Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog

Syracuse New York Medical Malpractice Lawyers Weigh In On Lawsuit By Former Upstate Hospital Neurosurgeon

February 20, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

When I clicked my way to Syracuse.com this morning to check out the Syracuse Post Standard news, I was both surprised, and not surprised, to read that Dr. Holsapple, a former Upstate University Hospital neurosurgeon, had sued the Hospital for retaliating against him after he voiced concerns about dangerous medical practices there. I’ll tell you why I was both surprised, and not, but first let me summarize the allegations.

In the lawsuit, Holsapple claims that, at Upstate University Hospital, safety took a second seat to profit concerns, and that the Hospital regularly covered up their mistakes and bad medical practices by doctoring the medical records. For example, the suit contends that a neurosurgeon was allowed to oversee spine surgeries in two different operating rooms at the same time, which Holsapple says was way too dangerous. Statistics seem to support the Doctor’s allegations; at the time, five times more patients were dying from spine surgery at Upstate compared to the national average.

Holsapple also alleges that when he complained about the dangerous, unethical practices, the Hospital responded by demoting him and cutting his pay. For these reasons, he claims, he resigned from Upstate in early 2009, and that’s why he is suing, too.

New Rule In New York Meant To Eliminate Judicial Bias From Election Campaign Donations May Have Unintended Consequences

February 14, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

Yesterday I blogged about tCentral and Syracuse New York personal injury law firm, has a list of judges they feel favor the insurance companies and corporations over their injured clients. It’s not that they intend to favor them; it’s just in their blood. For whatever reason, they are by nature less sympathetic to injured plaintiffs and more sympathetic to the corporations and insurance companies being sued. Those judges seem to pretty consistently rule in favor of corporate and insurance company defendants, and against the injured plaintiff, at least on close calls.

What if we, at the personal injury law firm of Michaels Bersani Kalabanka, wanted to disqualify those judges from hearing our injured clients’ cases? Under this new rule, all we would have to do is donate $2,500 every two years to the re-election campaigns of each of the perceived “bad” judges on our list. Those judges would then always be precluded from hearing our cases. By default, our cases will be assigned only to judges to whom we haven’t contributed $2,500, that is, the good judges, the ones we like. Ironically, we would get the “good” judges we want for our cases by funding only the “bad” ones’ re-elections.

I am sure this is not what the rule-makers had in mind when they made this rule. But is it too far-fetched to think that some lawyers will make the rule work in their favor by funding the campaigns of judges they don’t want to appear in front of? I think not.

Silence is Golden — NOT! — Central and Syracuse New York Accident Lawyer Explains.

February 13, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

Mum’s the word.

As a Central and Syracuse New York accident lawyer, I religiously read the New York Times and other newspapers for news that affects my law practice. Today I read in the New York Times that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has not spoken for almost five years at oral argument in Court! He has not asked a single question of the many lawyers who appear before the highest Court in the land to argue cases. By contrast, many of his colleagues on the bench pepper lawyers with tough, piercing questions “right out of the box” (as soon as they start their argument).

So what’s better, a quiet judge or an inquisitive one? As a Central and Syracuse New York personal injury lawyer who argues appeals in Courts all over New York State, I have learned to appreciate the talkative type. Why? Because the questions usually tell me what problems the judge is having in adopting my reasoning. If I know the concerns he or she has, I can then customize my oral argument to try to get that judge past his or her mental roadblocks to ruling in my favor.

Can I Be Sued If Someone I Hire To Remove Snow And Ice From My Roof Or Fix My Leaky Roof Falls? Central And Syracuse NY Personal Injury Lawyer Explains.

February 12, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

These winter days of snow-caked rooftops, there are lots of folks are up on roofs with chisels, hammers and shovels trying to dislodge ice and clear off snow. And for a good reason; all that snow and ice buildup can damage the roof, and can even cause the roof to collapse! That’s pretty dangerous, but being up there on the snow-and-ice capped roof, if you don’t know what you are doing, isn’t so safe either. Quick advice from this Central and Syracuse New York personal injury lawyer: Don’t do it yourself unless you know what you are doing. Hire a contractor or roofer instead.

But wait a minute. If you do hire someone to do it for you, and he falls off your roof and is injured or dies, can he, or his family, sue you?

Before I tell you the answer, let me give you some law. New York has a special law, called New York Labor Law 240, which provides that workers may bring a lawsuit against the “owner” of a building (among others) if the workers fall and are injured while engaged in either “cleaning” or “repair” work (among other things). Clearing snow and ice off a roof has been held to be a “cleaning” activity, and of course fixing a leak is a “repair” activity, so if someone falls from your roof while doing either of those things, you, the homeowner, would, at first glance, seem to be liable for the injuries sustained by the fallen worker.

Central And Syracuse NY Personal Injury Lawyer On Taking A Child’s Testimony

February 9, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

Being a Central and Syracuse New York accident lawyer requires me to subpoena Central New Yorkers to testify many, many times a year. Sometimes I even have to subpoena children. Tomorrow I will take the subpoenaed deposition testimony of several child-witnesses to my child-client’s Seneca County New York personal injury case. I served a subpoena on their parents notifying them that they were required to bring their child to my office to give testimony on the matter. That must have been quite a shock to them!

I certainly don’t relish putting a family through the stress of a subpoena and then a deposition, but sometimes I can’t avoid it. I have a duty to represent my client diligently, and in this case that means finding out what these child-witnesses know, and making a record (called a transcript) of it.

On the other hand, for the kids it’s probably not so bad. (“Cool — I get out of school for the morning!”) The parents, though, are probably kind of worried (“what the hell do they want my kid to testify for — did he do something wrong?”)

