Know Your Rights

Most Pennsylvania families with multiple cars on their auto policy are sitting on a financial protection they don't know they have — or signing it away for a discount that isn't worth it. It's called stacking, and the decision you make about it could be the most important insurance choice you never thought about.

What Stacking Actually Means

When you carry Uninsured Motorist (UM) or Underinsured Motorist (UIM) coverage on your auto policy, that coverage has a limit — say, $100,000 per person. Under Pennsylvania law, if you have multiple vehicles on your policy, you have the right to stack those limits together.

Here's what that means in plain terms:

• Two cars on your policy, each with $100,000 UIM coverage
• Without stacking: you have $100,000 in UIM protection for any one accident
• With stacking: you have $200,000 in UIM protection for that same accident

Same policy. Same premium (roughly). Double the protection — just by not signing a piece of paper the insurance company puts in front of you.

Three cars? That's $300,000 stacked. Four cars? $400,000. The math is straightforward. What isn't straightforward is how quietly insurance companies work to make you give it up.

Why This Matters So Much in a Serious Crash

Consider a realistic scenario: you're driving through Philadelphia when a driver who is underinsured — carrying Pennsylvania's state minimum of $15,000 — runs a red light and T-bones you. You suffer a traumatic brain injury, miss four months of work, and accumulate $180,000 in medical bills.

The at-fault driver's insurer pays out their $15,000 policy limit. You're left with $165,000 in uncompensated losses. Now you turn to your own UIM coverage.

• Without stacking (one vehicle's limit): $100,000 available — you're still $65,000 short
• With stacking (two vehicles at $100K each): $200,000 available — your losses are fully covered

That gap isn't theoretical. It determines whether your family recovers financially or absorbs a six-figure loss through no fault of your own.

The Waiver — and Why Insurers Push It

Pennsylvania law gives you stacking by default on multi-vehicle policies. But the law also allows you to waive stacking in writing — and insurance companies routinely ask you to do exactly that.

The waiver shows up in the paperwork when you purchase or renew your policy. It is often presented casually, buried among other forms, with a brief explanation that waiving stacking will lower your premium. What they don't emphasize is how small that savings actually is — typically $50 to $150 per year — and what you're giving up in exchange.

Insurance companies push stacking waivers because it dramatically limits their exposure in serious injury claims. For them, getting you to waive stacking is a financial win worth far more than the modest premium reduction they pass back to you. The asymmetry is stark: they save potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in claim exposure; you save a few dollars a month.

Interpolicy Stacking: It Goes Further Than You Think

Intrapolicy stacking — combining limits across vehicles on a single policy — is the most common form. But Pennsylvania also allows interpolicy stacking in some circumstances: combining coverage across separate policies within the same household.

If you and your spouse each have your own auto policy, and each policy carries UM/UIM coverage, you may be able to stack those limits as well — depending on the specific policy language and how the household is structured. This is a fact-specific analysis that an attorney can walk through with you, but the point is that the protection available to your family may be larger than any single policy's declarations page suggests.

How to Find Out Where You Stand Right Now

Pull out your auto insurance declarations page — the summary sheet that lists your coverage types and limits. Look for:

• UM/UIM coverage limits — what are they per vehicle?
• Number of vehicles on the policy
• Stacking election — it will say either "stacked" or "non-stacked" (or "waived")

If you don't have the declarations page, call your agent and ask directly: "Do I have stacked UM/UIM coverage?" Get the answer in writing. If you waived stacking and want to reinstate it, contact your insurer — you can typically add it back at renewal, though the specifics depend on your carrier.

If You've Already Been in an Accident and Waived Stacking

Discovering you waived stacking after an accident is devastating — but it may not be the end of the road. A few scenarios where stacking waivers have been challenged successfully:

• The waiver form was not presented properly or was not signed by a named insured
• The waiver language was ambiguous or did not comply with Pennsylvania statutory requirements
• The waiver was signed under circumstances that raise questions about informed consent
• Interpolicy stacking from a separate household policy was available and not factored in

These are not guarantees — but they are real arguments that have succeeded in Pennsylvania courts. If you're facing a significant injury claim and UIM coverage feels inadequate, have an attorney review the full picture before accepting that a waiver closes the door.

This is not a one-time failure. This is a pattern. And the federal government's answer to it is to ask the industry — nicely — to do better.

In the past year, two separate U.S. brands of powdered infant formula have been linked to botulism outbreaks. A contaminated ingredient triggered nearly 150 suspected poisoning cases across ten countries. Babies — some just weeks old — have been hospitalized from products their parents bought at major retail chains, trusting that someone in power had made sure those products were safe to feed a newborn.

On July 13, 2026, the Food and Drug Administration responded.

They sent a letter.

The Scale of What Has Happened

Let's be precise about what we're dealing with, because this is not a single isolated recall.

Outbreak One — ByHeart: The first confirmed U.S. botulism outbreak linked to infant formula in nearly 50 years. Forty-eight babies sickened across 17 states. The outbreak ran through early 2026 before being contained.

Outbreak Two — Nara Organics: Four infants, including a Pennsylvania baby, hospitalized with botulism type A. The outbreak began in April 2026 and, as of this writing, is still ongoing.

The Global Contamination Event: Separate from the botulism outbreaks, contaminated arachidonic acid (ARA) oil — a common ingredient added to infant formula — produced nearly 150 suspected and confirmed cases of cereulide intoxication across ten countries. In May 2026, a2 Milk recalled formula batches after detecting the toxin. This was a supply chain contamination that crossed manufacturers, brands, and borders.

Three crises. Two of them still unresolved. All of them involving the same category of product: infant formula fed to the most vulnerable humans on earth.

