, that figure remained almost the same at 5,212 deaths.

The Truck Safety Coalition and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways have called on the Motor Carrier Safety Administration to reduce the number of hours that truckers may drive without rest, increase safety inspections of big trucks, require onboard electronic monitors to ensure compliance with hours-of-service rules, and train drivers better.

Traffic Deaths Are Up in Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle

According to an article in the Amarillo Globe News, deaths from traffic fatalities are increasing in the Texas Panhandle.

Since Jan. 1 through Thursday, DPS has responded to 54 fatal wrecks that have killed 66 people in the Texas Panhandle. For all of last year, there were 87 deaths, Beighle said.

And the number of people dying on Panhandle roads seems to be rising, according to the figures recorded in July. Through July 2005, 48 deaths were recorded.

The figures are equally tragic in Amarillo. Nineteen people have died in car wrecks and collisions in the city since Jan. 1, said Lt. Mike Miller, who heads the Amarillo Police Department's Traffic Investigation Unit.

Amarillo normally sees about 21 or 22 traffic deaths a year, he said.

Employees on Commission Should Get Overtime

Employers and employees beware.  Employers often assume that if employees are paid on a commission basis, they are not entitled to overtime. In reality, in order for an employee to avoid paying overtime to an employee, the employee must be paid on a "salary basis." That means that each pay period the employee must receive a predetermined amount constituting all or part of the employee’s pay and that amount cannot be subject to reduction because of variations in the quality or quantity of the work done.  Commissions, by definition, fluctuate based on performance of an employee and are not a salary. Here is an example of how overtime payments to a commission-based employee might work:

Suppose the employee makes $1,000 in commissions during one week and works 45 hours that week. To know the amount of overtime owed, the employee must first determine the “regular rate” of pay by dividing the employee’s total compensation ($1,000) by the number of hours worked (45). This equals $22.22 per hour. The law presumes that the employee has then been paid the regular rate of $22.22 per hour for 45 hours. However, for the 5 hours worked over 40, the employee is entitled to time-and-one-half the regular rate, or an additional $11.11 per hour for each of those 5 hours. So, the total compensation for that week should be $1,055.55.

The bottom line is that employees who are paid on commissions alone are probably entitled to overtime pay.

Amarillo's Backyard Adventures Sued by Competitor

Amarillo's Backyard Adventures, manufacturer of playground equipment, has been sued by a South Dakota competitor claiming that Backyard Adventures misrepresents how its equipment is constructed.

Rainbow claims that it uses better quality construction products that Backyard Adventures and that its sales are hurt because Backyard Adventures represents it is using comparable equipment. 

Trucking Companies Destroy Logs to Avoid Liability

Trucking companies often destroy or falsify their logs in order to hide the fact that their drivers were exhausted at the time of an accident.  This according to an article in the Dallas Morning News on September 17, 2006. 

"The trucking industry appears to spend more time doctoring records, falsifying logs and covering up fault than they do screening drivers and training drivers," said Frank Branson, a nationally prominent Dallas plaintiffs' attorney who has handled truck accident cases for 37 years. "The end result is a lot of catastrophically injured and killed Texans."

Lawyers representing victims who have been hurt or killed by a truck driver often subpoeona these logs to show that the drivers were on the road for many hours, often days, without rest.  Faced with having to produce damning evidence, many trucking companies choose simply to shred the evidence rather than face the consequences of their action.

Under Federal law, truck drivers must keep a log of time spent driving or resting during a day.  Interstate truckers are limited to 11 hours of driving in a 14 hour period and are supposed to rest for 10 hours straight. 

Because of the risk of destruction of evidence, victims of trucking accidents must act quickly to make sure the evidence is preserved.