Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog

Why New York Personal Injury Lawyers Hate Insurance Companies.

October 11, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

You can’t be a New York personal Injury lawyer for very long without learning to hate insurance companies. I think it took me all of 6 months when I started out years ago to realize how brutal they were. You see, insurance companies “screw” good people all the time. Here’s just one recent example of a guy who got screwed by the insurance industry.

The client injured his lower back in a car accident, but did not immediately seek medical attention because he wanted to see first whether he was going to get better on his own. When more than a month went by and he was still in pain, he came to see me. He wanted to know what his rights were as far as getting medical coverage to see a doctor. There was an uncomfortable pause while I thought about how to break the bad news to him.

Before I tell you what I told him, let me give you a little recent history of New York’s “No-Fault Insurance” law. Only a few years ago, under No-Fault Insurance Regulation 68, auto accident victims had up to 90 days to file an application for no-fault benefits with their auto insurance carrier. (No-fault provides up to $50,000 in medical treatment and lost wages to car accident victims, regardless of fault.) But then the insurance industry lobbied New York State lawmakers to shorten the time limit to 30 days. The insurance industry claimed the shorter time limit was necessary to prevent “fraud”, but that argument never made any sense to me. Instead, I believe the insurance industry knew that many auto accident victims would inadvertently wait for more than 30 days to fill out their no-fault application. The insurance industry would thus save millions of dollars by denying these legitimate but “late” claims.

Can I Bring A New York Personal Injury Lawsuit If I Was Injured On The Job?

October 10, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

As a Syracuse New York personal injury lawyer, I have received countless calls from Syracuse and Central New York workers injured at work who want to know, “do I have a case”?

When a worker calls and says they were injured on the job, here are, pretty much in order, the questions I ask them so I can figure out if they have a valid New York personal injury case: (1) Did you get, or are you getting, Workers’ Compensation benefits? If the answer is yes, my next question is, (2) Were you injured because of something that a co-employee or your employer did wrong or is someone else to blame? If the at-fault person was a co-employee or the employer, the conversation usually doesn’t go on much longer because the caller generally has no case. But if the caller says the accident was caused by someone other than the employer or a co-worker — hey, now we have something to talk about.

Why does it matter whose fault it was? Because you can’t bring a New York personal injury case against your employer, or co-worker, if your employer provided you with Workers’ Compensation. Your case is barred by the New York Workers’ Compensation Law. But, if you were injured on the job because of someone else’s wrongdoing or negligence, you can bring a New York personal injury lawsuit against that person or company.

Syracuse NY Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Discusses Jury Bias Against Bikers

October 9, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

My father was a bone doctor. He made his living putting broken human bodies, among them motorcyclists’ bodies, back together again, kind of like “all the kings’ horses and all the kings men” in that Humpty Dumpty rhyme. He was a loving, gentle father, and very seldom lost his temper. But there was one thing he was extremely strict about: “Mike, you are never to get on a murdercycle (his word for “motorcycle”), and if you do, and I found out, you will be severely punished”. He made me promise I would not, and I did in fact promise. He had seen too many young men, dead and living, whose bodies had been broken to pieces in motorcycle crashes.

Well, I won’t tell you if I ever broke that promise (I’ll “take the 5th”), but I can tell you that, as a Syracuse NY Accident lawyer, I have almost the same perception as dad did about how dangerous motorcycles are. Recently, this has hit home pretty hard. A friend’s husband left her widowed, and his three small children fatherless, when he died in a Cayuga County motorcycle crash. It is heartbreaking to see her struggling alone with such young children.

Whenever I represent an injured motorcyclist, or the family of a dead cyclist, in court, I am always concerned that the jury will feel that motorcycles are dangerous, too dangerous, and will want to blame my client for riding one, even if the accident was completely the fault of the car driver. In other words, I am afraid my father will be sitting on that jury!

Chamber of Commerce Loves Lawsuits (Its Own), But Not New York Personal Injury Lawsuits (yours).

October 8, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

The top personal injury blogger in New York State, Eric Turewitz, had an interesting blog post today. He wrote about how, according to an ABC News article, the US Chamber of Commerce, one of the biggest corporate lobby group in the USA, plans to throw $10 Million at pro-“tort-reform” candidates this November. “Tort reformers”, by the way, are people, usually insurance or corporate types, who don’t think regular people should be able to seek justice in court against, among others, corporations whose defective products injured them. They want to put personal injury lawyers like me out of business.

But as Eric points out, there is hypocrisy in the Chamber claiming, on the one hand, that there are too many lawsuits (of the personal injury variety, or course), and on the other hand, the Chamber’s threatening to sue the Obama administration’s government to block any rules that hamper business. The Chamber’s head honcho is quoted as saying, “litigation is one of our most powerful tools for making sure that federal agencies follow the law and are held accountable”.

There sure is some irony in that position. And that reminds me of another Chamber of Commerce irony. Last year the Geneva NY Chamber of Commerce awarded me its “Citizen of the Year” award (you can read about it here). My partners in law, all terrific Central New York personal injury lawyers, found it hard to believe that the Chamber, which lobbies so hard against personal injury lawyers like us, was honoring one of us with its highest award. Go figure!

In Oswego NY Wrongful Death And Personal Injury Case, Question Will Be, Did the Siren Sound?

October 5, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

Last week, on September 28, tragedy struck in Oswego. One fishermen died, another is in critical condition, and several others narrowly escaped death. The men were fishing near the Varick damn in the Oswego River in the City of Oswego.