What the FDA Did

The FDA sent a letter to infant formula manufacturers urging them to exercise "substantive oversight" of their suppliers. The agency said it "expects" manufacturers to understand where their ingredients come from, how they're produced, what risks they carry, and whether those risks are being controlled.

It recommended that companies monitor safety signals — recall notifications, outbreak investigations, import alerts.

That's it. No mandatory testing requirements. No new regulations. No enforcement action. No prohibition on the use of unverified ingredients in infant formula. A letter asking an industry to please pay more attention.

What the FDA Could Have Done — And Didn't

This is not a situation where the FDA lacks the power to act. It is a situation where the FDA chose not to use the power it has.

Under the federal Infant Formula Act and its own regulations — 21 CFR Parts 106 and 107 — the FDA has authority to set and enforce manufacturing practices, quality control standards, and testing requirements for every infant formula sold in the United States. The agency can require that manufacturers verify ingredient safety before those ingredients ever touch formula. It can mandate specific pathogen testing before a product is released to market. It can prohibit the use of ingredient sources that haven't been audited and certified safe.

Congress has already signaled what mandatory action looks like: the Infant Formula Safety Modernization Act of 2026 was introduced to direct the FDA to enforce standardized pathogen and microorganism testing of formula products and manufacturing facilities. The FDA didn't need Congress to introduce that bill to act — it has the regulatory authority to impose those requirements through rulemaking right now, without waiting for legislation.

States have shown it can be done. Connecticut, Illinois, and Vermont have enacted laws requiring monthly testing, public disclosure of results, and enhanced labeling. States — with a fraction of the FDA's resources and authority — are doing what the federal regulator won't.

Instead, the FDA sent a letter.

Why This Matters — And Who Pays the Price

There is a cynical logic to regulatory inaction. Rulemaking is slow, politically contentious, and opposed by well-funded industries. Sending a letter is fast, frictionless, and generates a press release. The industry gets to say it received guidance. The agency gets to say it responded. And the cost of the next outbreak — the hospitalized infants, the traumatized families, the long-term developmental monitoring — falls entirely on the families it happened to.

This is not an abstraction. When a product made by a company that answers to shareholders poisons a baby, and the federal agency charged with preventing that outcome chose to write a strongly-worded letter rather than mandate the testing that would have caught it — those families have nowhere to turn except the civil courts.

The Civil Justice System Is the Only Real Accountability

People sometimes ask why we need product liability lawsuits when we have regulators. The infant formula crisis is the answer.

When the FDA issues a letter, there is no consequence for ignoring it. When a jury returns a verdict — or a company faces the prospect of one — there are consequences. Compensatory damages for medical costs, pain, suffering, and long-term harm. Potentially punitive damages where a company's conduct was reckless. Public disclosure through litigation of internal documents, testing records, and supply chain decisions that regulators never forced into the open.

Product liability litigation does not just compensate individual families. It changes industry behavior in a way that voluntary guidance cannot. Companies invest in quality control when the alternative is a trial. They audit their suppliers when a contaminated ingredient means a lawsuit. They test their products before release when failure to test becomes evidence of negligence.

The FDA's letter asks manufacturers to do these things voluntarily. The civil justice system requires them to do these things — or face the financial and reputational cost of not having done so.

If your infant consumed Nara Organics formula, ByHeart formula, or any recalled product and became ill, a letter from the government to the manufacturer is not justice. It is not accountability. And it will not change what happened to your child.

A lawsuit might.

Three infants are in the hospital. Pennsylvania families are affected. And the product that sickened them was sold at Target — a brand many parents trusted because it carried the word "organic" on the label.

On June 13, 2026, the FDA announced a voluntary recall of all lots of Nara Organics Whole Milk Organic Powdered Infant Formula following a multistate botulism outbreak that has left three babies hospitalized.

Here's what every parent needs to know — and what your family's legal rights are if your child was harmed.

What Happened

Between April and May 2026, three infants between the ages of 2 and 5 months old became ill with botulism type A — one of the most dangerous forms of the disease. The CDC linked the cases across three states: California, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

All three children required hospitalization and were treated with BabyBIG® (Botulism Immune Globulin), the only approved treatment for infant botulism in the United States.

As of the recall date, the product itself had not yet tested positive for Clostridium botulinum, the bacteria that produces botulism toxin. But the epidemiological evidence — three infants, three different states, one shared product — was strong enough for federal authorities to act. The recall covers every lot ever sold under the Nara Organics Whole Milk Organic Powdered Infant Formula label.

The formula was sold at Target stores nationwide, Target.com, and Nara.com from July 2025 through June 2026.

What Is Infant Botulism — And Why Is It So Dangerous?

Infant botulism is not the same as foodborne botulism in adults. In babies, the C. botulinum spores are ingested and germinate inside the intestine, producing toxin internally. Because infants' immune systems and gut microbiomes are still developing, they are uniquely vulnerable to this kind of infection.

The toxin attacks the nervous system, causing progressive muscle paralysis that starts subtle and can escalate quickly. Warning signs include:

• Constipation (often the first symptom)
• Weak, floppy muscles — the baby's head may droop, they may seem limp
• Weak cry or a cry that sounds different than usual
• Poor feeding or difficulty sucking
• Drooping eyelids
• Difficulty breathing

Infant botulism is a medical emergency. If your child consumed Nara Organics formula and is showing any of these symptoms — even mild ones — go to the emergency room immediately and tell the doctors about the formula. Do not wait.

What You Should Do Right Now

1. Stop using the product immediately. Do not finish the container.
2. Do not throw it away — preserve it in a sealed bag. If you pursue a legal claim, the product itself is evidence.
3. Call your pediatrician today, even if your baby seems fine.
4. Watch your baby closely for any of the symptoms listed above over the next several weeks.
5. Document everything: take photos of the packaging, lot number, and UPC. Keep your receipts or check your Target account purchase history.
6. Contact a personal injury attorney if your child was hospitalized or showed symptoms after consuming this formula.

