Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog

Is It Medical Malpractice For A Doctor To Shoot Heroin While Cutting Off The Wrong Leg With A Chain Saw?

March 11, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

Last week a very fine Syracuse New York medical malpractice lawyer, and a friend of ours, took a medical malpractice trial to verdict. His proof had gone in well. The malpractice seemed obvious, the harm horrendous. The jury seemed receptive. After his brilliant summation, the defendant’s malpractice insurance offered $800,000 to settle.

The plaintiff refused to take it. It wasn’t enough. The judge thought the jury was on plaintiff’s side. He told the insurance defense lawyer he should try to get more money to settle. The judge clearly felt the jury was going to come back with an even bigger verdict. The insurance carrier wouldn’t budge. So the jury did what a jury does, and came back with a verdict.

They found plaintiff had not met her burden of proving the doctor committed malpractice. That meant a zero-dollar verdict for plaintiff. The plaintiff had given up $800,000, confident that the jury would compensate her with twice that amount, and instead got the rug pulled out from under her.

Central NY Malpractice Lawyer Makes the Blind See!

February 26, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

I recently read a New York Times article titled “losing My Leg to a Medical Error“. The author, Frederick Southwick, a physician and professor in a Florida medical school, describes how, seventeen years ago, he had a routine surgery on his left Achilles’ tendon. To prevent bleeding during the procedure, a pressurized cuff was placed above his left knee. Apparently, the cuff was left on too long, and, unbeknownst to him, damaged his arteries. He didn’t find this out until just last summer when he experienced a sudden and total blockage of blood flow to his lower leg leading to amputation. Turns out the arteries, damaged by that cuff 17 years earlier, had slowly scarred, hardened and calcified, leading to the belated sudden blockage of blood flow.

Rare event? Probably. But medical malpractice is not.

Ironically, Dr. Southwick has, for the past two decades, been studying how to prevent errors in health care. In his case, he knows how the error could have been prevented; they could have used either (1) an alarm to remind the surgeon how long the cuff had been in place or (2) a cuff that automatically deflates after the prescribed time.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Testimony For Sale! (NY Personal Injury Lawyer Explains)

February 17, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

First, some background: The wheels of justice would come to a screeching halt without the Court’s power to subpoena non-party witnesses to testify in court. Subpoenaed witnesses, like it or not, must appear in court, take the oath, and testify about what they saw, heard, or know. In civil cases (such as personal injury trials) the judge doesn’t issue the subpoena, rather, the lawyers for the parties do under their authority as “officers of the court”. Each side subpoenas the witnesses it needs.

And it’s dirt cheap. In New York the party subpoenaing the witness must pay him only $15 a day (CPLR 8001[a]) no matter who he is or what he does for a living. The $500-an-hour business consultant is entitled only to the same $15 an hour as the street sweeper. Each has the same civic duty to appear. And if either refuses, he can be held in “contempt of court”, a punishable offense.

But can a party pay a subpoenaed witness more, even a lot more, if both agree to it? That’s the issue that came up in the recent Court of Appeals (highest Court in New York) case of Caldwell v. Cablevision Systems Corporation.

NY Health Clubs Must Have But Need Not Use AED’s, New York’s Highest Court Rules

February 10, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

Last year I blogged about a case (Miglino v. Bally Total Fitness) where one of New York’s intermediate appellate courts (the Second Department) held that health and fitness clubs in New York State must actually use automated external defibrillators (AEDs) when necessary, and not just have them available. If not, they can be held liable to the unattended victim.

In that case, the Court was interpreting a 2005 Statute, General Business Law 627-a, whose literal reading required only that AED’s be “on-site” at New York health clubs, and did not specifically mandate that Club employees use them. Nevertheless, the intermediate appellate Court read between the lines, holding that it was “illogical to conclude that no such duty exists”.

Now the highest Court in the State, the New York Court of Appeals, has reversed that Court’s Decision. The majority disagreed that the law creates an affirmative duty for clubs to use their defibrillators.

CNY Injury Lawyer Discloses The Solution To Frvolous Lawsuits

February 3, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

Are you against frivolous lawsuits? Good, me too. Not to worry. I’ve got the solution. Hold on. First a story.

Several years ago, a fellow Central New York personal injury lawyer secured a famously large settlement on a personal injury case. At a party a few days later, someone took issue with his fee. “Your 1/3 fee on that big settlement is not fair”. My quick-witted friend replied, “you’re right — it’s not fair. I did ALL the work, I took ALL the risks, but my client gets 2/3 of the money – NOT FAIR!”.

