This is the second of two posts discussing the enforceability of executive non-compete agreements in Texas. In Part I, we discussed the basics of a non-compete agreement as well as the first prong of Texas’s two-part analysis to determine their enforceability.

In this second part of the analysis, we will see how Texas courts evaluate the duration, geographical limitations and scope of the non-compete clause—the three keys to enforcing non-compete agreements in Texas.

1. Duration
A non-compete agreement must specify a time period during which the employee agrees not to engage in certain activity. Individual agreements and situations vary, but Texas case law provides ample guidance that one to five years is the approximate period of time that may be considered reasonable.

Still, the analysis will be based on the facts on a given case—a balance between the time required to protect the interests of the employer without being unnecessarily oppressive on the employee–so this timeframe is just a guide.

2. Geographical limitation
A determination of whether a non-compete agreement is reasonable in its geographical limitations depends greatly on the type of business involved. Remember, in order to be reasonable under § 15.50 of the Texas Business and
Commerce Code the restriction must “not impose a greater restraint than is necessary to protect the goodwill or other business interest” of the employer. An international business, for example, would have an easier time defending a worldwide geographical restriction than a company that only does business in Austin.

A non-compete agreement without any stated geographical area whatsoever could be at risk of being found unenforceable, but even this isn’t a bright line rule. For example, a Texas federal court has found a non-compete clause’s restriction of communications only with the employee’s former clients to be “a reasonable alternative to a geographical limit.”

3. Scope

The final part of the analysis looks at the scope of activities restricted by the non-compete agreement. In order to be found reasonable, the activities generally should be limited to those that the employee performed for the employer. An industry-wide restriction that would prohibit an employee from working in the same industry as that of the employer would likely be too broad and found unreasonable.

If Non-Compete Restrictions Are Found Unreasonable

In Texas, if a court finds the restrictions in a non-compete agreement unreasonable, Texas Business and Commercial Code § 15.51 allows the court to “reform the non-compete to make it reasonable.”

At this point, the employee loses the right to damages, however, and can only obtain injunctive relief to stop the employer’s actions.

Final Reminder: The Importance of Facts

It cannot be overstated how fact-driven the court’s analysis of these three factors will be in a determination of whether a non-compete complies with Texas law and is enforceable. Every employment situation is different.

If you have questions or concerns about your non-compete agreement, please contact Shaw Cowart for a consultation.

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In May 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that taking the type 2 diabetes drug Invokana (canagliflozin) increases your risk of foot and leg amputations. The safety alert was an update to a 2016 alert. Type 2 diabetes itself increases your risk of amputation. Taking medication to manage your blood sugar is one way to help prevent the damage that leads to amputations. But now two large clinical trials have found that taking Invokana actually increases your risk of amputation. If you have required amputation after taking Invokana, the medication may have been the cause of your injury and you may be able to recover substantial compensation for your losses.

We represent people who have been harmed by Invokana and other defective drugs nationwide. If you or a loved one has been injured by Invokana side effects, please, talk to Shaw Cowart, LLP, to find out how we can help.

Invokana Amputation Risk

According to the FDA alert, two large clinical trials found that people taking Invokana were twice as likely to require amputations as those taking a placebo. And, while the most common amputations were those of the toe and middle foot, some patients required amputation of the leg either below or above the knee. Additionally, some of the Invokana users had to have multiple amputations including amputation of both legs.

Each of the studies, Canagliflozin Cardiovascular Assessment Study (CANVAS) and A Study of the Effects of Canagliflozin on Renal Endpoints in Adult Participants With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (CANVAS-R), had similar results:

• CANVAS – amputation in 5.9 of every 1,000 Invokana users vs 2.8 in patients taking a placebo
• CANVAS-R – amputation in 7.5 of every 1,000 Invokana users vs 4.2 in patients taking placebo

Just One More Invokana Danger

As you may have noticed by their names, the clinical trials that revealed the amputation risk were not initiated to study the risk of amputation, but to study the risk of heart attack and kidney damage while taking Invokana. In addition to amputations, Invokana has been linked to serious harm including:

• Heart attack
• Stroke
• Renal impairment and kidney failure
• Diabetic ketoacidosis
• Bone fractures
• Yeast infection
• Urinary tract infection (UTI)

To learn more about your legal rights and how we can help you recover the compensation you need and deserve, please call Shaw Cowart, LLP, at 512-499-8900 or contact us online today. Your initial consultation is free of charge and you are under no obligation to move forward with us. If we represent you, we will do so on a contingent fee basis. We do not ask for money upfront. We only get paid if you get paid.

