Texas Civil Trial Blog

In Texas, independent contractors and their employees can hold property owners liable for premise liability and/or negligence if the property owner maintained some control over the manner in which work is performed on the property and failed to warn about dangers on the property that the owner should have reasonably known. This type of claim requires that the property owner was negligent in hiring the contractor and the contractor was negligent during work on improvements to the property. 

Late last year we discussed a short-term fix of a long-term problem as Congress considered legislation to exempt Livestock haulers from the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) provisions of the US Department of Transportation's Hours of Service (HOS) regulations applicable to commercial motor vehicle operators. As expected, Congress passed, and the President signed, legislation that exempted livestock haulers through the end of fiscal year 2019. However, all that did was again delay the inevitable, that federal regulators are going to have to substantively address HOS regulations as they apply to livestock haulers. Instead of considering long term solutions, Congress passed the buck, leaving livestock haulers to once again question what will happen in September 2019 at the end of the fiscal year. Will the temporary exemptions be extended yet again? Will Congress finally address the problem? Will livestock haulers be forces to put the animals they haul, and the American people, in harm's way in order to continue to do their job?