He was just kidding, of course. But in Spanish there is a saying: “From every joke, some truth does poke” (de broma en broma la verdad se asoma). The point of the joke is that, yes, the contingency fee IS fair! Actually, not only is it fair, it is the only system that makes “justice for all” possible. That’s because most people could never afford charge-by-the-hour legal fees. But even if you are poor, if you have a legitimate claim, you can find a lawyer to take the case on a contingency fee basis.

Why Assault Rifles Should Be Banned (And Automobiles Should Not).

January 25, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

…………….. Your Central New York Injury Lawyer is still blogging on the topic of gun control. New York recently passed an assault rifle ban. Other states will follow. An argument against such laws I have been hearing recently is, “more people are killed in car accidents than by shootings, so why don’t we ban cars?”. In other words, what fools you are for banning assault rifles!

But the analogy fails, and this blog post will explain why.

What’s the difference between banning automobiles and banning assault rifles? They both kill, they’re both dangerous, and cars may even be more dangerous! So why ban assault rifles and not cars? Think about it! I bet you can guess. Don’t give up!

How Personal Injury Lawyers May Become Victims Of Their Own Success

January 13, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

Not long ago cars were death traps. Then Ralph Nader, a trial lawyer, wrote a best seller called, “Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile“, published in 1965. The book detailed the resistance of the auto industry to investing in safety features, such as seat belts.

Then great trial lawyers brought a slew of products liability lawsuits against the auto manufacturers. The automobile industry responded by designing safer cars, featuring seat belts and then airbags, to avoid shelling out millions to mangled auto crash victims.

But the auto industry kept getting sued because lawyers kept arguing the vehicles could be made still safer, which spurred a leap-frogging of safer and safer designs. As a result, we now have side air bags, crash-resistant chassis, seat belt alarms, anti-lock brakes, etc.

A Central NY Legal Malpractice Case Explained

January 11, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

Just in case you were wondering how a New York legal malpractice case works (come on, admit it, you were wondering about that all day!), I have a “case study” for you.

I recently sued a lawyer on behalf of a widow and her child. I took over their case after the lawyer had mishandled it. The facts of the mishandled case went like this (in simplified form): a public official had, through his negligence, killed the widow’s husband, but before he died, he went through a terrible amount of agony and suffering. This meant that the widow had two claims:

One claim was for “wrongful death” (“WD”), which mainly means a suit for lost income. The concept of the WD suit is that, had the widow’s husband not been killed, he would have continued supporting her and their children, but now he was dead, and dead men don’t pay the bills.

Yet Another Grant Ave Car Crash In Sennett New York

January 8, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

We at the Michaels Bersani Kalabanka personal injury law firm know all too well how dangerous Grant Ave. (Route 5) is in Sennett, just outside of our hometown of Auburn, NY. If you don’t believe us, just google “car accident Grant Ave. Sennett New York” and look at the list of reported cases! Why so many?

Well, Grant Ave. is the main thoroughfare between Auburn and Syracuse. There’s way too much traffic, too many commercial parking lots to turn into and out from, and traffic moves way too fast. That’s a dangerous brew, but add to it the fact of life that many drivers just aren’t careful enough, and there you have the explanation.

Many of the car accident cases we handle happen right here in nearby Sennett on Grant Ave. In fact, we just settled a motorcycle-car collision case that took place on Grant Ave. at the intersection with the Wallmart parking lot.

In Bumpy Road For Plaintiff, Bumper Car Case Bumped (NY Injury Lawyer Explains).

January 2, 2013 | by Michael Bersani

I usual cheer for the injured plaintiff in lawsuits. I love it when wrong-doers and their insurance carriers get slammed for huge verdicts — hey, especially if it’s my case!. But every once in a while I root for the other side.

That’s how I felt about a California Supreme Court ruling that a bumper-car rider could not sue the amusement park for a broken wrist he suffered in a bumper car ride. The adult plaintiff was enjoying the bumper car ride when he was hit from the front and then from behind. She broke her wrist when she sought to brace herself on the car’s “dashboard”. A year after the accident, the amusement park owner added an island in the middle of the bumper car park — like those you see in most bumper car rides nowadays — to keep bumper car drivers headed in the same direction and minimize head-on collisions. The plaintiff’s lawyer argued, among other things, that this should have been done before his client’s accident.

The State’s highest court disagreed. It ruled that, by voluntarily engaging in the mock violence of low-speed collisions, bumper car riders assume the risks inherent that activity, just as people who play football or other sports assume the risks inherent in those sports. (We New York personal injury lawyers call this the “primary assumption of the risk doctrine” — see my prior blog post about it here.)