93.1. Kiss FM – Ask A Lawyer – Part 1 – Oct 3, 2025

(0:00:00) Start your day with a smile. Mornings with Iris and Grizz. 93.1 KISS FM. Alright. Happy Friday. Yeah.

(0:00:13) It’s Friday. It’s a fun Friday. It’s a fun Friday. Aren’t all Fridays fun? Some of them are. Yeah. You’d be surprised, Michael Gopin. That’s the voice of Michael Gopin you just heard right now. That’s why today is even more fun because we’ve got Michael Gopin joining us. Ask a lawyer with Michael Gopin. You have a question, a legal question you want answered. Download the Kiss mobile app. You can go to our website, kisselpaso.com, and Michael Gopin will answer them live on air. He will. Yeah. That’s actually what we’re going to be doing right now. Wow. All right. Let’s get to those questions. Our first one comes.

(0:00:42) from Daniel who writes in, I was in a car accident on Alameda. The other driver admitted fault at the scene, but now their insurance is denying the claim. I don’t have full coverage and I’m stuck with bills. How can I fight this and how do they prove fault in this case? Well, Daniel, they proved fault in the case by examining all the evidence that was presented to them. The driver at the scene may have…

(0:01:06) said that they were at fault or maybe they were afraid or who knows what they said or they changed their mind. But the insurance company can make up their own independent mind about the facts of the case. And apparently that’s what they did here. You do have rights, though. It’s not over because they said that they’re not going to pay. You can file a lawsuit. You can hire an attorney to fight for you. So there’s alternatives here to get a recovery. So it’s not over yet, but you’re going to have to take some proactive…

(0:01:34) moves here to move things along and get the

(0:01:37) insurance company to change their mind because the insurance company is not your friend. Thank you, Michael Gopin. We’re so trained. Such a good reminder. Sorry, friends that are insurance people. You already know. Now you’re not our friends. I know. All right, let’s get to the next question. All right, this question comes from Michael. Not Michael Gopin, but a different Michael. Maybe it was me. I don’t know. We’ll never know. The question is, I was working at a warehouse here in El Paso when a forklift clipped my leg.

(0:02:06) leaving me a huge cut and needing stitches. I wasn’t technically on the clock yet, but I was already at the facility getting ready for my shift to start. Does this still qualify as workers’ comp? My employer is saying that I would need to go through my own insurance since I wasn’t working at the time. That’s tricky. Well, your insurance, if your employer actually knew the law, they would not be telling you this. Ooh, wow. Who is the employer or employee going to sue for this forklift if they weren’t on the job?

(0:02:35) They’re going to sue the employer who has the forklift. And so they’re really saying to their employees, sue me because it was our fault, but you weren’t on the clock. Well, right, because somebody who was on the clock had to be driving that forklift, right? Correct. So the interesting thing here is if they have Texas workers’ comp, there will be a workers’ comp claim that’s going to be valid just because you haven’t technically clocked in. You’re at the job. You’re at the site.

(0:03:03) you’re working, you’re going to be covered by workers’ comp. On the way is a little different story, on the way to work, but you’re at the scene, you’re at the place, whether you’re collected or not, you’re going to be covered by the workers’ comp law. But the employer really would rather have you be covered by the workers’ comp law than be exposed to a potential lawsuit against them. So that’s the employer’s choices here. If you argue that…

(0:03:26) there’s no worker’s comp, then you’re the one that’s going to be sued because your employee can sue you then if they’re not in the job. A little tricky there, and they kind of stepped right into it. Literally. All right, next one comes from George who writes, I got food poisoning from a local food truck and ended up in the ER. I have the receipts and a medical report. Can I file a claim against the food truck people even if they aren’t an official restaurant, or is that going to be hard to prove? Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. I want to guess the answer.

(0:03:56) answer here because i think you’ve said this before so i think when it comes to like food poisoning stuff i think don’t you have to have like really good proof that it was the food poisoning that caused you to get sick specifically so when he jorge says is that hard to prove ah yeah

(0:04:10) You’re right. Because it could be other stuff. It is hard, right. I mean, and yes, you can sue the food trick even though they’re a little restaurant and they’re not technically a stand-alone shop or whatever. You can still sue them. They still have a duty of care to provide you with good, clean, healthy food. Right.

(0:04:29) But proving that you got sick from this particular restaurant is the key here. And Grizz was right on point. We’re going to change this to ask Grizz. I know. Ask Grizz or ask Michael. It’s all stuff I learned from you, Michael. All right. But, yes, you were right on point. Perfect. Good job. All right. All right. We got time for another question. Let’s go to Angelica. All right. Angelica says, I was let go from my job shortly after I filed a complaint against my manager for harassment. HR claimed it was due to performance issues, but I had never received anything.

(0:04:59) Any warnings or write-ups before? Can being fired right after reporting something like that not be considered retaliation? What steps would you say I should take here? Ooh, that’s an interesting one. Let’s see. I defer to you on this one, Michael. Oh, man. And I don’t even know. I was going to make this really easy for me today, you know. No, this one I have no idea. This sounds complicated. Well, there’s no immunity because you report something that they can’t fire you, okay? So just because you…

(0:05:27) You made a claim and you reported something to HR. That doesn’t mean they can’t fire you for some other reason. So the question is, I don’t know exactly what you told them or what you complained to a management reporter, what this harassment was about.

(0:05:41) But they can fire you for any reason they want to in Texas. It’s an at-will state. So they can fire you for any reason they want to. But if it’s for filing a workers’ comp case in retaliation or sexual harassment or other types of harassment, aid harassment, those are the things they cannot do. There’s also whistleblower laws. If you tell them they’re doing something illegal and then they fire you in retaliation for that, they can’t do that. So I don’t know if what you told them will fall into an exception here.

(0:06:09) And just because there was no write-ups doesn’t mean that they can’t claim that it was performance-related. They can make up their mind. Even if it wasn’t performance-related, they can still fire you. I mean, your employer can actually come in here right now during the show live and say you’re fired. And no reason at all just because they’re in a bad mood. And it’s legal. Oh, gosh. It’s not maybe ethical or moral or all those other things.

(0:06:35) They wouldn’t have a case to sue you on. Ah, well, that’s good to know. Kevin, please don’t fire us. That is good to know. We like our job. All right. All right. So anyway, that’s the situation. So you have to be able to prove it was because.

(0:06:48) Of the harassment, the harassment would have to fall under one of the exceptions to the general rule that you can be fired for any reason. My gosh. Interesting. All right. It’s Ask a Lawyer with Michael Gopin. Remember, you can always ask your questions by downloading the Kiss mobile app and submitting them there by clicking Ask a Lawyer with Michael Gopin, and he will answer them live on air. We have a few more that we’re going to get to coming up in just a minute after Vanessa Carlton that include car accidents and adopting pets and being told that, you know, they’re trained.

(0:07:18) They’re not aggressive, and the next thing you know, they turn aggressive. Chomp? Yep. Oh, no. We’ve got those coming. Yeah. Grizz? That’s coming up after Vanessa Carlton, A Thousand Miles on 93.1 KISS FM. Classic.

Michael J. Gopin

Michael J. Gopin has practiced law in El Paso since 1987. Even after more than 30 years, he still remembers his first jury case. It was two weeks after receiving his license, when he represented a person whose life had been forever changed after being blinded in a work-related incident...