Pennsylvania Families Were Directly Affected

One of the three reported cases involves a family in Pennsylvania — our state. That is not a statistic. That is a real baby, likely from a family that did everything right. They bought a product marketed as organic and wholesome, from a major retailer, for their newborn. And that baby ended up in a hospital.

Pennsylvania families deserve answers. They deserve accountability. And they may have a legal claim.

The Legal Angle: Product Liability for Contaminated Infant Formula

Under Pennsylvania law, a manufacturer can be held strictly liable when a product they put into the stream of commerce causes harm — even without proving they were careless. You don't have to show that Nara Organics "did something wrong" in the traditional sense. You only need to show:

1. The product was defective (contaminated or unreasonably dangerous)
2. The defect existed when it left the manufacturer's control
3. The defect caused your child's injuries

In a case like this, the potential claims include:

• Strict products liability — manufacturing or design defect
• Failure to warn — inadequate warnings about contamination risk
• Negligence in manufacturing, testing, or quality control
• Breach of the implied warranty of merchantability — the formula was not fit for its intended purpose

Damages in an infant botulism case can include medical expenses (including hospitalization, specialist care, and BabyBIG® treatment), pain and suffering, long-term developmental monitoring costs, and — in severe cases — compensation for lasting neurological effects.

35,454 crashes. 640 deaths. 33,453 injuries. Five years of official PennDOT data reveals which Philadelphia streets are the most dangerous — and one trend in the numbers that should alarm everyone.

As a Philadelphia personal injury attorney, I see the aftermath of serious crashes every day. But numbers have a way of making scale visible that individual cases can't. So I analyzed five years of official Pennsylvania Department of Transportation crash data covering every recorded collision within Philadelphia city limits from 2020 through 2024.

What I found is both predictable and alarming.

The Scale of the Problem

In five years, Philadelphia recorded 35,454 crashes — roughly 19 every single day — resulting in 640 deaths and 33,453 injuries. That's more than one fatality every three days, sustained across five years, in a single American city.

These aren't statistics to a personal injury attorney. Each one is a client, a family, a case that didn't have to happen.

Philadelphia's Most Dangerous Intersections

When mapped by location, a handful of intersections stand out as consistently deadly year after year.

North Broad Street & Erie Avenue recorded 48 crashes over five years — including 3 fatalities and 20 pedestrian crashes. That pedestrian count is one of the highest of any single intersection in the entire city. It is not a surprise to anyone who has stood at that corner.

North Broad Street & Glenwood Avenue tells a different story. Only 33 total crashes — but 4 fatalities, the highest death count of any hotspot in the dataset. That ratio matters. When crashes happen here, they tend to be severe. The intersection has a lethality profile that raw crash volume alone obscures.

The stretch of North Broad Street from Hunting Park Avenue to Erie Avenue contains multiple top-10 hotspots. This is not a coincidence — it is a corridor with known, documented, recurring danger, year after year.

Allegheny Avenue & Frankford Avenue in Kensington had only 19 recorded crashes in the dataset — yet produced 3 fatalities. That's a fatality rate of nearly 1-in-6 crashes. If you drive that intersection regularly, understand what the data is saying.

Roosevelt Boulevard: Philadelphia's Most Dangerous Road — By a Wide Margin

No road in Philadelphia is close. Roosevelt Boulevard accounted for 7,776 crashes from 2020–2024 — more than 22% of all crashes in the entire city occurring on a single road. It produced 183 fatalities and 1,047 pedestrian crashes over five years.

Roosevelt Boulevard is a 12-mile divided highway threading through the dense neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia at speeds up to 50 mph. It was designed in a different era, for a different city. The data shows what happens when high-speed arterial design meets pedestrian-dense residential neighborhoods decade after decade. The City of Philadelphia has studied this problem for years. The death toll persists.

The Trend Nobody Is Talking About

Here is what jumped out at me most in the year-over-year numbers: total crashes are falling, but crashes involving the most vulnerable people are rising.

• Total crashes dropped from 7,940 in 2020 to 5,806 in 2024 — a 27% decline
• Pedestrian crashes increased every single year — from 1,027 in 2020 to 1,133 in 2024
• Bicycle crashes surged 42% in 2024 alone — from 205 in 2023 to 290 in 2024

Fewer cars are crashing into each other. But more people on foot and on bikes are being hit — and the 2024 bicycle spike is particularly striking. The explosion of e-bikes, cargo bikes, and scooters on Philadelphia streets has not been matched by safer infrastructure. Protected lanes remain scarce. Enforcement of traffic laws near bike lanes is inconsistent. The result is visible in the data.

This is consistent with what I see in my practice: pedestrian and cyclist cases are increasing, and they tend to involve serious, often catastrophic injuries when they occur.

When Are Philadelphia Roads Most Dangerous?

The hourly data is unambiguous: the most dangerous hour in Philadelphia is 6:00 PM, with 274 average crashes per period — followed by 5:00 PM (262) and 7:00 PM (244). The window from 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM accounts for a disproportionate share of all serious crashes citywide.

If you're on foot, on a bike, or driving during that afternoon-to-evening window near any of the corridors identified above, the statistical risk is meaningfully elevated. That's not meant to discourage travel — it's meant to inform how you move through these streets and what you do if something goes wrong.

What This Data Means If You Were Injured

Location history is legally relevant. When a dangerous intersection has a documented, multi-year record of crashes, injuries, and fatalities, that record can be used in several ways:

• To show that a government entity was on notice of a dangerous condition and failed to correct it
• To counter a defense argument that the crash was a fluke or unforeseeable
• To establish that a property owner, municipality, or road authority had prior knowledge of recurring risk
• To contextualize the conduct of a defendant who was operating in a documented danger zone

An experienced personal injury attorney knows how to locate, subpoena, and use this kind of evidence. Official crash data is public record. Whether it gets in front of a jury is a function of how it's developed and presented.

