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A Jefferson Parish man received a decade in jail and a $5,000 fine for his 2013 DWI conviction. Why was his sentence so severe? Because the year before, the driver, facing four counts of DWI among other charges, negotiated his own plea deal without the assistance of an attorney. That 2012 deal resulted in four convictions on the four DWI counts, meaning that the state was entitled to charge him in 2013 as a fifth-time DWI offender. The Louisiana Court of Appeal recently affirmed his conviction and sentence on the 2013 charge, concluding that the man understood what he was doing when he voluntarily waived his right to an attorney in the first case.

John Henry Boyd, Jr. appeared in court in Jefferson Parish in April 2012 facing four counts of DWI, along with charges of resisting arrest, driving without a license, and possession of alcohol in a vehicle. Boyd, who was proceeding without a lawyer, agreed to take a deal offered by the prosecutor in which he pled guilty on all four DWI charges. In exchange, the state would drop the other charges Boyd was facing. Boyd signed four forms stating that his intent was to waive his rights and plead guilty.

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A Jefferson Parish couple received a damages award in excess of $300,000 after their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter broke her arm while playing on a piece of playground equipment meant for children ages five and up. The fact that the child’s daycare satisfied the state’s standards for the minimum teacher-to-child supervision ratios did not automatically shield it from liability. Even though the daycare was adequately staffed, the Louisiana Court of Appeal decided that it could be found liable for not preventing the child from playing on equipment unsafe for someone of her age.

The accident victim was Kaitlyn Skillman, a toddler who attended the daycare facility owned and operated by the Riverside Baptist Church in Jefferson Parish. In September 2010, the 19-month-old girl fell from some playground equipment and injured her arm. The playset from which the child fell was recommended for children no younger than age five.

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A New Orleans woman suffered a significant leg injury when she fell on the property of the apartment she rented. The woman’s landlords sought to escape liability for her injuries by arguing that the hole that felled the tenant was “open and obvious” to all. The Louisiana Court of Appeal‘s recent decision upholding a trial court’s refusal to grant summary judgment in favor of the landlords provided an insightful recitation regarding what a property owner must show to succeed on a claim of “open and obvious danger” in a premises liability case.

The case pitted a tenant, Jennifer Hooper, against her landlords, Val and Mary Brown. The apartment Hooper rented, located off Canal Boulevard, had a wooden front porch that, according to the tenant, contained at least one board that was rotten, leaving a hole in the porch. The landlords allegedly promised numerous times to fix the porch, but they did not. In September 2013, the tenant, who temporarily required the assistance of crutches, fell while attempting to enter the apartment, breaking her leg.

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If you’re arrested on suspicion of DWI, you have the option of refusing a chemical test to measure your blood-alcohol content. If you are arrested multiple times and refuse multiple tests, this may have an impact on the status of your Louisiana driver’s license. If the state suspends your license, the law gives you certain rights with regard to challenging that suspension. In one recent case, a ruling against a driver was overturned by the Louisiana Court of Appeal because a District Court did not follow the correct procedure for hearing the driver’s challenge of his license suspension.

The driver involved was Johnny Cook, Jr., whom law enforcement officers arrested in March 2013 on suspicion of driving drunk. The driver received the option of submitting to a breathalyzer test. Both the driver and the arresting officer signed a form stating that the officer informed the driver of his rights regarding chemical tests. Cook refused the test.

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Nursing home staffs have a duty to care for their vulnerable patients, and cases of negligence are a breach of that duty. Families who find themselves in this position must move swiftly because the law imposes strict deadlines for action. The law may, however, delay these deadlines if the patient’s family neither knew nor should have known about the misconduct, which was a key factor in a patient’s family’s recent victory before the Louisiana Court of Appeal.

Delvin Hume’s family placed him in the Ferncrest Manor Living Center in 2009 for a one-month stay while his wife underwent and recovered from eye surgery. Within less than a week, the patient allegedly fell from his bed and missed his diabetes medication because the nursing home staff erroneously refused to administer it.

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If you’ve been injured in an accident that was the fault of another driver, there’s a lot that goes into obtaining a successful outcome in court and recovering the compensation you deserve. You not only have to prove that the other driver was negligent, but also that you suffered injuries that were the result of that accident. One Jefferson Parish driver’s personal injury case failed, not because the driver did not have injuries and not because the other driver wasn’t negligent, but because the jury did not believe that the driver’s injuries were caused by the accident, and the Louisiana Court of Appeal recently upheld that decision.

The lawsuit arose from an auto accident that occurred on the day after Thanksgiving 2010 in Jefferson Parish. Andre Stevenson was in a gas station parking lot, waiting to turn right onto Veterans Memorial Boulevard when a Chrysler driven by Sandra Serth slammed into a Nissan, which caused the Nissan to collide with Stevenson’s vehicle. Stevenson sought medical care for his injuries, and an MRI revealed two bulging discs in his neck and one torn disc in his back.

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When you’re facing a DWI charge, one of the many important factors you need to consider is which of your previous DWI convictions will (or won’t) “count” against you for purposes of determining how severe a punishment you should face for your current charge. The Louisiana Court of Appeal recently addressed such an issue, concluding that a trial court properly sentenced a southeast Louisiana man as a four-time offender, even though two of those four DWIs happened more than a decade before the current incident.

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When you’ve been injured by the negligent actions, or inaction, of others, you likely have a lot of things on your mind. If your injuries are the result of negligence committed by a health care provider, it is very important to understand exactly what requirements the law imposes on you in order to sue that provider. In some cases, you may have to appear before a review panel before you can sue in court. Failing to follow this step can lead to the dismissal of your case, as happened to one Lafayette-area woman, whose unfavorable ruling was recently affirmed by the Louisiana Court of Appeal.

In this recent case, Veronica Thomas, a woman confined to a wheelchair, was being transported from a hospital to a nursing home in Lafayette. An employee of the nursing home drove the van that carried the patient. According to Thomas, she was injured during that trip when she fell backwards.

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Defending yourself in a criminal matter in Louisiana, such as a DWI case, involves many parts. In addition to addressing the issue of guilt or innocence, there is also the aspect of sentencing. A pair of recent Louisiana Court of Appeal cases offer some useful insight into what must (and must not) go into a sentence for a DWI conviction.

In the first ruling, Timothy Hooter was arrested in February 2012 after a police officer spotted him driving a car with a license plate six years out of date and belonging to a 1992 Ford truck, not the 2001 Mitsubishi coupe Hooter was driving. In addition to having crossed the center line while driving, the driver, upon being stopped by police, had red eyes, slurred speech and smelled of alcohol. Faced with this evidence, Hooter ultimately pled guilty to drunk driving, fourth offense, and the trial court handed down a sentence of 12 years in jail and a $12,000 fine.

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Black Friday is a big day among retailers and many holiday shoppers. Unfortunately, Black Friday 2009 was a very painful day for one area shopper who slipped and fell in the vestibule of a department store in Kenner. Making matters worse, Louisiana’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal decided that the shopper was unable to recover damages from the store because her evidence at trial failed to show that the store had “constructive notice” of the fallen sign that caused her injury.

Sylvia Scott visited the Dillard’s store in Esplanade Mall shortly after it opened on Black Friday 2009. In the front entryway to the store, a plastic cling sign (like one might commonly see in a store front window announcing holiday hours) had fallen to the ground. Scott stepped on it, slipped, and fell on her back. Scott’s injuries eventually forced her to have surgery.

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