Lawyers

Syracuse New York Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Lawyer on How to Change the Law

April 18, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

The other day a fellow Central New York injury lawyer congratulated me on a recent Court victory I had, which changed the law throughout New York State, and helped him, and other New York personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers, better represent their clients. The case he was referring to was Thompson v Mather, which I have already blogged about. He pointed out to me that this was the second time he had seen me change the law for the better in New York State by winning a key appellate argument for New York personal injury and medical malpractice victims. He remembered that I had, a few years ago, stopped no-fault insurance companies from denying coverage for medical bills when the insured had reached “maximum medical improvement” in a case called Hobby v CNA. The lawyer wanted to know how I was able to effect such big changes in the law with my cases.

My response was simple: I read the statutes. And I read them carefully. And I read them over and over again, word for word, looking for hidden or perhaps even obvious meanings that everyone else has been overlooking. In both cases this lawyer was referring to, all the case law generated by other lawyers had overlooked the fact that the controlling statutes just did not allow insurance companies to do what they had been doing. In Thompson v Mather, the statute, CPLR 3113, when read carefully, just did not allow a non-party witness to bring in a lawyer (usually an insurance company lawyer) to object to questioning at a deposition. It said that deposition questioning was to proceed just like at trial, and at trial non-party witnesses’ lawyers can’t object or talk at all. And in Hobby v CNA, the statute at issue, New York Insurance Law 5102, just did not allow a no-fault insurance carrier to cut off an insured’s medical treatment based on a finding of “maximum medical improvement”. It only allowed them to cut an insured off if the treatment was not “reasonable and necessary”, which is not quite the same thing.

So while other lawyers had, for decades, overlooked these nuances, and just assumed that the common practice of insurance carriers and other lawyers comported with the law, I actually READ THE LAW, and found out that everyone else was wrong!

Personal Injury Attorney Advertising — Yuk!, But Constitution Protects It.

March 14, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

I hate attorney advertising, especially personal injury lawyer advertising. Yet I advertise. Well, I mean, my firm does. I remember when we finally decided to advertise on TV. It was a tough decision. For years Michaels Bersani Kalabanka prided itself on its success in attracting top personal injury and medical malpractice cases through word of mouth and through referrals from other attorneys who knew that we were among the best in the New York personal injury and medical malpractice field.

But our case load had started to dwindle even though we were still at the top of our game. Why? Because other Central New York accident lawyers were advertising and we were not. They were getting the cases simply by being on TV! For the most part, their ads were in terrible taste (examples: an attorney who called himself “The Hammer” and a firm that called itself “The Heavy Hitters” and one who claimed he was “a son of a bitch”, but if you hired him he would be “YOUR son of a bitch!”).

All this advertising, though totally tasteless, and even deceptive, was legal because decades ago the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that attorney advertising fell under the protection of the “free speech” clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In other words, those guys had a right to say all this crap in their ads, even though it created a terrible image for personal injury lawyers.

Syracuse New York Medical Malpractice Lawyer’s Big Win in Appellate Court hits Medical Malpractice Blogosphere.

February 28, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

I recently had a win at an appellate court in Rochester, New York, (Thompson v Mather) that has been the subject of chatter within the New York medical malpractice lawyer blogosphere, and even made an entry on one of our nation’s top legal blogs, Eric Turkewitz’ New York Personal Injury Law Blog. If Turkowitz found my appellate win fit to blog about, I figured I should blog about it myself. So here’s the real scoop, from the horse’s mouth:

My partner, Lee Michaels, sued a doctor for medical malpractice, and needed to take the deposition of his client’s treating cardiologist (whom Lee had NOT sued) because that doctor had information Lee needed to prove his client’s injuries. Lee scheduled a video-taped deposition (a deposition to be used at trial in lieu of live testimony) of the doctor-witness in our law office in Auburn, New York.

Lo and behold, the doc witness shows up with a medical malpractice defense lawyer, even though he had not been sued, and was just a witness. Not unusual. Now-a-days, many malpractice insurers require their insured doctors to notify them when they are subpoenaed as a witness in a medical malpractice case, and then send a lawyer with the doc to the deposition.

Personal Injury Lawyers in Central New York and Throughout the United States Make Americans Safer.

December 18, 2009 | by Michael Bersani

This central New York personal injury lawyer was born and raised in Syracuse, New York. My law offices are in Auburn, Cayuga County. I reside in Geneva, Ontario County. I am therefore fully rooted in central New York and the Finger Lakes region. But I like to travel. In fact, as a young man, I spent seven years living abroad. I speak several languages, including French and Spanish. My travels have taught me many things. One lesson I learned is that United States’ personal injury law is the best in the world. Let me explain by telling a story.

One evening, while visiting my in-laws in Guatemala City, Guatemala, I was walking down a dimly lit side street to get to my in-laws’ house. I came inches from stepping into a barely visible 3-foot wide, and who-knows-how deep, hole in the middle of the street. Municipal workers had created the hole and left it uncovered and un-barricaded. If I had taken one more step, I would have fallen into this hole and been seriously injured.

Why did the municipal employees leave the hole they were working on uncovered with no warnings or barricades? Because it did not matter to them. In Guatemala, a citizen can’t sue the City for personal injury, pain and suffering, lost wages and medical expenses for municipal workers’ negligence like we can in the United States. Since there was no price to pay, what incentive did those workers have to be careful? Answer: none.

What makes Michaels Bersani Kalabanka Different from Other Personal Injury Law Firms?

November 15, 2009 | by Michael Bersani

Ok, I won’t beat around the bush: This blog entry is a shameless plug for my law firm, Michaels Bersani Kalabanka, P.C, a Syracuse area personal injury and medical malpractice law firm. But it’s also the truth (so help me God!).

Good personal injury law firms are not hard to find (and unfortunately, bad ones aren’t either). We believe that we are among the best injury law firms not only in central New York, but in all of upstate New York. But don’t take our word for it — judges and other lawyers have also ranked us among the best. Every lawyer in our firm has been named a “Super Lawyer” by Super Lawyers Magazine, and our firm has achieved the highest possible ranking in the Martindale-Hubbell Directory. To achieve those rankings, many lawyers and judges had to give us top grades for our legal skills and ethical standards. To learn more about what these ratings mean, go to the Martindale-Hubbell and Super Lawyers websites.

Still, there are other highly rated law firms, so what makes us different? We believe the answer resides in our team approach to cases. All four lawyers in our firm (Lee, Jan, Dave and myself) work as a team on each and every case in our office. We meet every two weeks for a full morning to discuss, strategize, brain-storm and trouble-shoot our cases collectively. Four heads are better than one! Most law firms don’t take the time to do this. The ideas that come out of our meetings are amazing! Those ideas help advance cases in the best way possible. This is why our motto, which you can see at the top of our website, is “the better game plan”. Just like a team huddles before deciding how to handle a key play, the lawyers at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka strategize as a team before deciding how to tackle tough or important issues in a case. And that’s our “better game plan”!