Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog

Did you ever wonder where the expression, “to read the Riot Act” comes from?  Well, if not, you are probably wondering now.  So here’s the explanation:  The so called “Riot Act” was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain when the USA was still part of Great Britain (1715).  It authorized the government to declare any assembled group of twelve or more people unlawful, and force them to disperse.  Before the group could be arrested or punished for illegal assembly, the authorities had to read aloud the Act as a warning to disburse.  The phrase “to read the Riot Act” thus came to mean more generally any situation where an authority delivers a stern reprimand or warning to someone indicating that they must change their behavior or else suffer dire consequences.

A recent Court of Appeals (New York’s top court) Decision has New York personal injury lawyers “reading the Riot Act” to their clients.  Before I can tell you why the “Riot Act” is being read to New York personal injury claimants, I have to first explain the Court’s ruling.

In Forman v. Henkin the Court held that, when you sue someone for personal injuries, their lawyers can get access not only to your “public” Facebook posts, but also – under certain circumstances — to the ones you posted under your “privacy” settings.  Those private postings do not automatically need to be disclosed to the insurance company lawyer, but those lawyers – whose goal is to defeat your claim — can force you to turn them over by showing they are reasonably likely to be relevant to the credibility of your injury claims.

Warning:  This blog may be a little too “legalese” for many of my readers, but it is an important development in New York personal injury law, so I feel compelled to write about it for my many lawyer-readers and others with a more-than-casual interest in the law.  The new development is a case from New York’s top Court — the Court of Appeals — called “Rodriguez v. City of New York”.

The particular facts of that case don’t matter for our purpose here.  So I am not even going to talk about them.  Here’s what you need to know:  Whenever we New York personal injury lawyers sue a defendant for negligence, there comes a point, usually after depositions, when we consider making a “summary judgment motion on liability”.  That means we are asking the Judge – without a jury – to rule that the evidence so clearly shows the defendant was negligent that the Judge – without even giving the case to the jury to consider – should rule that the defendant was negligent and is liable to our client, the plaintiff.  At that point, if we get “summary judgment on liability” in our favor, we gain several advantages.

First, the only remaining issue now for a jury to decide is the amount of “damages”, in other words, how much is the injury worth?  We get to go to the jury and tell them “the judge has already found the defendant liable for what he did to our client and now you only have to consider HOW MUCH he owes our client, not WHETHER he owes our client.”  Huge advantage.  It’s like starting a football game with a three-touchdown head start.