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Hurricane Harvey hit Texas hard—especially in Houston, Beaumont, and Hardin, Jefferson, Orange, Chambers, and Harris counties—and caused upwards of $180 billion in damage.

If your business has been forced to shut down partially or entirely because of Hurricane Harvey or other natural disaster, business interruption insurance (also called “BI insurance”) may be able to get you moving again. You should act quickly, though, because the sooner you understand exactly what coverage you have and how much you are entitled to recover, the sooner your business may be back up and running.

What is Business Interruption Insurance?

Business interruption insurance exists for when an enterprise must cease or slow operations for reasons specified in a policy. These reasons generally include natural disasters such as hurricanes. Because coverage varies widely, you should understand the wording of your specific policy before making a claim with your insurer.

Generally, business interruption insurance is meant to return a business to the same financial position it would have been in had the disaster not occurred. Accordingly, it cover costs involved with making physical repairs to get a business back in working order and also compensates for income lost during that period.

Business interruption insurance differs from basic property insurance, which covers solely the physical damage suffered by the business.

What Is Covered Under Business Interruption Insurance?

Your policy language will dictate exactly what is covered in your situation, but common items covered in a business interruption insurance policy include the following:

• Profits/Revenues

Regarding economic losses, policies usually include specific formulas that insurers follow in their determinations. This can be a complicated procedure, and each insurer has its own way of figuring out the amount of the insured’s covered loss.

Regardless of the specific formula used, you will be asked to produce records detailing your expenses and income before the loss, often over the previous year or two. From there, the insurer will calculate your loss based on lost profits or lost revenues, depending on their formulas.

• Overhead

Even with your business at a standstill, you still have general overhead expenses such as rent, utilities, payroll, insurance premiums, taxes, advertising, etc. Business interruption insurance is intended to cover these expenses.

If your business operated at a loss before Hurricane Harvey, your policy will probably only cover these kind of fixed expenses, though your policy language may differ.

• Additional expenses

Because of the hurricane, you may be experiencing costs you wouldn’t normally face—movers, employee overtime to get things back on track more quickly, storage fees. All of these are likely covered under business interruption insurance.

• Temporary relocation costs

If your business has had to relocate temporarily, you are probably facing additional renting costs as well, and these are generally covered by business interruption insurance.

What Is “Extended Business Interruption Insurance?”

In addition to basic business interruption insurance as described above, your policy may have a separate provision that allows for the compensation of income lost even after repairs have been made. This would be through “extended business interruption insurance.”

This type of insurance provides coverage for a specified period after repairs have been made and helps you recoup losses sustained even beyond when your business is back up and running.

For example, if you must devote hours to making up for lost customers once you’re open full time again, extended business interruption insurance may cover further income losses incurred during that period as well.

What Is “Contingent Business Interruption Coverage?”

Sometimes hurricanes and other natural disasters cause damage to your business’s suppliers or distribution chains—their own buildings may have been damaged or perhaps roads were blocked and your suppliers couldn’t deliver goods or their employees couldn’t get to work, slowing or halting their operations.

Even if your business didn’t sustain any physical damage, these types of problems with suppliers or distribution chains may also affect your business’s income. If you have “contingent business interruption insurance,” you may be protected from those losses.

How to Make a Business Interruption Insurance Claim

In order to make a business interruption insurance claim, first check out the policy language to understand exactly what is covered. As with any type of insurance situation, you should contact your insurer as soon as possible after a disaster. You may want to make immediate repairs to machinery and such if necessary and hold on to any damaged parts for the claims adjuster. Also, consider taking steps to protect your property from further damage as best you can.

Your ultimate business interruption insurance recovery will depend on various factors, including the type of industry you’re in, but in general, your claim should be as specific as possible. You should gather your pre-disaster business records and make sure they are all in order as well as keep meticulous records regarding your business post-disaster, especially regarding the extra expenses you are shouldering to keep your business moving. If you’ve had to shut down your business entirely, keep track of the overhead expenses that you’re still incurring.

How Legal Advice Can Help

As you can see from the information above, business interruption insurance can be an extremely effective way to recoup losses sustained when you are unable to continue normal business operations because of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Harvey. Understanding your policy and presenting your claim in the best way possible should help maximize your recovery.