Several dams, used to hold back water to generate electrical power, cross the Oswego River. The lower section of the river, where it empties into harbor, also offers great fishing. When the water is to be released, which causes a sudden rise in the river, a loud siren is supposed to sound to warn the fishers.

But did it sound? And did it sound at the right time?

Another Wrong-Site Surgery Malpractice Case at Syracuse’s Upstate University Hospital

October 1, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

Syracuse medical malpractice lawyers are taking note: Upstate University Hospital has a recent demonstrated history of performing botched or erroneous surgeries. The lawyers at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka know this first-hand. We have successfully sued Upstate several times, including a case two years ago which rendered a $2.5 Million verdict to an elderly Parkinson’s patient who was paralyzed and brain damaged due to an avoidable equipment malfunction during brain surgery.

The Syracuse Post Standard now reports that an Upstate University Hospital neurosurgeon was recently suspended after he or she (they won’t disclose the name) made an unnecessary incision. And not just a minor incision. Although the Hospital refused to disclose any further details, anonymous sources say that the unnecessary cut spans almost the entire length of the patient’s back, whereas only a relatively small incision was needed.

This is yet another clear case of Upstate Hospital medical malpractice. And it’s the third time since 2004 that Upstate doctors have blundered by cutting patients in wrong place, a totally avoidable error. In the other two cases, Upstate surgeons made an incision on the wrong side of a baby’s head when attempting to operate on his brain and they operated on the wrong side of a patient in attempting to remove a tumor from an adrenal gland.

Central New York Injury Attorney Travels Across New York State To Teach Other Accident Lawyers About New York Municipal Liability Law

September 28, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

This Central New York accident lawyer is “on tour” again, traveling across New York State teaching other New York personal injury lawyers about New York “municipal liability law”. I addressed a very welcoming and attentive room of New York personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers in Manhattan this Friday, and will be hitting Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo over the next 6 weeks.

What’s “municipal liability law“? It’s a maze of byzantine rules New York injury lawyers have to follow for suing New York State and its counties, cities, towns, villages, school districts and other governmental entities. The State and all these “subdivisions” of the State have special defenses they can raise to beat back accident and injury claims against them. I try to steer other lawyers around these blockades, and away from mistakes that might harm their injured clients’ cases

The rules are really quite complicated, and most years the courts “tweak” the rules at least a little bit in some of the cases they publish. And I read all the cases, hundreds of them, each year. I then try to distill from all this the most important changes in law, and convey that to my fellow personal injury lawyers.

Syracuse Megabus Accident Lawyer: Case Is Strewn With Legal Hurdles

September 27, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

The Syracuse New York bus accident lawyer busy and thinking. I have handled complex personal injury cases before, but this one has lots of interesting twists, as can be seen by reading my prior blogs about it, entitled:

“Syracuse Megabus Overpass Collision — Was It the County’s Fault?”

“Syracuse Auto Accident Lawyer Discusses Syracuse Bus Crash Liability”

Syracuse personal injury lawyer advises, “Careful What You Post on Facebook: Big Brother Is Watching!

September 26, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

Hate to tell you, but I told you so! I previously blogged about the dangers of Facebook and similar social media for injured plaintiffs in New York personal injury lawsuits. I explained that, as a Central New York personal injury lawyer, I advise my clients to be very careful about what they post on Facebook and other social media sites. Why? Because insurance companies can, and will, search plaintiff’s Facebook page for evidence that he or she is not as disabled or in as much pain as claimed. They will look for Facebook comments, posts and photos depicting plaintiff as a happy, healthy normal person with no injuries. Never mind that the injured person is trying to put on her best face to the public, and never mind that some of those photos might be from before she was injured. I also advised that no one should think that the privacy settings on Facebook will prevent a determined insurance company from getting into his or her private posts and photos.

Now a New York Court has made a ruling ordering a personal injury plaintiff to give to defendant (more precisely, the lawyer hired by defendant’s insurance company) access even to her private postings (i.e., ones that plaintiff only allowed to be viewed by her Facebook “friends”) from Facebook and MySpace that could contradict her personal injury action claims. The same Court has ordered Facebook itself to disclose the entire history of plaintiff’s Facebook postings.

The judge found that the private pages were likely to lead to relevant information that might contradict plaintiff’s claims because some of the information on her public pages already displayed material that seemed to contradict her claims and deposition testimony with regard to her activities and enjoyment of life. In ordering the disclosure, the Court held that the private Facebook pages must be disclosed so as not to “condone Plaintiff’s attempt to hide relevant information behind self-regulated privacy settings”

Syracuse Medical Malpractice Lawyers’ Opinion On "Ways to Avoid Malpractice Lawsuits" Lecture

September 21, 2010 | by Michael Bersani

Watch this video of a doctor’s lecture on “Medpage”. He tells his fellow medical doctors how to avoid getting sued for medical malpractice. Some of his points are well taken. For example, “Care deeply about your patients”, and “communicate” well and often with them. (It’s harder to sue someone you like!).

We at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka, as Syracuse New York medical malpractice lawyers, have some trouble with his last point: “At the end of the day, recognize that the American system of dealing with medical professional liability, so called malpractice, sucks, that stuff (so to speak) happens, and that many trial lawyers are the scum of sub-humankind.”

Actually, what really sucks is the medical establishment’s way of dealing with medical malpractice — ignore it, downplay it, and, of course, blame the lawyers — as this doctor does here. That’s been their modus operandi for many years now. Oh yeah, and I forgot – they also spend more time and money lobbying for malpractice reform than they spend trying to devise systems to prevent malpractice.