Typical Cases
BETTY STOVALL (Kit) CLARK
Attorney Emeritus
Retired
Brief Sampling of Typical Cases
The Case of the Traveling Trousseau: Married only a short time, the bride and her husband set out
for a new life in Houston. Everything arrived safely EXCEPT the bride's several large boxes of lingerie. The moving company refused any reimbursement and denied all claims of pilfering by its employees. After trial, a jury found in favor of the bride and groom.
The Case of the Brown-Eyed Baby: Baby about four months old, was sick with a cold. Baby's
mother and father spoke little or no English. Two medicines were prescribed by a doctor, and two
prescriptions written: one for cough syrup and one for eye-drops. Two prescription slips were handed to the pharmacist. The pharmacist put cough syrup in the eye-drop bottle and eye drops in the cough syrup bottle (and was later found to have a drug problem). Baby suffered pain and trauma to eyes from administration of cough syrup into eyes. Mother and father requested that pharmacy reimburse additional medical expense, but pharmacy refused. By the time case was tried, the Baby with beautiful, wide brown eyes was two years old. A jury found in favor of Baby, Mother, and Dad.
The Bad-Cop/Bad-Cop Bank Case: A young woman who recently moved from another state used
her out-of-state driver's license to open an account at a major bank, into which she deposited several
thousand dollars. A short time later, she went into the bank and presented the same driver's license with her check to be cashed. She was thereupon taken into the back by two bank guards, where she was accused of using a fraudulent license, called a criminal, a thief, threatened with incarceration, insulted, spat upon, kicked, and refused the use of a telephone for several hours. She recovered for false imprisonment and other misconduct by the bank. The bank claimed it had lost all videotapes that would have confirmed her account of events.
The Case of the Dishonest Dealer: A used-car dealer sold a used Mercedes to a young couple, telling them it had only 25,000 miles on the odometer. This was true. However, it was later discovered that the car actually had over 200,000 miles, and that the dealer had rolled back the odometer. After trial, a jury found in favor of the couple.
The Case of the Hosed House: A couple with two young children (one in the crawling stage) moved into a new home, only to find that when it rained water penetrated the brick walls downstairs, ran down the inside walls, and soaked the carpet. After dealing with the builder unsuccessfully for over a year, nothing was accomplished. Upon inspection during a dry spell, the father-in-law hosed down the brick outside to demonstrate the problem. The builder's attitude was: A defect? What defect? After extended litigation, the builder repurchased the home.
The Junkyard Dog Debacle: When an owner went to obtain his wrongfully repossessed vehicle, the towing facility had improperly towed it, resulting in extensive damage to the hydraulic suspension. When he went to make a complaint about the damage, towing company employees locked him in an area with a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, taunted him, and eventually left him there alone with no indication when or whether he would be released. In climbing over the fence, he suffered multiple cuts and puncture wounds and tore his clothing. He eventually recovered all damages.
The Case of the Showroom Showdown: A young draftsman and his wife purchased a vehicle that later became subject to recall. In repairing the recall, the dealership damaged other systems on the vehicle, which required multiple other repair attempts. On a final return to the dealership, two dealer employees jumped the complaining customer in the middle of the showroom floor, kicked him, beat him, ripped off his shirt and broke the fingers on his right hand (with which he drafted). He was left with a vehicle with no working speedometer, flashers, heater, fan, clock, or emergency brake light, all of which had worked fine prior to the recall. After suit, a satisfactory result was obtained.
