Alabama Injury Attorney Blog

The city of Huntsville, AL has just passed a new -"Eyes on the Road Ordinance" - which will take effect September 20th. This new law will make it illegal to text and read emails while driving in the city limits of Huntsville. The new law prohibits the following: texting, reading e-mail, scrolling through music files, and viewing YouTube. The law also prohibits programming a destination into a satellite navigation unit while driving. Huntsville becomes the fifth city in Alabama to pass a texting ban. The other cities include: Birmingham, Vestavia Hills, Jacksonville and Roanoke in Randolph County. One concern with the law is how will the law be enforced. A violation of this law will be classified as a secondary offense, which means you cannot be pulled over for just texting you must also be committing another offense such as speeding or tailgating. This seems to take all the teeth out of the law. Thus, someone could be texting and driving with no seatbelt and they could not be pulled over as both are secondary offenses.

The above video displays the dangers of texting while driving. Hopefully, this type of ban will reduce the number of Huntsville car accidents. Our firm recently resolved a Huntsville car wreck claim where the at fault driver was texting while she was driving at 70 mph on the interstate. See the article: Settlement Reached in Huntsville Alabama Car Wreck Caused by Texting Driver.

M&B is pleased to announce that we have launched a firm Facebook fan page. This page will be used to keep our present and former clients, friends of the firm, and our community apprised of various legal matters including, product safety and recalls, consumer affairs information and overall legal guidance on various topics that may be useful to the average consumer.

Facebook factoids:
• Facebook now has more than 400 million active users.
• 50% of Facebook's active users log on to Facebook in any given day.
• Average user has 130 friends.
• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

To become a fan of Martinson & Beason, P.C. go to the following site and click like: http://www.facebook.com/martinsonandbeason

The collapse of third (3rd) story deck at the Waterford Landing Apartments located in Hoover, Alabama has tragically claimed the life of one Alabama resident and injured 6 others. The collapse happened Sunday night - July 4th - when 7 people were standing on the deck when it gave way sending the people crashing into the deck below. 25 year-old Gerald Andrew (Drew) Scribner an Iraq War Veteran was killed in the collapse. Initial reports indicate the deck was last inspected by the city of Hoover when it was built 15 years ago. Since that time it would be up to the apartment complex - Waterford Landing - to properly inspect and maintain the structural integrity of the deck. According to Frank Woeste, a professor emeritus at Virginia Tech University and expert in the field "A properly designed deck cannot be overloaded by too many people. " Woeste also stated that the most common problem in deck design is how the ledger - the support beam for the deck joists - is attached to the outer band of joist of the house.

Initial reports also indicate the insurance company for Waterford Landing has already begun its investigation of the deck collapse. Under Alabama Premises Liability law, which comes within Alabama personal injury law (similar to slip and fall cases), the apartment complex owed a duty to the home owner and his guests to properly inspect and maintain the subject deck. While it is far too early to determine if the apartment complex complied with their duty, as experienced Alabama premises liability attorneys we often see situations such as this where a company's attempt to cut corners ends in a tragic result.