If your business has had to close down partially or completely because of Hurricane Harvey and you haven’t yet filed a claim, please get in touch with Shaw Cowart; and we may be able to help walk you through the process.

Moreover, if you have filed a claim and it has been denied or it isn’t being paid in a timely manner, Shaw Cowart could guide your next steps to your goal of getting back in business.

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This is the first of two posts that will discuss the enforceability of executive non-compete agreements in Texas.

What are Executive Non-Compete Agreements?

Non-compete agreements, also called “restrictive covenants,” are contract provisions through which an employee agrees not to work in a similar trade in competition with an employer, usually in a particular geographical area for a specified amount of time.

Non-compete clauses in CEO contracts are increasingly common. One recent study found that although only 60-65% of CEO contracts had non-competes in the early 1990s, 89% included them in 2008. This high number is not surprising because CEOs gain special knowledge about a company’s proprietary processes and other confidential information, and employers have a legitimate business interest in not having that knowledge used against them in the business arena.

California doesn’t allow non-competes at all, finding them contrary to public policy and “restraints on trade,” but most states, including Texas, will enforce them—but only if the restrictions are reasonable in three key areas: duration, geographical limitations and scope. There is abundant case law in Texas addressing these issues; however, the analysis is fact-driven and addressed on a case-by-case basis.

Texas Law on Non-Compete Agreements

The Texas statute governing non-compete agreements is § 15.50 of the Texas Business and Commerce Code:

[A] covenant not to compete is enforceable if it is ancillary to or part of an otherwise enforceable agreement at the time the agreement is made to the extent that it contains limitations as to time, geographical area, and scope of activity to be restrained that are reasonable and do not impose a greater restraint than is necessary to protect the goodwill or other business interest of the promisee.

Texas courts follow a two-step analysis, first determining whether the non-compete is “ancillary to or part of an otherwise enforceable agreement.” Under Texas law, a non-compete is not enforceable for at-will employees unless other consideration is provided. When deciding specifically on the enforceability of a CEO’s contract, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas has stated that this requirement can be satisfied by the promise of providing confidential or proprietary information to an employee in exchange for the employee’s promise not to disclose that information, but only once the information is actually provided.

Accordingly, most executive non-competes will likely satisfy this part of the analysis.

The next step in the analysis—regarding the agreement’s reasonableness as to duration, geographical limitations and scope—is where many cases are decided, and, again, are highly fact-specific.

In the next post, we’ll delve into Texas law regarding the reasonableness of these three key features of a non-compete agreement. We’ll also discuss what happens if an agreement’s restrictions are found to be unreasonable.

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In July 2013, the much-anticipated Texas Giant rollercoaster at Six Flags Over Texas became a symbol of tragedy after a 52-year-old rider named Rosa Esparza fell 75 feet to her death from the ride.

The accident sparked a national discussion about the potential dangers of rollercoasters, especially for riders with larger bodies that may not be accommodated by the coaster. It also raised many questions about the inspection requirements Texas implements for amusement park rides, and whether a stricter system might be necessary.

For example, while several rides at Six Flags offer a “test seat” at the entrance so that visitors can determine whether they will fit safely within the seat, the Texas Giant did not have a test seat available on the day of Esparza’s death. The park did have a test seat for the ride, but did not make it available to visitors until after the accident had occurred.

A spokesperson for the park did assert, however, that all riders are checked to make sure their seat restraints fit correctly, according to an article in the Dallas News. And the park made other changes to the roller coaster, such as installing a mechanism that won’t let the train leave if the lap bar is not attached properly.

But have these changes actually improved safety? Not everyone thinks so. A court filing against Six Flags claimed that the trains on the Texas Giant were a “defective product that was unreasonably dangerous in design, manufacture, distribution and promotion.” Other commentators have noted that “one size fits all” is increasingly not an option for amusement park rides, as amusement parks continue to attract more customers with significant diversity in body size and shape.

The Texas Legislature may also discuss changes to amusement park safety laws and regulations. Currently, the Texas Department of Insurance is responsible for collecting proof of insurance and inspection from amusement parks, but it cannot enforce safety regulations. Meanwhile, a 400 percent increase in requests for amusement park permits in recent years has strained TDI’s resources, making it even tougher to ensure every park’s paperwork is in order.

