As we approach the end of the year, it is time for the Michaels Bersani Kalabanka personal injury law firm of Central New York to give out its “Worst Personal Injury Lawyer Advertisement of the Year Award”. This year we have a hands down winner. No need to even talk about a runner up. Not even close. Hold your applause until after you view the winning ad by “The Texas Law Hawk”:
Need I say more?
Drowsy driving kills thousands of people in the United States each year. We’ve all been there: You are driving down a boring interstate highway at night. You start to nod off and, just when you about to enter la la land, you “snap out of it” and clutch the wheel, your heart racing. Scary, huh? And you were one of the lucky ones. Other drivers, succumbing to the sirens of sleep, crash and burn.
But a new device being developed may keep drivers like you awake and save your life. Here’s how it works:
A Bluetooth headset fits on one ear and points an infrared sensor toward the eye to detect blinking. (See photo). The driver’s blinking frequency indicates drowsiness. The data is transmitted by Bluetooth to a smartphone. If the sensor detects drowsiness, the headset vibrates, flashes and beeps to alert — and awaken — the sleepy driver.
Drones! They’re everywhere! Officially known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAV’s, they come in all sizes and at all prices. Some are as small as a flying insect. Others are full-sized airplanes on bombing missions. They’re used in agriculture, construction, photography, engineering, real estate and many other industries, but now, most recently, they are used just for fun. Among other recreational uses, they’re the new “selfie stick” – fly it over and away from your guests and snap a picture of the whole crew!
700,000 drones have been sold this year in the USA. Every year the number of drones sold quadruples! It is predicted that 400,000 more will be sold this holiday season. You can get one on Amazon for just $50 – with a camera. They’re the hot-selling Christmas gift this year.
They might also be the most dangerous Christmas gifts we have yet seen. Yes, this Christmas we are way past the days of shooting your eye out with a Red Ryder BB gun. We’ve come from “every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings” to “every time a drone passes you might get dinged”. Example: Recently a New York restaurant launched “mistletoe drone” that flew from table to table to coax patrons into kissing on camera. It was a lot of fun and romance until the mobile mistletoe plummeted like a reindeer dropping and mauled a patron’s nose with its unguarded rotor. (I suppose she could have played the part of Rudolph after that).
I sometimes wax nostalgic about the “good old days” when my boys were toddlers: The petting zoos, the living-room wrestling matches, the cute things they would say. But one thing I definitely do NOT miss is struggling with car seats. What a pain! And I was never sure I had them in right.
Well, I was right to be unsure. Results from recent child car seat inspections throughout New York State revealed that out of 931 random car seats inspected only 112 seats were installed correctly. That’s only 12%! Nevertheless, most parents — 96% to be exact — BELIEVED they had their kids correctly installed in the car seat.
What was wrong with the car seat installation? In some cases, the seats didn’t fit the child, in others they weren’t fitted in tight enough, in still others they were installed or positioned incorrectly.
As anyone who has been following health news in the last few years knows, medical malpractice is rampant. But what fewer people know – except perhaps those of us who sue doctors for a living – is that medical malpractice cover-ups are also rampant.
Here’s a recent example of a med mal cover-up that made headline news. (But note there is no way of knowing how many med mal cover-ups go on since many of the cover-ups surely succeed).
Dear client: You have been ripped off. No, not by me, silly! By your doctor, by the hospital, by your physical therapist, and by anyone else who has treated you for your injuries. Let me explain.
Your medical providers have been charging me 75 cents a page for your medical records. This money initially comes out of my pocket, but eventually comes out of yours because I charge it as an expense on your case. The charge reduces your “net” settlement or recovery.
Seventy-five cents a page may not sound like a lot. But it’s a nickle-and-dime ripoff that can add up to a lot of money if we are ordering hundreds or even thousands of pages of medical records.
A New York resident is on vacation and has stopped into a rental car agency. Let’s listen in:
Customer: “Hello, I came to pick up my rental car. I was told it was $30 per day”.
Salesman: “Sure, but you should really get the “rental insurance” on it for an extra $10. Otherwise, you may be responsible for any damage to the car or injuries to others.”
New York personal injury lawyers like me get this question all the time. The answer is complex, but explaining complex things to judges, juries and clients, is what we do for a living. We are essentially in the “communication” business. So here goes:
In the TV smash hit “The Apprentice”, Donald Trump famously trumpets the words “you’re fired” when dismissing a contestant for failing to live up to his high job performance expectations.
Well, Trump isn’t the only one. Honda yesterday uttered those same words to Takata, the Japanese maker of the infamous defective shrapnel-shooting airbags.
Maybe it was “you’re fired” or maybe “Sayonara”. But by any measure, Takata had a bad day yesterday. Longtime customer Honda dumped the company right after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) slapped Takata with a $70 million penalty for failing to promptly disclose the dangerous defects in its airbags.
Our jury system is in trouble, big trouble, and that’s no small matter. It’s a Constitutional matter. The right to a civil jury trial is enshrined in our Constitution’s Seventh Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights.
But that right is under siege, as explained in a recent series of New York Times articles. Who is assaulting this important right? Corporate America. Corporations are tucking away arbitration clauses into the contracts their customers and employees are routinely required to sign. These arbitration clauses state something like this: “The company may elect to resolve any claim by individual arbitration”. With these simple words, corporations are depriving millions of Americans to their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.
Examples abound. Do you have a credit card, a cell phone, or internet service? Then you have given up your right to a jury trial in any dispute with those companies. In the fine print of your service contract lies a hidden a requirement that you “arbitrate” any disputes at a forum pre-selected by the corporation. The same is true in many employment contracts you might sign. Think your boss has discriminated against you? No jury. No Court. Arbitration.
Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog
