A San Antonio Sheriff’s Deputy was on patrol late at night on loop 1604 when he was hit head-on by a wrong way drunk driver that tried to flee the scene. The deputy went to the emergency room once but was otherwise uninjured. He waited 23 months to call our law firm. When he did, we filed suit and got his case resolved for the maximum amount of insurance.
Transcript:
Speaker: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.
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Speaker: When a Bexar County Sheriff’s officer was hit by a drunk driver, he called the Hill Law Firm. About a year ago, we were contacted by a sheriff’s officer here in Bexar County, San Antonio, Texas. He told us how about 22 months prior, he was out patrolling on 1604 near 35 when a drunk driver was coming head-on in the wrong lane of travel. The sheriff’s officer was able to get over to the right-hand line and almost onto the shoulder when he was hit by the drunk driver.
The drunk driver was going highway speeds the wrong way down 1604 at about three in the morning. The sheriff’s deputy was sitting disabled on the side of the road, injured and the driver kept driving. The driver hit another car and finally became disabled when he hit the retaining wall. He tried to flee, but he was stopped. He was arrested, he was charged with drunk driving and intoxication assault.
This the sheriff’s deputy didn’t reach out because he was worried about making a claim. He didn’t want to be seen as somebody who was making a claim for being injured in the line of duty. He thought it was his duty and his responsibility to do his job and being injured on the job was something he thought was part of his job. When I spoke to him, I let him know how that wasn’t part of his job and he had a claim against that drunk driver’s insurance and the drunk driver.
The drunk driver didn’t have any personal assets, he didn’t have any money so the only thing he had was an insurance policy. Luckily, for this deputy, he wasn’t that injured. He went to the emergency room and he saw his PCP, got some medication for pain and muscle relaxers, but he was able to make a full recovery. He didn’t really know what to expect and I told him that we would take care of everything.
One thing an insurance company doesn’t want to do is go to trial against a police officer, a sheriff’s deputy, injured in the line of duty, especially when they’ll be defending a drunk driver. We took his case and we were able to resolve it for the maximum amount of policy limits available within just under three months.
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