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If it hasn’t hit you yet, it’s coming.  More and more business clients enter into Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFA) with their lawyers.  Clients like the idea of the certainty and predictability an AFA provides, and quite frankly, they like the idea that they can pick up the phone to ask you a question without increasing their costs with every tenth of a minute they are on the phone.

According to the BTI Consulting Group, the outside counsel spending under AFAs was up to 35.6% in 2015, up from 21.7% just two years earlier.  Almost 70% of companies polled were using AFAs for at least some portion of their legal work.  Companies report on average that they are saving around 14% when using AFAs.  In another survey conducted by LexisNexis, wherein 135 companies responded, the majority of respondents expressed a satisfaction with AFAs, many even suggesting that they hoped to increase their use of AFAs in the years to come.

Many lawyers’ initial reaction to this news is negative.  Lawyers assume AFAs will cut into their fees.  But that does not have to be the case.  In fact, if employed smartly, AFAs will not only make your clients happier but can be used to increase your overall business and profitability.

What The Clients are Saying

An array of corporate counsel polled by LexisNexis responded that they believe pricing/fee structure to be top issue facing the legal industry and their legal departments.  Interestingly, as hourly fee rates continue to rise, a majority of corporate counsel polled actually said that their legal budgets had been cut in the past few years.  These competing trends obviously make extracting the most value in the most efficient means possible an important goal as businesses deal with their outside attorneys.

Businesses also enjoy the predictability that can be provided through various AFAs.  It’s no secret that the ability to accurately forecast costs is one of the most important criteria to whether a business venture will be profitable.  In my own conversations with business owners and corporate counsel, the prevailing view is that traditional hourly fee based litigation almost always ends up costing more than expected, as unforeseen issues invariably arise.  And whether this a legitimate complaint or not, it is reality that clients often get frustrated with the idea that every time we, as lawyers, pick up our pens or have a thought process that involves their cases, it is costing them money.

In our experience, when we express enough of an understanding of a clients business to offer them AFA options that help make them more efficient, and their costs more predictive, they are incredibly appreciative.   Many of the AFAs offered also shift some of the legal fee risk to the law firm, which again is appreciated by the clients, as they perceive our interests becoming more aligned.  This often leads to more business not only from the client, but also from referrals the client then makes.

The Types of Alternative Fee Arrangements Commonly Being Introduced

Contingency Fee Wherein Client Pays Expenses

This is the most traditional AFA in which the law firm receives a fixed or scaled percentage of any recoveries in a lawsuit.  The nice thing about this arrangement for the law firm is that the client pays all expenses.  These arrangements are appreciated by smaller companies and start ups who do not have a large legal budget.  This type of arrangement obviously works best on a plaintiff claim, but it can be structured as part of a defense claim also, wherein the payment is made contingent on a percentage of savings off of a set agreed to amount.

Partial Contingency Fee

This is an arrangement wherein the law firm bills at a reduced hourly rate, and also receives a percentage (smaller than normal) of the recovery.  If a firm’s normal contingency fee rate is 33%, they may take only 15 to 20% here, while also billing at about 50% of their normal hourly rate.  This type of agreement can work well in many instances, as the law firm is guaranteed some money on the reduced hourly rate, but there is also some risk sharing and aligning of financial interests provided to the client.  This AFA is most common on a plaintiff claim but can also be structured as part of a defense file, with contingent money kicking in if agreed upon results are achieved.

Fixed Fee

Clients often find this type of AFA very attractive and they can be tailored to a number of different situations and circumstances.  A flat fee can be a one time agreed upon payment up front, or made in increments.  It can be a fixed number paid on a monthly basis, or in sort of a hybrid hourly fee setting, it can be a ceiling on the amount of hours billed per month, providing some certainty to the client as to what the maximum exposure will be.  This type of agreement is versatile and can provide efficiency and certainty to both law firm and client.

Holdback/Success Fee

This is another versatile type of AFA that can be tailored to fit a number of matters.  In this AFA, a portion of the attorney’s fee is paid up front, with another portion to be paid in the end, contingent upon certain agreed upon milestones or measures of success being reached.  In this setting, the law firm is guaranteed some money without having to bill by the hour, which is nice, and has also aligned its interests with the client.

How Can this Be A Net Positive For Your Firm?

