Our Blog

Public Housing Often Fails to Meet Modern Fire Safety Standards Many older public housing apartment buildings, homeless shelters lack smoke detectors and fire sprinklers In a previous post, we reviewed the recent tragic deaths of 6 people in a Las Vegas hotel that had been converted to an apartment building. In that post we noted that early reports suggested the building, which is privately owned, did not have an operating fire sprinkler system and that smoke detectors were either not…

Hazing Incidents On Rise at College Sororities Here at The Doan Law Firm, we maintain an in-house database that tracks published reports of college fraternity suspensions over infractions related to hazing, alcohol/drug abuse and other types of fraternity misconduct. Although we have previously limited our database to incidents involving fraternities, we have recently noted that an increasing number of sororities have become the targets of misconduct investigations conducted by their hosts schools and/or their national sorority headquarters. In today’s post,…

California Wildfire Lawsuits Last year, California’s Camp Fire killed 85 people and destroyed an estimated $16.5 billion in private and business property. According to most estimates, as much as $4 billion of those property losses were uninsured. It was later determined that the fire was caused when sparks from a downed power line belonging to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) ignited dry underbrush. With high winds being forecast to last at least until Monday evening, the state is bracing for…

New Mexico Jury Awards $40 Million Verdict in Student Truck Driver Accident Although many of us don’t realize it, Interstate “Big Rig” trucking plays a vital part in our everyday lives. As an example, practically everything that you buy in your local supermarket was at some point transported by a commercial truck. The same holds true for the car you drove to the shopping center to buy your child’s back-to-school clothes: both your car and your child’s clothing were transported…

New Orleans Hard Rock Hotel Collapses: Catastrophic Building Disaster Revisits Tragedy in the Iconic French Quarter Without warning, an 18-story building under construction on Canal Street at the edge of the New Orleans French Quarter began to collapse just after 9:00 on Saturday morning. The building was to be a New Orleans Hard Rock Hotel when completed. More than 100 workers were in the structure at the time of the deadly calamity. By mid-afternoon, emergency personnel reported that at least one…