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Decades ago, when I was just a baby NY personal injury lawyer, most of my personal injury clients came from lawyer referrals.  Those other lawyers knew that my firm concentrated  in the field of personal injury law.  Those lawyers had discovered from past referrals to us that we got top results even with difficult cases.  Those lawyers in turn would tell other lawyers about us, and our referral base grew and grew in Syracuse, the Central New York area, and across the entire Upstate New York region.

Even back in those days, however, there were always some “cold calls” – people who found us not by referral from other lawyers, but directly, the old-fashioned way, by something called “the yellow pages”.  (If you are younger than 30, ask mom and dad).  But by and large it was our trusting network of referring lawyers who fed our personal injury pipeline.

Then came lawyer advertising. This followed on the heals of the Supreme Court case Bates v. State Bar of Arizona finding that bar association rules banning or strictly limiting lawyer advertising violated the First Amendment’s guaranty of free speech. The proverbial floodgates opened, and the flood of tacky “INJURED?” billboards and TV ads rushed in.

Attorney Mike Bersani

This is Dave Kalabanka, Mike Bersani’s partner, high-jacking his blog (again) to write about yet another award Mike has received for his outstanding work representing personal injury victims. Recently, I blogged about Mike being named “Personal Injury Lawyer of the Year” for 2021 by the publication Best Lawyers in America, which deemed him the “number one” ranked personal injury lawyer in all of the Syracuse metropolitan lawyer based on peer reviews (judges and other lawyers ratings). 

I am proud to announce that our own Mike Bersani has now been named to the Blue Ribbon Panel of Super Lawyers. Let’s unravel this new award:  Super Lawyers is a national publication that lists only the best lawyers in each field of law (top 5%).  All the lawyers at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka are listed as “Super Lawyers” in the field of personal injury law.  The publishers of the Super Lawyers directory choose who to designate as Super Lawyers by way of a multi-phase process that includes a statewide survey of lawyers, an independent research evaluation of candidates, and “peer reviews” (lawyers rating each other) by practice area. 

This law firm recently settled a wrongful death case for $5,500,000!  Although I am not at liberty to discuss the details of the settlement, nor any of the specifics regarding the injury (we signed a non-disclosure agreement with the insurance company), I can say that , once again, our lawyers did an outstanding job.

Such a large settlement for a motor vehicle accident case is unusual.  There are two reasons why:

First, a negligent driver who causes an accident is extremely unlikely to have enough insurance (or personal assets) to cover such a large settlement. The minimal liability insurance for motor vehicles in New York is only $25,000, and a good chunk of New York auto owners carry only this bare minimum in coverage.  Even well-off folks rarely carry more than $1,000,000 in coverage.  Greater coverage is usually only available when the at-fault vehicle is owned by, or the driver of the vehicle was in the scope of his employment for, a large corporation.  Personal injury lawyers refer to this as a “deep-pocket defendant”. In car accidents, “deep pocket” defendants are rare.

The author in “virtual court” arguing an appeal

As I write this blog post, I just got an appointment for my first COVID vaccine shot for February 6.  I am 65, just barely, which qualifies me for this early round of vaccines.  Lucky me! With the vaccine soon to be widely available, the pandemic lockdowns and distancing may (we hope!) soon end.

This got me thinking about the post-COVID world.  In my little corner of the world representing New York personal injury victims, COVID has driven many changes to the way we practice law. Will the COVID way of practicing of law end when the pandemic ends?

So, your New York personal injury lawyer is on the verge of settling your case.  Finally, many months or even years after your accident, you are going to get some compensation for your injuries, your lost income, your permanent disabilities, etc., etc., etc.  You know what I mean.  This has been the worst thing to ever happen to you. Now you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But wait.  Your personal injury lawyer says there is one more stumbling block to a successful resolution of your case:  “Liens”.  He says he has got to investigate the “liens” on your case.  What is that?  How can it affect your settlement?