Insurance Companies Raise Deceptive Arguments To Escape Paying For Neck And Back Injuries.

February 7, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

One thing I have learned as a Central and Syracuse New York injury lawyer is that almost no one over 30 has a perfect spine. If you are over the age of 30, and we were to take an MRI of your spine today, you would probably be surprised by what we would find. Unbeknownst to you, you probably have “degenerative disc disease” (called “DDD”, which can include disc protrusions or herniations, spinal stenosis, bone spurs and other changes).

I hear you: “What, me, a spine disease”?! Don’t be alarmed. A doctor friend of mine describes DDD as “gray hair of the spine”. It’s part of the normal aging process. We all get it sooner or later, and it is usually harmless, just like gray hair.

Even though most people with DDD have no pain at all, DDD can be associated with neck or back pain. The pain often begins with a traumatic event, such as a fall or a car crash. Many of my Central and Syracuse New York personal injury clients suffer from painful DDD. Although they were pain-free before their accident, the accident caused their asymptomatic (pain free) DDD to suddenly become painful.

Pain stalks Central New York Injury Lawyer’s Clients.

February 6, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

Pain is the constant companion of many Central and Syracuse New York accident victims. Believe me, as a Central and Syracuse New York personal injury lawyer, I know! Let me give you a “for example”.

The other day I took the trial testimony of an orthopedic surgeon who performed a type of surgery, called a “diskectomy and fusion”, on my client’s cervical spine. The sole purpose of this operation was to chase the pain out of her body. It was a gruesome operation consisting of slicing open the patient’s neck, peeling back the skin and muscle, exposing the vertebra, shaving off two of the spongy discs that separate the vertebral bodies, replacing the discs with cadaver bone, and then screwing in a metal plate to hold the whole mess together.

There are many risks involved in the procedure, including stroke and paralysis. But my client gladly underwent the operation. And the fact that my client was willing, in fact eager, to go under the knife is the best evidence I have as to how much pain she must have been in. No one on the jury will be able to feel her pain, but the operation she was willing to undergo in the hope of removing at least some of it will make them understand, I hope, how intense the pain was.

Central And Syracuse NY Injury Lawyer: “Frivolous Claims Don’t Pay”.

January 30, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

I have been a Central and Syracuse New York personal injury lawyer for many years now. So I have been around the block a few times. I am steeped in our civil justice system. And I have news for you: It works just fine. It ain’t broken, so don’t fix it. No “tort reform” needed, thank you.

Here’s an example of how our civil justice system automatically weeds out frivolous lawsuits without the need for tort reform.

The other day I went to visit a farmer whose arm had recently been ripped off by a piece of farm equipment. I went to inspect the machine to see if the manufacturer was to blame. If the design was unreasonably dangerous, and the dangerous machine caused the accident, the farmer would have had a good New York products liability claim to compensate him to the tune of several million dollars.

Central And Syracuse NY Gas Explosion Attorney Discusses Recent Natural Gas Explosions

January 28, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

I have been blogging lately about gas explosions. That’s because gas explosions keep happening! As I said in my last few blogs about this topic, our natural gas supply system, owned and maintained by private utility companies, is aging and not being properly maintained and replaced by those companies. As a result, we are seeing an increase, nationwide, in natural gas explosions. Just a few weeks ago a main gas line explosion rocked Philadelphia, killing at least one person and severely injuring others. And last fall, a main gas pipeline explosion in California destroyed 38 homes, injured 50 and killed eight people.

But gas explosions strike closer to home, too. This week a house exploded in Horseheads, NY. According to Elmira New York personal injury lawyer Jim Read, preliminary indications indicate the cause was a natural gas leak. Also according to Jim, the house is less than 1/2 mile from another house that exploded because of a natural gas leak in a NYSEG service pipe a few years ago.

Also, just this week, the parents of one of the victims (a 20-year old college student) of the Fall 2010 natural gas pipeline explosion in California filed a wrongful death lawsuit against an (ir)responsible utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Their daughter died from the horrific burns she received while trying to escape the blaze in her home caused by the explosion. In the lawsuit, her parents are claiming the defendant PG&E failed to properly inspect and maintain the pipeline.

What?! A Rochester Tort-Reformer Filing A Frivolous NY Personal Injury Lawsuit?!

January 27, 2011 | by Michael Bersani

As a Central and Syracuse New York personal injury lawyer who takes on only legitimate accident claims, I resent, despise, disown, and spit-in-the-general-direction of all frivolous personal injury lawyers and their frivolous lawsuits. They give my bonafide injury lawsuits a bad name. And they give all legitimate personal injury lawyers a bad name.

Yes, I hate frivolous claims, but I also dislike so-called “tort-reformers”. Most of them have self-interest at heart; they work for or represent big insurance companies or businesses who stand to gain by taking away the little guys’ right to hold big business liable in court for their careless safety shortcuts that injury innocent people. To dupe the public into believing our time-tested tort law is a problem, they blow out of proportion the very few “frivolous lawsuits” that are filed, and try to convince the public that all or nearly all, personal injury lawsuits are frivolous.

So, since I despise frivolous lawsuits, and I also dislike tort-reformers, I should doubly despise and dislike frivolous personal injury lawsuits filed by tort reformers, right? What? A tort reformer filing a frivolous accident lawsuit? Yes, you heard me. An editorial in the New York Daily News the other day criticized conservative Republican New York State Senator James Alesi, a self-proclaimed “tort-reformer” (he represents the Monroe County towns of Chili, East Rochester, Henrietta, Irondequoit, Mendon, Penfield, Perinton, Pittsford, Riga, Rush and Wheatland, and portions of the City of Rochester) for filing a frivolous lawsuit.