It seems that many lawyers assume AFAs will mean a net reduction in money to the firm without first putting the time in to evaluate the positives that could result.  When a firm is not tied to just billing through as many hours as it possibly can, it is freed up to discover and entertain other opportunities.

The old model of “no stone unturned” on hourly files is a dying breed, except for at the largest of companies and on multimillion-dollar files.  Clients, instead, are asking now for a more efficient, value-based approach.  We see more reductions in time entries being asked for every day for tasks the client deems were unnecessary, or not technically a “legal” task, etc.  More and more clients are also refusing to pay full price for associate work, making the partners spend more time on matters that are not their highest and best use for their law firms.

Under many of the AFAs discussed, many of these problems can be alleviated.  Associates are freed up to work on the matters entrusted to them while partners are able to spend more time adding value to the firm in other ways.  Efficiencies can be achieved in multi-tasking on several matters at once that were not possible under hourly fee arrangements.  Also, the certainty in the fee provided by many of AFAs helps firms more accurately forecast the money that they will have to invest in other matters, which again can lead to pursuing opportunities that firms would have been more hesitant about in the past.

The bottom line is that if employed thoughtfully, smartly and appropriately, we believe AFAs to be win/win arrangements wherein the client appreciates that you’ve thought about and accommodated their situation and aligned your interests with theirs, while also providing your firm the opportunity to use resources more effectively, resulting in a net increase of business and productivity.

For more information, contact Matt Riley.

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A stressful life event that results in injury, like a car accident or a concussion, certainly has a negative impact on our wellbeing when it occurs. But research published in the journal Anxiety Stress Coping indicates that how we think about that event can continue to affect our health years later.

In this journal article, “Perceptions of Stressful Life Events as Turning Points Are Associated With Self-Rated Health and Psychological Distress,” researchers describe their attempt to test the hypothesis that how a person perceives a stressful life event can change their health, even after any acute injuries resulting from the event have healed.

In the study, researchers talked to 1,038 different people about a stressful life event they had recently experienced. Ten years later, they returned to ask the participants how they viewed that event in hindsight, and what, if any, lessons they felt they had learned from it. They also asked about the participants’ long-term health outcomes.

The researchers discovered that whether or not the participants felt they had “learned a lesson” had very little effect on their actual or perceived state of health. However, they also found that how the participants perceived the stressful event had a significant relationship to their health. Specifically, the more a participant viewed the event as negative, the more likely it was that he or she was struggling with poorer health than participants who viewed the event as neutral or positive.

The researchers concluded, then, that there is some truth to the idea that how we perceive an event like a car accident or a concussion has an effect on our health – and that the effects on our health can persist long after the event occurs. While it doesn’t appear necessary to find a “life lesson” in the event, it does appear that finding a way to contextualize the event as neutral, or finding positive things that resulted from it, can help boost health outcomes. Continuing to view it as negative may have the opposite effect, contributing to lingering stress and other health problems.

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In a famous paper published shortly after World War II, physicist Richard Feynman predicted that the far future of technology would be all about manipulating machines at the very smallest scales – the so-called “nanoscale,” populated by events that occur at between one and 100 nanometers in size, nearly as small as a strand of human DNA.

Over the last few decades, Feynman’s vision has come to pass. “Nanotech” is now big business. Revenue from this nascent industry is expected to exceed $500 billion in 2017 alone, according to government estimates.

When engineers work with materials of extremely small size, very counterintuitive things happen. Certain properties, like a material’s melting point, ability to conduct electricity, and chemical reactivity, can radically change. In some cases, quantum mechanical effects, such as electron tunneling, make certain types of construction impossible… and simultaneously open the door to other engineering feats that would seem like science fiction were they to be done at the larger scales familiar to us.

Nanotech advocates are quick to point out all the good things in store for society as engineers make progress in this bizarre realm: super-targeted medicines, fabrics and plastics with nearly-magical properties, quantum computers that make today’s most advanced chips seem like one of those clunky vacuum tube computers from the 1970s by comparison.

These promises are amazing. But the risks are also tremendous – and often overlooked by techno-evangelists. What nanotech accidents await patients (because some will be inevitable)? What happens when a nanomachine or nanofiber fails catastrophically? What if this tech gets hacked… or gets in the hands of someone who uses it to harm people, interfere with business or government, or steal?

The “worst case” scenarios – for instance, a scientist accidentally creating an unstoppably replicating nanomachine that consumes all life on the planet, reducing Earth’s surface to a kind of “grey goo”— are highly unlikely. But the less apocalyptic but still bad scenarios sketched out above are quite realistic.

