Texas Law Professor Sued School Over Tailgate Party Injuries

Do you know which Super Bowl MVP's dad is a prominent attorney?

This one is a bit of a throwback Thursday for you. A decision dating back to last year, but there is a connection — albeit a little tenuous — to this week.

Back in 2009 the University of Texas boasted an elite football team and students filled their Saturdays with wild tailgates while the Longhorns drubbed teams like Kansas en route to a national title game appearance. It was that precise Kansas party back in 2009 that set the stage for this law professor’s personal injury suit against the school for injuries he sustained tripping over the cables powering the fun.

Most folks would just curse their clumsiness and move on, but law professors know the full extent of their legal rights better and that’s why UT Family Law professor John Sampson filed suit against the school.

But putting aside the merits of this case, I wrote up this one for all my New York Giants fan friends so they can understand that, no matter what the record books will say about Drew Brees, not every member his family is invincible. Because his dad, lawyer Chip Brees representing Professor Sampson, was unable to win this shootout. The father of Super Bowl XLIV MVP and Wrangler Jeans enthusiast is a veteran litigator in Austin currently practicing with Whitehurst, Harkness, Brees, Cheng, Alsaffar, & Higginbotham, PLLC. Perhaps it’s that upbringing with a cool, analytic mind in the house that allowed Drew to be so at peace with his own six-year-old son rooting against him for Eli Manning.

On November 21, 2009, Sampson, a professor at the University’s law school, was injured while walking to his office on campus after dark. Sampson alleges that he tripped over an extension cord strung across a pedestrian walkway between a parking lot on the campus and the law school. Sampson sued the University to recover damages for his injuries, alleging that “[t]he cord was not taped down or secured in any way,” that a portion of the cord ran across and slightly above the walkway, and that, as he was walking to his office after dark, the cord hit his leg about mid-shin, causing him to pitch forward and injure himself. He alternatively asserted causes of action for negligence, a special defect, and a premise defect. See id. §§ 101.021(2), .022(a), (b). As to his negligence claim, he alleged that the University was negligent by failing to properly locate and secure the cord, placing it in a dangerous location, and failing to warn of the dangerous location.

“Mid-shin” seems awfully high for a cable. That’s not a power cable, that’s a tripwire that launches a clever escape if you’re the A-Team. Hook ’em indeed.

In any event, the school went another direction, waving around their immunity in the air like they just don’t care. Not that the school can escape liability for creating a death trap on campus, but they can escape the suit if, as the court finds here, Sampson failed to prove the school had “actual knowledge of a dangerous condition at the time of the accident,” which is a pretty convenient little loophole.

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But with that, Professor Sampson’s claim got tossed on a technicality. Hopefully, the professor sustained no permanent injuries.

At least Professor Sampson can take heart that the school took remedial steps to protect future faculty and students from similar injury by promptly becoming an atrocious athletic program.

(The full opinion available on the next page…)

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