Pennsylvania's statute of limitations for personal injury is two years from the date of the crash. Evidence disappears. Surveillance footage is overwritten in days. Witnesses move on. If you were hurt in any crash in Philadelphia — car accident, truck accident, pedestrian knockdown, bicycle collision — the time to act is now, not later.

Data source: Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) crash records, municipality code 67301 (Philadelphia), years 2020–2024. Analysis by James Stinsman, Esq., The Levin Firm Personal Injury Lawyers.

A new study published in the journal Neurosurgery has put numbers to what emergency rooms already know: e-bikes and e-scooters are producing catastrophic, life-altering injuries at a rate no one anticipated. For riders in Philadelphia — where electric bikes and rental scooters are everywhere — the data is a wake-up call. And for those who have already been hurt, the legal picture is more complex than most people realize.

What the Study Found

Researchers examined trauma admissions at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City from 2018 to 2023, focusing on injuries involving bicycles, e-bikes, and e-scooters. The findings are stark:

• E-bikes and e-scooters went from 8% of bike/scooter trauma cases in 2018 to over 50% by 2023 — a six-fold increase in five years
• Nearly 30% of patients sustained traumatic brain injuries
• 26% suffered skull or facial fractures
• 50% required surgery
• 69% required hospital admission
• Almost 33% required intensive care
• Most patients were hospitalized for at least three days
• Only 31% were wearing helmets at the time of injury

The most common cause of serious injury was a collision with a motor vehicle — not a fall. As Dr. Hannah Weiss noted in connection with the research, "micromobility injuries are producing serious brain and spinal trauma that demands neurosurgical care at a scale we haven't seen before."

The full ABC News report on the study makes clear this is not a New York problem. It is happening in every city with e-bikes and scooters — including Philadelphia.

Philadelphia's Specific Exposure

Philadelphia's streets are not designed for the volume of e-bikes and scooters now using them. Indego bike share, Lime, and private e-bikes have become a primary mode of transportation for thousands of riders, many of them navigating streets with no protected bike infrastructure, alongside cars, trucks, delivery vehicles, and SEPTA buses. The conditions that produce the injuries documented in this study exist on virtually every major street in the city.

When a car door swings open into a bike lane, when a driver fails to yield at an intersection, when a rideshare pulls to the curb without checking — the rider absorbs the impact. At e-bike speeds, which can reach 20–28 mph, those impacts produce exactly the kind of traumatic brain injuries described in this study.

Who Is Liable When a Rider Is Hurt?

The legal landscape for e-bike and scooter injury cases involves several potential defendants, depending on how the crash happened:

• The negligent driver — in most serious cases, a motor vehicle operator failed to yield, ran a red light, opened a door without looking, or made an unsafe turn. Driver negligence is the most common source of liability in these collisions.
• The scooter or e-bike company — if a mechanical failure (brake failure, battery malfunction, structural defect) contributed to the crash or the severity of injuries, the manufacturer or rental company may bear liability under product liability theories.
• The City or a property owner — dangerous road conditions, defective bike infrastructure, or poorly maintained surfaces can give rise to claims against the entity responsible for maintaining them.

Identifying the right defendant — and often multiple defendants — is one of the most important things an attorney does in these cases from day one.

The Helmet Question and Pennsylvania Law

Only 31% of seriously injured riders in the study were wearing helmets. Defense attorneys and insurance companies will try to use this against injured riders.

Here is what Pennsylvania law actually says: adult cyclists and e-bike riders in Pennsylvania are not legally required to wear helmets. The requirement under PA law applies only to riders under 12. The fact that you were not wearing a helmet does not automatically mean you were negligent.

That said, insurance companies will argue that a rider's failure to wear a helmet contributed to the severity of a head injury — not necessarily the crash, but the resulting harm. Pennsylvania is a comparative negligence state, meaning a jury can apportion fault between multiple parties. A plaintiff found partly responsible for their own injuries can still recover, as long as their share of fault does not exceed 50%. An experienced personal injury attorney counters these arguments with evidence, expert testimony, and a thorough analysis of what caused the crash — not just what made the injuries worse.

Traumatic Brain Injuries Are High-Stakes Cases

TBIs affect cognition, memory, personality, and the ability to work and maintain relationships in ways that are often invisible and difficult to quantify. They are frequently undervalued by insurance companies precisely because the injuries don't show up on an X-ray.

A TBI case requires thorough medical documentation, neuropsychological evaluation, specialist testimony, and an attorney willing to fight for the full picture of what has been lost — not just the medical bills. These are not cases to handle alone or settle quickly.

What to Do If You or Someone You Know Is Hurt on a Bike or Scooter

• Call 911 immediately — get police and medical responders to the scene. A police report creates a contemporaneous record.
• Accept emergency medical evaluation — TBIs do not always present symptoms immediately. What feels like a headache can be a bleed.
• Document everything at the scene — photographs of the vehicle, the road, traffic signals, your bike or scooter, and your injuries.
• Get witness contact information — bystanders disappear quickly.
• Preserve the bike or scooter — do not return a rental or repair your own before an attorney can inspect it.
• Do not speak to the driver's insurance company without legal representation.

An 18-wheeler plows into a stopped car on I-45 in Texas, killing a woman. The truck driver was allegedly engaged in phone sex with a woman miles away — who allegedly knew he was behind the wheel of a commercial rig. The victim's family sued her. A Texas appeals court just threw the case out. Here's why — and why New Jersey courts have reached a completely different conclusion.