First, if you are only hearing about “liens” at the end of your case, your lawyer has not done a very good job of keeping you informed.  He or she should have told you about that little problem – and yes it is a problem – long ago. Better late than never!

Even though I write all the appellate briefs and argue all the appeals for my office, and even though I have been blogging about New York personal injury issues for almost a decade, and even though I spent two years clerking for an appellate court (Fourth Department in Rochester) before I began representing personal injury victims, I just realized I have never blogged about the process of arguing an appeal. It’s time!

I’m not going to talk about writing the brief:  That’s way too technical and boring for this blog spot.  I’ll address the actual oral argument.

By the time we get to oral argument, both sides have researched all the law and how it applies to the facts of the case.  Both sides have made all their arguments in writing – in the “Briefs”.  The Appellant fires the first salvo with an Appellate Brief arguing for a reversal or modification of the lower court’s order or judgment.  The “Respondent”, who won in the court below and wants an “affirmance”, then files its Responding Brief to try to undermine the arguments in the Appellant’s Brief.  The Appellant gets to fire the last shot with a Reply Brief, which tries to poke holes in the Responding Brief.

Most folks know that when you are hurt on the job you can’t sue your employer.  Instead, you get worker’s compensation, which means the employer’s worker’s compensation insurance (“comp”) pays your medical bills and some of your lost income (the most they pay is about 2/3 of your lost income, but that’s only if you are 100% disabled).

You can’t sue your employer, or your co-workers employed by the same employer, but you can sue others who negligently caused, even partially, your on-the-job injuries. When you sue these non-employer others, that lawsuit is called a “third-party action”.

For example, say you are working on a Syracuse construction site for a plumbing subcontractor.  One of the employees of an electrical subcontractor is working from a ladder and drops a power tool on your head.  Your employer’s insurer pays your worker’s compensation benefits, but you can also sue the electrical subcontractor in a “third-party action”.

Last week I gave a lecture to more than 800 fellow New York personal injury lawyers by Zoom.  The hour-long lecture (followed by a 20-minute question-and-answer period) was titled, “How to Defeat the Governmental Immunity Defense”.  You can watch a short clip from my lecture here, or you can, if you are a lawyer interested in this area of the law, watch the entire presentation here.

I used power point to guide my audience through the relevant case law and the “do’s and don’ts” of defeating the defense.  Thanks to my legal assistant Becky, the accompanying power point presentation was attractive, informative, and well received.

The lecture was by zoom rather than in person because of COVID.  I really missed delivering to a live audience.  But the advantage was that I got in front of 800 lawyers from all over the State in real time in the same hour.  Usually, I’ve got to travel around the State to deliver to rooms of a few hundred at a time.

I have not looked back to see how many years in a row our firm has made this top ranking, but it’s been quite a few.  Sometimes I wonder whether the folks at “Best Lawyers” even bother checking on us.  Maybe they just assume we have not declined in skill, talent or experience and therefore just “rubberstamp” our “Tier 1” ranking year after year?

But that’s not the way it works, at least according to them.  A firm must have at least one attorney who is recognized in the current edition of Best Lawyers in order to qualify for being ranked as a “Best Law Firm” in their publication. (All four of our lawyers are listed).  After that first condition is met, Best Lawyers says they then dig deeper, collecting data from the firms’ clients, and eliciting “votes” from other lawyers in the area.   (And no we can’t vote for ourselves.)  According to Best Lawyers, “all of the quantitative and qualitative data is then combined into an overall ‘Best Law Firms’ score for each firm.”

Somehow this process always seems to make us land in the top tier.  Good for us!

As anyone who has not been living under a rock knows, it’s election season.  Boy, is it!  The Trump/Biden contention is one of the most – well – contentious in modern history.  It’s a battle of two completely opposite and irreconcilable narratives:

Trump says he has performed brilliantly in fighting the coronavirus.  Biden says he has failed miserably.

Trump says Biden is senile and incapable of governing.  Biden says Trump is a narcissistic egoist whose every act is aimed at self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment.

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