Your Legal Questions: November 3, 2026

Let's answer some of your legal questions right now. Look who's here. Of course, we have our Fox 26 senior legal analyst, Chris Kudico. Good morning to you. You ready to help these people out? You know it. All right, let's get it going. We are going to start with Timothy, who writes, the apartment complex I lived in had to be evicted because the complex said, quoting now, I attacked. A neighbor with a knife, unquote, and the apartment complex knew at no time had I ever attacked anyone with a knife. They lied to the court, misled the court to get me evicted. Can I sue the complex and every person involved in filing that eviction for emotional distress and slander and or defamation? Well, so you have a cause of action for that probably, but you lost the eviction, which would have been the time to counterclaim for those, for those. Those defamation claims, but When you lose the eviction, now they've got evidence that you did do it, right? And so it's going to make it really hard to do that. Under Texas law, you have one year to file a defamation claim, which includes slander. And so you have one year to do that. I don't recommend this. I don't think you're going to, it's going to be a very difficult case to win. It's going to be hard to find a lawyer who's going to take that case. But if you do do it, a lawyer who takes it is probably going to make you pay them out of pocket because defamation cases are so hard to win in Texas. Good luck. All right. Next one coming in from Leo. This is a little long, so hang in here with me. I just turned 65 years old and contacted Social Security to apply for a monthly Social Security payment. The operator told me she would have to check my work record, which started back in 1976. The operator gave me the number of years that I worked at each company, verified the name of the company along with the amount of taxes that I had paid each year that I was employed. Everything was accurate until the clerk got to the last job that I was employed for 13 years. The clerk said I worked for Port of Houston, but I was employed with International Longshoremen Maritime Local 28, and she had no record my working for them. My question is, I need to know what can I retire from, Port of Houston or International Longshoremen Local 28? Well, Leo, so you're applying for Social Security. Now, my gut guess is, is that while you were employed through the union, you were paid by the Port of Houston, who was reporting your wages. And that's why Social Security has that as your wages. The union may have a retirement account for you that's totally separate from who paid your wages and reported for Social Security purposes. I think it's all the same thing. You're not retiring from the union, you're retiring. And Social Security is going to pay you the amount of money you're due based on who paid your Social Security tax and what amount of credits you have based on that. You're good to go. Take the money they're going to give you, then call the union and see if they have a 401k that you've been paying into all those years. Good luck. Enjoy your retirement. All right. That was very helpful information right there. All right. Final question coming in from Brooke, who writes, I was taken by ambulance to the ER in August after several hours of uncontrollable vomiting. The ER takes nine vials of blood. They gave me a cocktail of meds and my IV to help stop vomiting, which didn't work, a CAT scan. And after an hour and a half, I was discharged because they found cannabis and said that I had a cannabinoid syndrome. The hospital never took my history, which they already, since I have been there before. I'm a female veteran being taken care of by the VA for several underlying health issues, including serious GI problems the past year. I have the EMS records. They also documented possible infection going on. What recourse do I have, or am I just another female veteran being dismissed by health care? Well, Brooke, I can't tell you why... The hospital treated you that way just because they found cannabis in your blood. You need to seek out the lawyer of your choice. You can look over all of these records and determine if there was a medical malpractice that occurred here. Typically, what lawyers are looking at is what are the damages and was there a long-term damage model here. If there's not, then they're probably not going to take that case. More importantly, though, you need to get to the bottom of what's going on health-wise with you. Because you have the VA that's treating you, Go back to them that's free to you and see if you can figure out what the issues are so that you don't have to keep having this ongoing problem. That's really more important than anything else you have going on right now. Good luck. I love your compassion. Thank you for trying to help out. If you want to send us your legal questions, hop onto our website. You can go to fox26houston.com. And when you get there, look for Chris's segments. You're going to find them under the morning news tab. And you know the deal. We always encourage you for specific info to contact an attorney of your choice. But Chris, we always appreciate all the insight that you give us on these situations. Thank you for that.