What Happened on I-45

On June 6, 2022, Jocelyn Ortega was driving on I-45 near Houston when she was rear-ended by another vehicle. Both drivers did the right thing — they pulled to the shoulder and waited at the direction of law enforcement. A fire truck blocked the left lane. Traffic slowed and backed up.

Then Thomas Earl Roberts came barreling down the highway in his eighteen-wheeler, cruise control still engaged, at full speed. When he finally noticed the fire truck blocking the lane ahead, he swerved. The rig rolled over. It crushed and killed Jocelyn Ortega where she sat, on the shoulder, following police instructions, waiting to be released from the scene of a minor fender-bender.

Jocelyn's family — her parents, Manuel and Nancy Ortega — sued Roberts. They also sued a woman named Inger Washington. Their allegation: Washington was engaged in "phone or video sex" with Roberts while he was driving his commercial vehicle, knew or should have known he was operating an eighteen-wheeler, and was a proximate cause of the crash that killed their daughter.

The Legal Question: Does a Remote Caller Owe a Duty to the Public?

To win a negligence case, you have to prove four things: duty, breach, causation, and damages. The threshold question — the one that ended this case before it ever got to a jury — was whether Washington owed any legal duty at all to Jocelyn Ortega or the general public.

The trial court said no. The Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals, in a memorandum opinion issued June 4, 2026, agreed. Ortega v. Washington, No. 14-25-00371-CV (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] June 4, 2026).

The court's reasoning rested on a critical distinction: the difference between a passenger in the vehicle and a remote caller.

Passenger vs. Remote Caller: The Distinction That Decided the Case

Texas courts have previously recognized that a passenger owes a duty to refrain from distracting or interfering with a driver. The logic is intuitive: a passenger is physically present, can see the road, can observe traffic conditions in real time, and has some ability to understand when their conduct is creating a hazard. A driver also has limited ability to simply end the interaction with a passenger sitting beside them.

A remote caller is different in two decisive ways, according to the court:

• No first-hand knowledge. A remote caller cannot see the road, cannot see traffic, cannot observe the emergency scene Roberts was approaching. Washington had no real-time awareness of the hazard that was about to unfold.
• The driver controls the call. Roberts could have hung up at any moment. He chose not to. A driver cannot so easily remove a passenger from his vehicle, but he can end a phone call with a single button. That unilateral control, the court reasoned, places the responsibility squarely on the driver.

The court also rejected the family's argument that modern video call technology made Washington's situation equivalent to being physically present in the cab of the truck. That theory, the court concluded, was "precisely the type foreclosed" by the no-duty rule already established for remote callers.

New Jersey Has Gone the Other Way

The Texas court briefly acknowledged the family's citation to a New Jersey appellate decision — and expressly declined to find it persuasive. That divergence is worth understanding, because it illustrates a genuine split in how American courts are wrestling with this issue.

New Jersey courts have held that the sender of a text message can be held liable if the sender knew or had special reason to know that the recipient was driving and would read the text while driving. The New Jersey approach focuses on the sender's knowledge — if you text someone knowing they're driving and will look at their phone, you've contributed to the distraction.

Texas draws a harder line: the driver is solely responsible for choosing to engage with remote distractions, and remote parties owe no duty to the general public no matter what they knew about the driver's circumstances.

What This Means — and What It Doesn't

The dismissal of claims against Washington does not mean Roberts faces no liability. The family's claims against the truck driver himself — and against any trucking company involved — are entirely separate and were not part of this appeal. Commercial truck drivers and their employers face strict regulations, and a jury question about Roberts' negligence was never extinguished by this ruling.

What this case does establish — at least in Texas — is that liability for distracted driving ends with the driver. A remote caller, regardless of what they knew, regardless of what they were doing, does not owe a legal duty to the strangers who may be harmed by the driver's choice to remain distracted.

Whether that is the right place to draw the line, as courts in other states continue to grapple with the question, remains unsettled law across the country.

You take your child to a trampoline park, rock climbing gym, go-kart track, or adventure park. Someone at the front desk hands you a clipboard with a liability waiver. You sign it, your kid gets hurt, and you assume you've signed away your right to sue. You haven't — at least not your child's right. And that distinction matters enormously.

The Legal Principle: Minors Cannot Waive Their Own Rights

Pennsylvania law, like the law in most states, holds that a minor child does not have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract. A liability waiver is a contract — specifically, an agreement to release a business from claims arising from its negligence. Because a child cannot contract, a child cannot waive their own legal rights.

When you sign a waiver at a trampoline park, you are signing as a parent. You may be releasing your own claims — any personal injury claim you might have as an individual. But you are not your child. Your signature does not and cannot bind your child. They never agreed to anything. They can't. They're a minor.

The result: the waiver may protect the business from a lawsuit brought by you as an adult. It does nothing to extinguish your child's independent claim.

Pennsylvania Courts on Parental Waivers

Pennsylvania courts have consistently declined to enforce pre-injury liability waivers signed by parents on behalf of their minor children. The reasoning is straightforward: a parent has no legal authority to prospectively waive a child's future tort claims before an injury has even occurred. Public policy in Pennsylvania does not allow a third party — even a parent — to strip a child of their right to seek compensation for injuries caused by someone else's negligence.

This is not a loophole or a technicality. It is a fundamental protection built into the law specifically because children cannot advocate for themselves.

What the Business Knows That You Don't

Commercial attractions — trampoline parks, indoor climbing gyms, inflatable arenas, go-kart facilities, paintball fields, escape rooms — are well-advised by lawyers. Their legal teams know exactly what those waivers can and cannot accomplish. They know a parent's signature doesn't bind the child. They hand you that clipboard anyway, and they count on you not knowing the difference.

