Newsroom

By Charles Wood, Hill Country News

A Leander woman is suing the Round Rock school district over a bus accident that took place two years ago.

According to the lawsuit by Amanda Redus, 30, of Leander, Round Rock ISD bus driver Juan Ayala, 59, of Georgetown, pulled in front of Redus and another vehicle at the intersection of West Parmer Lane and Ranch Trails in Cedar Park. Redus swerved and was injured when her car left the road and slammed back into the school bus.

The suit asks the district to reimburse Redus for $20,000 in medical bills and $18,000 in lost income from an accident.

“School buses should be the safest vehicles on the road, and school bus drivers should be our safest drivers,” said Redus' lawyer, John Selden. “When a school bus driver makes a mistake like this, Round Rock ISD and Mr. Ayala have some explaining to do.”

Round Rock ISD spokesperson Joy Lynn Occhiuzzi said the issue was being handled by the school district's insurance company, Property Casualty Alliance of Texas. “Our automobile insurance has been handling the claim since the date of the accident,” she said. “Since it has not yet resolved within the two-year statute of limitations, the other party filed suit. We are in the process of sending the lawsuit to our insurance company.”

AUSTIN, Nov. 2—An Austin law firm filed suit Friday against a drunk driver who hurt two local college students and one of their friends—and whose insurance company refuses to pay for the damage she caused.

Jon Selden & Company PC sued Marlen Jackeline Argueta, 24, 5800 Techni Center Drive, Apt. 617, on Friday. Argueta’s car insurance company, Dallas-based Gainsco Auto Insurance, has so far refused to pay for all of the damage she caused.

The suit (Gordon v. Argueta, No. C-1-CV-09-011747, Travis County Court at Law 2) alleges Argueta was driving drunk on April 19, 2009, when she slammed into a car carrying two local college students, Christopher Jenkins, 23, Elizabeth Gordon, 20, and one of their friends, Michael Garcia, 32, at the intersection of Comal and East 7th Streets in downtown Austin.

Gainsco initially refused to accept liability for Argueta’s actions. When it finally did, it wouldn’t pay for all of the property damage Argueta caused. Now it’s refusing to pay for all of the plaintiffs’ injury-related expenses.

“When Argueta decided to get drunk and drive, she decided to hurt my clients,” says lawyer Jon Selden. “When Gainsco refused to pay for the damage she caused, I had no choice but to sue her and ask a Travis County jury to help.”

The suit asks the court to award the plaintiffs exemplary damages to punish Argueta’s gross negligence. Because Gainsco refused to accept the plaintiffs’ reasonable offers to settle the case before trial, it now will have to pay all of the plaintiffs’ damages awarded by the court.

Selden & Company PC has begun producing high-quality settlement video packages.

The first video, entitled the Jessie Parson's Project, follows one of our client families through a typical day and shows how their lives were affected by a teenage drunk driver, who slammed into a dad and his baby daughter on I-35 on Halloween night 2008.

The short films, shot in full high-definition, are powerful tools for communicating with defendants, insurance companies, and juries.

Of course, the films are not appropriate for all cases, but we will use them to full advantage when appropriate.

It’s already started, but you’re going to hear a lot of horror stories in the coming months about “government-run health care.”

The tactics are not new. Health insurance companies have been using them for decades to scare the public into keeping the same broken health care system that’s too expensive, too inefficient, and leaves too many people sick and injured.

Today, they’re using Canadian brain tumor patient Shona Holmes to show how a government-run health care system fails patients. Holmes says she was not able to get the necessary brain surgery in Canada fast enough and had to go to the Mayo Clinic in the United States for treatment.

Holmes and her husband went $100,000 in debt—taking out a second mortgage on their home and borrowing from family and friends—to pay the Mayo Clinic and doctors to perform the surgery.

Holmes’ story highlights weaknesses in both systems: Wait times in Canada’s government-run bureaucracy and America’s ridiculously high-priced care-to-the-highest-bidder approach.

But a Canadian physician interviewed for the story highlights one important difference between the two: "I'm not going to say we don't have issues with timeliness for some things,” ER Dr. David Zelt told CNN. “It does happen. But again take the other side of the coin -- these patients have access. They're on somebody's waiting list.”

It's true. For every Shona Holmes in Canada, there are countless other uninsured American citizens waiting indefinitely for health care that may never come. In Texas, one in five people don’t have health insurance. Nationally, the total number of uninsured is 47 million—almost twice the population of Texas.

It's a problem for uninsured patients and for the good doctors who treat them without getting paid. The only winners are the health insurance companies, who keep charging more for coverage while actually covering less.

Whatever we decide to do to fix the current system: Start our own national health care chain like Canada’s, provide the so-called “public option” government health insurance to compete with private insurers, or make everyone buy low-cost health insurance with government subsidies, we must do it and we must do it now.

Please write us and let us know what you think or, better yet,call or email your state and federal representatives and tell them you support health care reform for American citizens.