The Beagle Blog

Discovery is the formal evidence-gathering stage of a personal injury lawsuit. In a Utah injury case, it usually begins after the defendant answers the complaint and the parties exchange required disclosures, documents, written answers, and sworn testimony. It matters because a serious injury claim is not built on the insurance adjuster’s first impression or a stack of medical bills alone. It is built on admissible evidence showing fault, causation, damages, insurance coverag

The best cross-examination of an economist is not a debate over every number in the damages spreadsheet. It is a disciplined attack on the assumptions that make the number look larger, smaller, safer, or more certain than the evidence supports. In a Utah personal injury case, that means using short leading questions, one fact at a time, arranged in chapters that move the jury toward a clear factual goal. When the cross is built that way, the economist’s final number starts to

Parents may have a legal claim when a video game uses deceptive or unreasonably unsafe design choices to keep a child spending real money, especially when the game hides costs, obscures odds, bypasses parental consent, or punishes disputed charges. In Utah, the claim is not simply that a child played too much or made a bad choice; the question is whether the company designed, marketed, or operated the product in a way that foreseeably caused unauthorized charges, measurable h

When cargo or vehicle parts fall into traffic, the claim usually turns on who let the hazard reach the roadway and whether that person or company can be identified. In Utah, a road-debris case may involve the driver who failed to secure a load, the employer or motor carrier responsible for the trip, the company that loaded or maintained the vehicle, an unidentified vehicle under uninsured-motorist coverage, or in narrower cases a governmental entity or road contractor. The fa

Section 230 is powerful, but it is not a magic shield for every injury connected to a website, app, or social media platform. It usually prevents a plaintiff from treating an online platform as the publisher or speaker of content supplied by another user, which is the core protection in 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1). A product-liability design claim is different when it targets the company’s own design choices, such as a speed filter, addictive engagement loop, defective age gate, un

If an AI system gives someone the wrong drug, wrong dose, wrong timing, or dangerous interaction advice and the person is physically injured after following it, there may be a viable Utah injury claim. The legal theory will depend on what the AI was designed to do, who built or deployed it, whether a licensed health professional was involved, and how the recommendation reached the patient. A case may involve product liability, ordinary negligence, medical malpractice, consume

If someone borrows a car in Utah and causes a crash, the answer is not simply that “insurance follows the car” or that “insurance follows the driver.” Utah law generally requires an owner’s auto liability policy to cover a person who is using the insured vehicle with the owner’s express or implied permission, so the vehicle owner’s policy is often an important source of liability coverage. The driver’s own auto policy may also apply, however, and the order in which multiple p

A trucking company may be directly responsible for a crash when it puts an unsafe or unqualified driver behind the wheel despite information that a reasonable hiring process would have uncovered. Negligent hiring focuses on the company’s own decision to employ the driver, not merely on what the driver did seconds before the collision. In Utah, the issue generally turns on whether the company knew or should have known that the driver posed a foreseeable risk and whether the co

Potentially, yes—but Utah law does not yet provide a reported appellate decision holding that a generative-AI chatbot is a “product” for strict product-liability purposes. The better answer is that a chatbot may fit a product-liability theory when the claimed injury comes from the way the system was designed, deployed, tested, or warned about, rather than simply from disagreement with an idea expressed in a conversation. Utah’s Product Liability Act asks whether a product had

When a smoke or carbon monoxide detector fails to warn and that failure makes an injury or death worse, Utah law may allow claims against the manufacturer, installer, property owner, maintenance contractor, or other responsible party. The case is not proved merely by showing that the alarm stayed silent. The evidence must explain why the device failed, who was responsible for the failure, and whether a timely warning probably would have allowed the injured person to escape, s

Carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a furnace, space heater, water heater, fireplace, boiler, or other fuel-burning appliance can support a Utah personal injury or wrongful death claim when a defective product, negligent installation or repair, unsafe rental condition, or another preventable failure caused the exposure. The responsible party is not always the appliance manufacturer; an HVAC contractor, service company, landlord, property manager, installer, or component manuf

Yes. An AI company can potentially be held liable when an AI system causes foreseeable physical or psychological harm, but there is no single established “AI liability” rule that decides every case. In Utah, the viable theory may depend on whether the system is legally treated as a product, a service, or both, and whether the claim concerns an inadequate warning, unsafe design, negligent operation, or another recognized tort. A claimant still must prove the elements of the pa

A product does not become safe because a company puts a vague caution in fine print. Under Utah law, a manufacturer can face strict product-liability exposure when it knows or should know of a product risk and fails to provide an adequate warning, leaving the product unreasonably dangerous. The central questions are what the company knew, what warning actually reached the user, whether that warning communicated the real danger, and whether a proper warning would have changed

A permanent scar or disfigurement can be a major part of a Utah personal injury claim because the loss is not limited to the cost of the medical treatment that created or repaired the wound. A visible scar can change how a person sees himself or herself, how other people react, what clothing the person chooses, and how comfortable the person feels at work or in public. Utah’s model jury instructions specifically identify the degree and character of disfigurement as a factor a

Family members and coworkers can be some of the most important witnesses in an invisible brain injury case because they can describe what actually changed after the injury. A spouse may notice repeated questions, forgotten appointments, irritability, or a new need for help with ordinary tasks, while a coworker may see slower work, lost focus, missed steps, or errors in work the person previously handled easily. Their testimony does not replace medical diagnosis or expert evid

Voir dire is the process lawyers and the judge use to determine whether prospective jurors can fairly decide a personal injury case. The goal is not supposed to be finding eight people who already agree with the plaintiff or eight people predisposed toward the defense. Lawyers are trying to identify experiences, beliefs, and biases that could prevent a juror from evaluating the evidence under the court’s instructions. In a serious injury trial, that can mean asking directly a

Section 230 does not simply say that social media companies can never be sued when a child is harmed while using their platforms. The federal statute generally prevents an online service from being treated as the publisher or speaker of information created by somebody else, which gives platforms powerful protection against claims that depend on third-party posts. The harder question in current child social-media litigation is whether a lawsuit seeks to hold a platform liable

A parent who signed a trampoline-park waiver should not automatically assume that a seriously injured child has no claim. Utah Supreme Court decisions have repeatedly recognized a strong public policy against allowing a parent to prospectively release a minor child’s negligence claim, and Utah’s trampoline-park statute separately imposes specific duties involving industry safety standards, supervision, inspections, warning signs, injury records, emergency preparation, and lia

A crash with an Amazon, FedEx, UPS, or other delivery vehicle can involve much more than the individual driver’s negligence. Depending on who employed the driver, who owned the vehicle, who controlled the delivery operation, and what insurance applied, responsibility may extend to an employer, delivery contractor, vehicle owner, logistics company, or another business involved in getting the package to its destination. The logo on the van does not necessarily answer those ques

A hotel or resort can be responsible for a guest’s injury when an unsafe condition on the property creates an unreasonable risk and the business fails to take reasonable steps to discover, correct, or protect guests from that danger. The important issue is not simply that someone fell, was assaulted, or was hurt while staying at a hotel. A successful Utah premises-liability claim requires evidence connecting the injury to negligence by the person or company that possessed or