The waiver serves a real purpose: it may limit or eliminate your personal claim as an adult visitor. For a business, eliminating even some claims is worth the paperwork. But they are not going to explain to you at the front desk that your child's rights are entirely unaffected by what you just signed.

Where This Comes Up Most Often

This issue arises regularly at:

• Trampoline parks and bounce facilities
• Indoor rock climbing and bouldering gyms
• Go-kart tracks and racing facilities
• Zip line and aerial adventure courses
• Inflatable party venues and play spaces
• Paintball and laser tag facilities
• Waterparks and amusement attractions
• Martial arts, gymnastics, and cheer gyms

If a business requires a waiver before your child participates, that business has accepted the risk of injury as part of its operation. The waiver is their attempt to shift that risk back onto you. For your child, that attempt fails.

The Statute of Limitations Is Tolled for Minors

There is another critical protection most parents don't know about. Pennsylvania's personal injury statute of limitations is generally two years — meaning an adult must file suit within two years of the injury or lose the right to sue. For minors, this clock does not start running until the child turns 18.

A child injured at age 9 has until age 20 to file a lawsuit. This does not mean you should wait — evidence disappears, witnesses move on, and surveillance footage is overwritten within days. But it does mean that the legal window is far broader for a child's claim than for an adult's, and a decision not to pursue the matter immediately is not necessarily a permanent one.

What You Should Do If Your Child Is Hurt

If your child is injured at any commercial attraction:

• Photograph everything — the area where the injury occurred, any equipment or conditions involved, your child's injuries
• Request an incident report and keep a copy
• Identify witnesses — get names and contact information before you leave
• Preserve your signed waiver — if you were given a copy, keep it
• Seek medical care promptly — both for your child's health and to document the injuries
• Do not give a recorded statement to the business's insurer without speaking to an attorney first

And do not accept the premise that the waiver you signed is the end of the story. It almost certainly isn't — at least not for your child.

Pennsylvania law requires every driver to carry auto insurance. But the minimums the state sets are dangerously low — and millions of drivers are on the road right now with coverage that would leave you financially devastated if they hit you. Understanding what those minimums are, what they don't cover, and how to protect yourself is one of the most important things you can do before you ever need a lawyer.

What Pennsylvania's Minimum Auto Insurance Actually Requires

To legally drive in Pennsylvania, you must carry at least:

• $15,000 bodily injury liability per person — the most your insurance pays to one person you injure
• $30,000 bodily injury liability per accident — the total paid to all injured people in one crash
• $5,000 property damage liability — covers damage you cause to another person's vehicle or property
• $5,000 in first-party medical benefits — pays your own medical bills regardless of fault, up to this amount

Read those numbers again. If you are seriously injured by a minimum-coverage driver — a driver who is following the law — the most you can recover from their insurance is $15,000. One ambulance ride and a night in a Philadelphia hospital can exceed that. A single surgery can cost ten times that amount.

The Gap Between Minimums and Reality

Consider a realistic scenario: you are struck at an intersection, suffer a herniated disc requiring surgery, miss three months of work, and incur $80,000 in medical bills. The at-fault driver carries the Pennsylvania state minimum. Their insurer writes you a check for $15,000 — the policy limit — and closes the file. That is all you are getting from them.

The at-fault driver personally owes you the remainder, but if they had minimum coverage, they almost certainly don't have assets worth pursuing. You are left holding the difference. This is not a hypothetical — it happens constantly, and it is exactly why your own insurance policy is your most important financial protection on the road.

Uninsured Motorist Coverage: When the Other Driver Has Nothing

Pennsylvania consistently ranks among the states with the highest percentage of uninsured drivers. Estimates suggest that roughly 1 in 8 Pennsylvania drivers has no insurance at all. When an uninsured driver causes an accident and injures you, there is no liability policy to claim against. Without Uninsured Motorist (UM) coverage on your own policy, you have no insurance recovery available — period.

UM coverage steps in as if your own insurer is the at-fault driver. You make a claim against your own policy. It also typically covers hit-and-run accidents where the responsible driver flees and cannot be identified. If you are a pedestrian or cyclist struck by an uninsured vehicle, UM coverage on your own auto policy may still apply.

Underinsured Motorist Coverage: When the Other Driver Doesn't Have Enough

Underinsured Motorist (UIM) coverage applies when the at-fault driver has insurance — but not enough of it to cover your actual damages. This is the scenario described above: the driver who hits you carries $15,000 in coverage and your damages are $150,000. Your UIM coverage can make up the gap, up to your own policy limits.

The way UIM works in Pennsylvania: once the at-fault driver's liability policy is exhausted (you've received their full policy limit), you can then make a UIM claim against your own insurer for the remaining damages. Your UIM limit minus the other driver's liability limit is the maximum available to you — which is why carrying high UIM limits is so important.

Stacking: Multiplying Your Protection

If you have more than one vehicle on your policy — or multiple policies in your household — Pennsylvania allows you to stack UM/UIM coverage across vehicles. If each of your two vehicles carries $100,000 in UIM coverage, stacking gives you up to $200,000 in UIM coverage for a single accident. Stacking can also apply across household members' separate policies in some circumstances.

Insurance companies routinely ask policyholders to waive stacking — often buried in the paperwork — because it reduces the insurer's exposure. The premium savings from waiving stacking are typically modest. The consequences of waiving it can be enormous.

What Coverage Limits Should You Actually Carry?

As a general rule, you should carry UM/UIM limits that match your liability limits, and both should be as high as you can reasonably afford. A common recommendation for a working professional in Pennsylvania:

• Bodily injury liability: $100,000 per person / $300,000 per accident (or higher)
• UM/UIM: $100,000 per person / $300,000 per accident — with stacking
• First-party medical benefits: $100,000 (dramatically better than the $5,000 minimum)
• Tort election: Full tort — never limited tort if you can help it

The difference in annual premium between minimum coverage and robust coverage is often less than $500 per year. The difference in financial protection is the difference between a manageable recovery and a catastrophe.