Will the U.S. witness big tort claims against nanotech companies, as some of these nightmares start to come true?

Nanotech began a steep upward trend in 2009. Since around that time, legal critics have predicted that will only be a matter of time before the first major nanotech tort lawsuit. Nanotech companies have so far (in general) worked hard to comply with federal regulations; they have averted big risks and gotten creative to make their products safe.

But how long with this peaceful interlude last? Currently, nanoparticles appear in products ranging from carbon-fiber vests to medical devices, sunscreen, and even food packaging. It’s tough to foresee where, exactly, problems might arise – and what injuries might result if they do.

Predicting oncoming harm is even tougher when the injuries from a product don’t appear for months or even years. And unless there’s a provable cause-and-effect relationship between nanoparticle exposure and a particular harm, even those who do suffer injuries will be missing a key part of the argument they’ll need to win a lawsuit against a nanotech manufacturer.

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Depending on the type of truck accident, the layout of the scene, and the types of facts or models that need further evidence and analysis to develop (or disprove), forensic analysts may gather evidence such as:

• Photographs of the scene. Pictures can show factors like the weather, the layout of the road, the location of signs and barriers, skid marks, and the nature and final position of accident debris.
• Video of the collision, which is more common at intersections and other places with traffic cameras.
• Measurements of the scene. Analysis of skid marks, damage to road barriers, and other features can help experts estimate things like speed and force of impact.
• Paint, glass, and other debris samples. This evidence offers indirect insight into things like speed and angle of impact. In a hit and run, such samples can also help identify a vehicle.
• Eyewitness testimony. Firsthand accounts of what happened before, during and after the crash – particularly when collected shortly after the incident – offer analysts clues. This testimony, for instance, can narrow the possible explanations for how the crash occurred and help analysts focus on the most likely scenarios.
• Event data recorder information. Many large trucks come equipped with a “black box” that records data, such as speed, direction, and when brakes were applied.
• 3D scans. These tools offer investigators another way to model the accident scene and recreate the forces and conditions involved.

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Truck accidents often happen very quickly for the people involved in them. You may have a moment or two of panicking at the sight of an 18-wheeler swerving into your lane, and then the crash. Or the accident could have literally blindsided you. Adding to the confusion, your resulting trauma may make recovering accurate memories difficult.

Forensic experts can help make sense of this chaos.

Using trusted processes, these scientists gather evidence from the scene, deploy engineering tools, and then draw conclusions to reconstruct what happened on the road. Armed with their insight, you and your lawyer can then hold negligent parties accountable for your pain and suffering, lost work time and medical bills.

What Is Forensic Science?

Forensics involves collecting and analyzing evidence to form reasonable hypotheses about how a particular event occurred. Investigators gather this material carefully to preserve its integrity as well as to adhere to legal rules for evidence collection in criminal and civil cases.

Typically, a single case – like a truck accident – won’t be handled start to finish by a single scientist. Instead, one or more forensic experts will do the “field work” of visiting the scene to document and collect material, visiting impound yards to examine vehicles if needed, and similar tasks. The evidence will be taken to one or more labs, where additional analysts may work on types of evidence that fall within their specific area of expertise.

What Can Forensic Science Tell Us About Truck Accidents?

Unlike the audacious characters you might have seen on crime scene TV shows, these specialists are trained to be conservative. They work hard to avoid inferring more detail than what the data actual tell them. To guard against the very human tendency to see patterns where none exist, they apply rigorous physics and engineering principles to their observations. For instance, knowledge of principles like the conservation of linear momentum, kinematics, and work-energy methods help them construct models of how the accident could have occurred based solely on the evidence left behind.

Forensic analysis can help answer questions like:

• Where were the vehicles at or just before the moment of impact?
• How fast was each vehicle going?
• In what direction was each vehicle going?
• Which vehicle hit the other first?
• Did factors outside the vehicles, like the condition of the roadway, contribute to the events of the crash? If so, how?
• How is it that the forces of the crash could result in the injuries or vehicle damage suffered?
• If a “hit and run” occurred, what type of vehicle was involved? Where is it likely to show damage? What direction did it go in, and how fast?

Sometimes, a truck accident case hinges on a crucial fact. A forensic analysis determines which version of disputed facts is most supported by the available science.

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