Where an accident happens is an important factor in a personal injury case. For example, if a resident of another state gets injured in a car accident in New Mexico, then the courts of New Mexico have jurisdiction to rule on any lawsuits that may arise from the accident. Likewise, if you get injured while traveling out of state, the place to file a personal injury lawsuit is the state where the accident happened. Personal injury lawyers can only represent clients who filed lawsuits in the state where the lawyer is licensed to practice.  With premises liability cases, the location is of th ..read more

If you think the mountains, plains, gorges, and sand dunes of New Mexico are beautiful, wait until you see what is below the surface. The Carlsbad Caverns National Park is only a small part of the Carlsbad cave system. There are many other caves in New Mexico besides the ones that tourists visit, and many of them are beneath the surface of privately owned land. The government of New Mexico encourages cave exploration as a recreational activity and a way of finding out more about the natural environment of New Mexico, including but not limited to its plant and animal species. What happens if yo ..read more

Your parents are not the only ones who think that seatbelts make a big difference in whether a traffic collision leads to catastrophe. The data agree with them, and so do insurance claims adjusters. Motor vehicle occupants who were not wearing seatbelts at the time of impact account for a disproportionate share of traffic fatalities. Even in non-fatal collisions, drivers and passengers who do not wear seatbelts usually sustain more serious injuries than their counterparts who do.   New Mexico is a modified comparative negligence state, which means that the other driver’s insurance can pay ..read more

Retiring to Florida is so last century. With its restaurants overrun with blue-haired old ladies during the early bird dinner hour, it is the senior equivalent of going to the same college where most of your high school classmates attend. If you really want to play golf in peace, you should retire to New Mexico, where the weather is surprisingly mild in certain parts of the state and where the scenery is not just an endless parade of strip malls and parking lots. Few activities are more pleasurable than riding around a New Mexico golf course and its immediate environs on a golf cart. Seniors a ..read more

It is not always easy to tell, from looking at a person who has just been involved in a motor vehicle collision, how serious the person’s injuries are. Someone who is bleeding profusely may just need a few stitches and may not have any bone fractures or internal injuries. On the other hand, someone who has a concussion or whiplash injury might look and feel fine at first, but then the pain grows worse after the next few days, and an apparently minor sprain to an ankle or wrist might result in complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), which can interfere with the person’s normal use of the affecte ..read more

If you hit your head during a car accident, it might not hurt very much at the moment, but the injury could turn out to be more serious than you originally thought. You might develop a severe headache, dizziness, nausea, and other acute symptoms of concussion in the hours following the accident, and these symptoms might continue for months. If you have a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), the headaches and nausea will eventually go away, even though, while the symptoms last, they may be so bad that you are unable to work; this is as troublesome to your finances as it is to your p ..read more

Everybody knows someone who is full of tall tales. If you happen to meet such a person at a neighborhood block party or a professional networking event, he will tell you that it all started when he got hit by a garbage truck, and the insurance settlement money enabled him to launch his current business venture. You have probably seen news stories, especially here in New Mexico, about mishaps involving trash trucks.  This is not to suggest that garbage trucks are more involved in accidents than other vehicles; they just make the news because trash is so unpleasant that people cannot help b ..read more

At this moment, you are sharing the road with lots of people who are still suffering from financial losses related to a previous car accident. They might have incurred a lot of debt to get their cars fixed so that they could continue commuting to work. Medical bills from a car accident years earlier might still be following them around. Most of these people receive insurance settlements after their accidents; the trouble is that the settlement money is not enough to make a dent in the cost of their medical bills and vehicle repairs. Many of them would be in a better financial position today if ..read more

New Mexico’s mountainous landscapes are a lovely sight at any time of year, but navigating the mountain roads takes more skill and vigilance than you might expect if you learned to drive in a flat state like Texas or Oklahoma. If you follow the news, you occasionally see stories of drivers who met a terrible fate after taking a curve in the road too quickly or misjudging the width of the road. Meanwhile, ice and snow increase the risk of car accidents, no matter the terrain.  Therefore, snow-covered mountains are a doubly dangerous place to drive, no matter how beautiful they might look f ..read more

They say that it takes two to tango, but it only takes one vehicle to crash. Single-vehicle accidents can cause at least as much damage to life, limb, and property as collisions that involve two or more vehicles. Excessive speed and alcohol are frequently among the contributing factors to single-vehicle accidents. Sometimes, a single-vehicle accident can occur when a driver on an empty road gets drowsy or distracted or loses control of the car. These types of accidents rarely happen in city traffic, where almost any mistake would cause you to collide with a nearby vehicle. Therefore, the damag ..read more