If You've Already Been Hit by a Minimum-Coverage or Uninsured Driver

If you are already dealing with the aftermath of an accident caused by an underinsured or uninsured driver, contact an attorney immediately. UM and UIM claims against your own insurer are more adversarial than most people expect — your insurer's interests are not aligned with yours in these disputes. An experienced personal injury attorney navigates this process regularly and can make the difference between a fair recovery and a lowball settlement from your own carrier.

Every Pennsylvania driver chooses between two options when they purchase auto insurance: limited tort or full tort. Most people choose limited tort without fully understanding what they're giving up — and they only discover the consequences after they're hurt.

What Is the Tort Election?

Pennsylvania is a "choice no-fault" state. When you buy auto insurance, your carrier is required to offer you a choice between limited and full tort coverage. The difference in premium is often modest — sometimes as little as $50–$100 per year. The difference in legal rights, however, can be enormous.

Full Tort

If you elect full tort, you retain the unrestricted right to sue the at-fault driver for all of your damages — including pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life — regardless of how severe or minor your injuries are.

Limited Tort

If you elect limited tort, you agree to limit your right to sue for non-economic damages (pain and suffering) unless you meet the threshold of a "serious injury." Under Pennsylvania law, a serious injury is defined as:

• Death
• Serious impairment of a body function
• Permanent serious disfigurement

This means that if you suffer a painful soft-tissue injury — a herniated disc, a torn rotator cuff, chronic neck or back pain — you may not be able to recover for your pain and suffering even if the other driver was completely at fault. Insurance companies love limited tort elections for exactly this reason.

Exceptions: When Limited Tort Doesn't Apply

Here is where many people — and frankly some attorneys — miss critical recovery opportunities. Even if you elected limited tort, there are several exceptions that restore your full tort rights:

• The at-fault driver was DUI at the time of the crash
• The at-fault driver was uninsured
• The at-fault vehicle was a commercial or business vehicle (delivery trucks, company cars, rideshares)
• The at-fault driver is registered in another state
• The crash was caused by an intentional act
• You yourself elected full tort — meaning if you are the passenger in someone else's vehicle, your own election governs

What You Should Do

If you've been injured in a car accident, do not assume your limited tort election is the end of the story. A competent personal injury attorney will analyze whether any of the above exceptions apply to your case. I've seen cases where insurance companies — and even other lawyers — failed to spot these exceptions, leaving injured clients without the recovery they deserved.

Insurance companies are not afraid of lawyers who never go to trial. They know who will fold, and they make their settlement offers accordingly. If you want maximum value for your case, you need a lawyer who has actually tried cases — and who will do it again when the stakes demand it.

What Insurance Companies Know That You Might Not

Large insurance carriers maintain internal databases tracking which law firms and attorneys regularly take cases to verdict and which ones consistently settle. They share this information across claims departments and with defense counsel. It is not speculation — it is industry practice.

When an insurer sees that your attorney has never tried a serious personal injury case, or hasn't been in front of a jury in years, they calculate their settlement offer accordingly. They know the bluff won't be called. That depresses the value of your case, often dramatically.

The Settlement Mill Problem

Many personal injury firms — particularly high-volume advertisers — operate as what practitioners call "settlement mills." Their business model depends on volume: sign up as many clients as possible, push for early settlements, collect the fee, move on. Trial preparation is expensive, time-consuming, and uncertain. For these firms, going to trial disrupts the assembly line.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a good settlement. Many cases should settle. But the willingness and ability to try a case — credibly, effectively — is the single greatest source of leverage in a personal injury negotiation. Without it, you're negotiating without leverage.

What Real Trial Experience Looks Like

There is a difference between an attorney who has tried a case and an attorney who has won hard cases in front of skeptical juries. Before you hire anyone, ask:

• How many jury trials have you personally taken to verdict?
• What types of cases — and what were the results?
• Are you willing to take my case to trial if the insurance company doesn't offer fair value?

As a former Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia, I stood in front of juries regularly — often in the most difficult and emotionally charged cases imaginable. I cross-examined hostile witnesses, argued complex facts to lay jurors, and learned to read a courtroom. That experience doesn't leave you. It is the foundation of everything I do as a civil trial attorney today.

Even in the Toughest Cases

Insurance companies push hardest in cases they believe are difficult: cases with disputed liability, cases with gaps in medical treatment, cases with prior injuries, cases where the plaintiff made a statement early on. These are exactly the cases where trial experience matters most — because these are the cases that go to verdict. An attorney who won't try a hard case might as well advertise it.

The first call you receive from the other driver's insurance company after an accident is not a courtesy call. It is a business call — and their business is paying you as little as possible. The most cost-effective thing that can happen from their perspective is for you to handle the claim yourself.

The Friendly Adjuster Routine

Insurance adjusters are trained professionals. They are taught to seem sympathetic, helpful, and reasonable. They express concern for your wellbeing. They tell you the process is simple and they just need a few things to get your claim moving. What they are actually doing is gathering information to minimize or deny your claim.

They will ask you to give a recorded statement. Do not do this without speaking to an attorney first. Statements made in the days immediately following an accident — when you may be in shock, still discovering the extent of your injuries, or simply trying to be cooperative — can and will be used against you.

The Early Settlement Offer

One of the most common insurance tactics is the fast, lowball settlement offer made before you've finished treating, before you've received all your medical records, and before you fully understand the long-term consequences of your injuries. They'll write you a check for a few thousand dollars and ask you to sign a release — a document that permanently and forever waives your right to seek further compensation for that accident.

