Articles Posted in General

I have blogged about the Tea Party before, and here I go again. While many of the positions of the Tea Party are not my cup of tea, I strongly align with the Party on one particular issue: The right to a civil jury trial. It’s in our Bill of Rights, and it’s one of the most important rights we have.

I know what you’re thinking: Of course you’re for it because, as a New York personal injury lawyer, it’s your bread and butter. Yes, I am biased. But I’m also right!

Don’t take it from me. Take it from the Tea Party founding father, Judson Philips. In his most recent blog on the subject, he points out that the hallmark of American democracy is our “classless society”. Everyone is treated equal under the law. We are unique on this planet in that our court doors open wide enough to allow even the poorest citizen to sue the richest corporation for injuries and other wrongs they inflict on us.

When I recently read about the wave of fungal Meningitis afflicting steroid spinal injection recipients, I thought, “I hope our clients are safe”! The rash of Meningitis from steroid injections has so far killed 14 and made another 156 ill. But others who have recently received the injections are holding their breath — they too could get sick and die.

Many of our back and neck-injury clients have taken, or are taking, steroid epidural injections hoping for some relief from unremitting back or neck pain.

Unfortunately, most get only temporary, minor relief. And for this very insignificant relief they subject themselves to very significant risks, including nerve damage, strokes and paralysis, and now Meningitis.

If you are a New York personal injury lawyer like me, you need your stress relief. From my observations, the two most popular ways for litigation lawyers to “de-stress” are (1) exercise and (2) drink. I have chosen the first (although I also occasionally engage in the second, in moderation). When I work out hard, I can feel the stress peeling away, like when you peel back the layers of an onion.

Mostly I run, bike and swim, though my knees are giving out and so I do a lot less running than before. And every year I do at least one short triathlon (swim-bike-run race). This year is no exception. Saturday is my annual Geneva NY “Musselman” triathlon.

My goal is to beat my time from last year. I am racing only against myself. Can I win? In the glass-half-empty department: (1) I’m a year older, (2) low back pain, and (3) knee issues sabotaged my run-training. In the glass-have-full department: (1) in better swim shape, (2) faster bike, and (3) down 7 pounds or so. So it’s a toss-up. In the why-the-hell-do-I-care department, all I can tell you is, good question!

I never knew I was a Tea Party kind-a-guy, but in at least one respect, I am. I found this post, titled “A Hollow Liberty“, on the website for “Tea Party Nation“. I agree 100% with it!

The article warns that Mitt Romney and other Republicans are planning an assault on our sacrosanct Seventh Amendment constitutional rights. The Seventh Amendment is the one that guaranties us the right to a civil jury trial.

To the Tea Party’s chagrin, Mitt Romney wants to impose Federal Tort Reform throughout the nation. Tort Reform of any kind has only one true purpose; to sap the life out of our constitutional right to a civil jury trial for personal injury claims brought against careless corporations, drunk drivers, dangerous doctors, and a host of other wrongdoers.

I consider myself in pretty good shape for my age. But when my brother just a year older than me recently died of a sudden heart attack, I decided to get all the testing I could for heart disease. One test I got is called a “cardiac CT scan for calcium“. It measures the amount of plaque deposits in the arteries near your heart.

Alas, I did not do so well. I scored a 61, which is in the 59th percentile for my age. That means that 59% of American men my age have less plaque build up than me. Very surprising considering my lifestyle: I exercise regularly (about an hour and a half a day of biking, swimming or running), eat well, keep my cholesterol under control, and am thin.

So I started investigating why I might have such plaque build-up. Clearly genetics is one factor, and I can’t change that. But there was one thing in my lifestyle, I discovered, that could be causing the fat in my blood to deposit on my artery walls; sitting. Recent studies show that, even if you work out regularly, if you are sitting a lot during the rest of the day, you are more likely to develop plaque in your arteries, and thus more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes.

I blogged last time about a seven-and-a-half year Syracuse NY wrongful death case I settled on the first day of trial this week. Today I want to blog about the “behind the scenes” preparations for trial. It sounds boring, and it sure ain’t “LA Law” stuff, but in a trial, preparation is 90% of the battle.

I knew from the get-go that the trial would involve about 25 witnesses as well as complex legal issues, so I didn’t mess around. Three months before trial, I started fashioning an electronic file, with separate folders for pleadings, orders, exhibits, witnesses, depositions, affidavits, law, summation, opening, jury selection. I organized everything logically. For example, each discovery demand was set in a separate folder with its corresponding response, and each set of demand-responses was set into a file labeled “discovery”.

About 2 weeks before trial, I finally had an electronic file so well organized that I could click to any of the hundreds of pages of documents I wanted within 5 seconds. I also had all my witness deposition summaries, and witness questions, set out in separate witness folders along with each witness’s deposition and affidavit.