Once you sign a release, it is over. It does not matter that you later discover your herniated disc requires surgery. It does not matter that you develop chronic pain. The release is binding.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Study after study — including data from the Insurance Research Council — consistently shows that claimants represented by an attorney recover significantly more than unrepresented claimants, even after paying legal fees. The insurance industry knows this. It is why their adjusters are instructed to resolve claims quickly, before a lawyer gets involved.

They Have Lawyers. So Should You.

The insurance company defending the claim against you has a team of experienced defense attorneys on retainer whose sole job is to minimize what they pay injured people. They are very good at it. The idea that you can negotiate on equal footing with this apparatus — without legal representation — is, frankly, what they're counting on.

At The Levin Firm, we take personal injury cases on a contingency basis. You pay nothing unless and until we win. There is no financial barrier to getting a lawyer in your corner from day one — which is exactly when it matters most.

You do everything right. You buy insurance. You follow the rules. And then an uninsured driver runs a red light and seriously injures you. Or an underinsured driver causes a catastrophic crash — and their policy limits are a fraction of your medical bills. Pennsylvania law provides a protection for exactly this scenario, but only if you understand it and have it on your policy.

The Two Coverages Explained

Uninsured Motorist (UM) Coverage protects you when the at-fault driver has no auto insurance at all. UM coverage also applies in most hit-and-run accidents where the responsible driver cannot be identified. You are essentially making a claim against your own insurance company, which then steps into the shoes of the uninsured driver.

Underinsured Motorist (UIM) Coverage applies when the at-fault driver does have insurance — but their policy limits are not enough to fully compensate you for your injuries. If the at-fault driver has $15,000 in liability coverage and your injuries are worth $250,000, your UIM coverage can fill (or help fill) that gap.

Pennsylvania Law and Your Rights

Pennsylvania insurance carriers are required by law to offer UM and UIM coverage. However, you can waive it — and many people do, often without fully understanding what they're giving up. If you waived UM/UIM coverage, you generally cannot now claim you didn't understand what you were signing. This is why it is critical to review your own policy before an accident happens.

Stacking: A Critical Concept

Pennsylvania allows a practice called stacking of UM/UIM coverage. Stacking means combining the coverage limits across multiple vehicles on your policy — or in some cases, across multiple policies in your household. If you have two vehicles each with $100,000 in UIM coverage, stacking means you may have access to $200,000 in UIM coverage for a single accident.

Like UM/UIM coverage itself, stacking can be waived in writing. Many insurers push policyholders to waive stacking to reduce premiums. The savings are often minimal; the consequences of the waiver can be significant.

Making a UM/UIM Claim

Pursuing a UM or UIM claim is not as simple as calling your own insurance company and expecting them to write you a check. Your insurer — even though they are your own carrier — is still a business trying to minimize payments. UM/UIM claims frequently involve disputes over the value of the underlying injury claim, complex coverage issues, and procedural requirements with strict deadlines. An experienced personal injury attorney is critical to navigating this process correctly.

What You Should Do Right Now

Pull out your auto insurance declaration page. Check your UM and UIM limits. Check whether you have stacking. If you don't know what any of this means or can't find the information, call your agent — or call me. A quick policy review today could save you from a catastrophic shortfall tomorrow.

When you walk into a store, a restaurant, a mall, or any other business open to the public, the law places a powerful obligation on that property owner. It is called the duty owed to a business invitee — and it is the highest duty of care in premises liability law.

The Three Categories of Entrants

Pennsylvania premises liability law categorizes people who enter property into three groups, and the duty owed to each is different:

• Trespassers — People on the property without permission. Property owners generally owe them only the duty to refrain from willful or wanton misconduct.
• Licensees — People on the property with permission but for their own purposes (social guests, for example). Property owners must warn of known dangers that the licensee is unlikely to discover.
• Business Invitees — People on the property for a commercial purpose, at the express or implied invitation of the owner. Customers, shoppers, diners, patrons. Property owners owe this group the highest duty of care.

What the Highest Duty Actually Requires

For business invitees, a property owner must:

• Actively inspect the premises for dangerous conditions
• Discover dangerous conditions through reasonable inspection
• Correct those conditions, or warn invitees of dangers that cannot be immediately corrected

This is a proactive duty — not merely reactive. A store does not get to say "we didn't know about the spill" if the spill had been sitting on the floor for 45 minutes and employees were walking past it. Under the concept of constructive notice, if a dangerous condition existed long enough that a reasonably diligent business owner should have known about it, the law treats the owner as having known about it.

Common Scenarios

The business invitee duty applies to a wide range of dangerous conditions:

• Wet or slippery floors (spills, mopping, tracked-in rain or snow)
• Broken, cracked, or uneven flooring or sidewalks
• Inadequate lighting in aisles, parking lots, or stairwells
• Fallen or improperly stacked merchandise
• Defective shopping carts, ramps, or escalators
• Inadequate security leading to assault on the premises

The "Open and Obvious" Defense

One defense stores frequently raise is that the dangerous condition was "open and obvious" — meaning a reasonable person would have seen and avoided it. Pennsylvania courts have found that even open and obvious conditions can give rise to liability where the business owner should anticipate that invitees might be distracted, looking at merchandise, or otherwise unable to appreciate the danger. This defense is not automatic, and an experienced attorney can often overcome it.

Why This Matters for Your Case

Stores, restaurants, and shopping centers are insured, well-funded, and represented by aggressive defense teams. They will investigate quickly, preserve only the evidence that helps them, and look for any way to shift blame to you. Comparative negligence — the argument that you were partially at fault — is a common tactic. Your own attorney needs to move equally fast: photographing the scene, obtaining surveillance footage before it is overwritten, identifying witnesses, and preserving evidence of the store's prior knowledge of the hazard.