Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog

All metal hip implants, the newest line of artificial hips, are failing all over the U.S., the New York Times reported today. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has received more than 5,000 complaints since January about the "metal-on-metal" implants (both the artificial ball and cup are made of metal). As a result, many recipients of all-metal hips must undergo replacement surgery after only a few years (artificial hips should last about 15). Some patients have suffered injuries from minute pieces of chromium and cobalt shedding from the metal hips. In such cases pain, rashes and inflammation are common.

Hip replacement has come to be one of the most widely performed medical procedures in the United States. As a result, there are an estimated 500,000 patients who received all-metal replacement hips. Many of these hips were sold without testing in patients.

Because of the high rate of failure of the metal-on-metal hips, most surgeons are going back to the old metal-and-plastic ones.

Patients who have received metal-on-metal hips may have a valid products liability claim against the manufacturers. They are entitled to claim compensation for their lost wages, medical expenses and pain and suffering, which includes compensation for the ordeal of going through with an additional hip replacement.

Under New York defective products law, a person injured by a defective or dangerous product doesn't need to show that the manufacturer was negligent or careless, but only that the product was unreasonably dangerous. This means that even if the manufacturer did not know and could not have known there would be problems with the metal-on-metal hip replacements, they can be held liable for the damages that the product causes, if it is found to be unreasonably dangerous.

Patients who have a failed hip replacement should contact a New York products liability lawyer to understand their rights.

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

Drop-side cribs should have been dropped a long time ago. Why? Because they kill. I blogged about drop-side crib deaths last year. The drop-side sometimes created a gap between the mattress and side rail where babies got caught, suffocated and died. About 40 babies have been strangled to death since 2000. This of course led to product liability lawsuits in New York and around the nation.

Are drop-side cribs convenient? Yes. A lifting side rail allows parents to easily place and pick up their baby. But in a convenience-versus-safety match, especially where babies are concerned, safety should win out.

And finally it did. This week the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is finally banning drop-side cribs, even at yard sales! Now, all four sides will be fixed, and so will the problem of baby strangulation.

Better still, all crib models sold in the U.S. will be rigorously tested for tightened hardware that can't shake loose from a baby's rattling.

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

As every New York prescription drug lawyer knows, prescription drug suppliers don't always do a stellar job warning their customers about risks associated with their products. In fact, sometimes they do a plainly lousy job. And that can cause serious injury, or even death, to prescription drug users.

But every wrong has a legal remedy, right? Who could disagree with that?

The Supreme Court of the United States, that's who. Last Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 vote, in a case called Pliva v Mensing, , ruled that the makers of generic drugs (as opposed to brand-name drugs) may not be sued for faulty or inadequate warning labels. This is surprising, to say the least, since two years ago the same Court, in Wyeth v Levine, reached an opposite conclusion regarding the makers of brand-name drugs.

The reason for the disparity in treatment? The majority in the Pliva case says that brand-name drug companies can change the labels on their products without seeking permission from the FDA, while generic drug makers cannot. True enough (one of the idiosyncrasies of Federal drug law), but this recent court ruling does not allow consumers to sue generic drug makers even where they can show they failed to make diligent efforts to solicit permission from the FDA to change their labeling when they saw a problem emerging. Instead, they can sit back and relax --- while you lie down and die.

Even the Court seems to recognize the absurdity of having one rule for brand-name drugs and another for generic drugs. Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion in PLIVA, admitted the distinction between generic and brand-name drugs "makes little sense."

I agree. New York prescription drug lawyers agree. And if you or someone you love gets sick or dies because of faulty warnings on generic prescription drugs, you will agree, too.

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

So what rights would we New Yorkers have to compensation in the event of a New York Nuclear Power Plant Catastrophe?

Let's assume that Oswego's Nuclear Power Plant suddenly broke down and started spewing out dangerous radioactivity, just like in Japan. Let's assume your family ended up sick, or dead, and that you had to move out of your home --- forever --- and that its market value was reduced to zero dollars. Can you sue the Power Plant owner? If so, for how much?

Well, I've got some bad news for you. Even though under New York common law principles you would be able to sue the power company for every penny of compensation you were entitled to for all those catastrophic losses, a not-well-known federal law trumps New York law, and would probably force you to accept pennies for every dollar you would otherwise be entitled to.

The law is called the Price-Anderson Act of 1957, and it places a damages cap on the liability of nuclear power plant owners or operators. Under this Act, the power plant owners or operators pay an insurance premium each year to create a kind of "no-fault" system for paying damages caused by nuclear accidents. The total payout available from the fund for personal injury and property loss for nuclear accidents amounts to only about $13 billion.

I say "only" because that's such a small amount of money considering the devastating, widespread catastrophic damages a nuclear disaster would unleash to hundreds of thousands of our local central New York residents and businesses. In fact, the damages that would result from a major nuclear catastrophe are estimated at more like $500 billion.

The stated intent of the Price-Anderson Act was to foster commercial development of nuclear power. But what ever happened to the free market system? Why shouldn't big power companies have to pay full dollar for catastrophes that, through their negligence, they unleash? The Act, which seems to me extremely unfair, survived a constitutional challenge in 1978 in Duke Power Co. v Carolina Environment Study Group

Who pays the price for this generous "gift" our federal government gave to the power industry? You do, of course. Should, god forbid, our local nuclear power company, through its negligence or carelessness, unleash a Japan-like disaster, none of us will get anything even close to true justice. We will be stuck with the pennies-on-a-dollar compensation provided for in the Price-Anderson Act. And as a Central New York personal injury lawyer, that both offends and scares me . . . .

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

I just read about a bicycle accident case from Texas that teaches New York riders a BIG lesson. The lesson? Preserve the evidence! Read on.

The biker recently filed a products liability suit against Trek Bicycle Corporation, the bicycle manufacturer, claiming his 2002 Trek roadbike's steering fork cracked, causing his handle bars to collapse, which in turn caused him to hit the pavement and suffer a severe brain injury. The poor guy has been in a coma ever since. (His family filed suit on his behalf). You can read about it here.

That's all I know about the case, but I can already tell you what Trek's defense will be. Either: (1) the biker misused or altered the bike, thus causing the crack in the steering fork at some time before the accident, or (2) the biker lost control of the bike, fell, and the crash itself caused the steering fork to crack and the handle bar to collapse.

If you have a curious mind, you might be asking, "how does this poor coma-stricken road biker beat trek? Doesn't he, as plaintiff, have the burden of proof? And how does he prove a defect in the steering fork made him go down if he is in a coma?

Answer: If his family preserved the bicycle without altering it and brought it intact to his bicycle accident lawyer, the lawyer can hire an expert engineer specialized in bikes to carefully examine the fissures in the steering fork, and the entire bike, for evidence of how the accident happened, and how the crack was formed. But if they tossed the bike out, or messed around with it, they will have destroyed the evidence, and they will never be able to prove the case.

Moral of the story? If you go down on your bike, are seriously injured, and suspect it was the bike's fault, don't mess with the bike! Get it to your New York bicycle accident lawyer. He'll get it to an expert engineer. That expert might even recommend that the steering fork be examined by a metallurgist, who will look with a microscope at the crack to better determine the cause. Was the metal too soft or brittle? Was there some microscopic defect in this piece of metal? If there is any manufacturing or design defect that caused this accident, Trek will be liable.

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

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.

As it turned out, there was nothing wrong with the machine; the farmer had simply made a mistake. He should have shut the machine off before he climbed into where he did to fix a mechanical problem. We all make mistakes, and unfortunately this one cost him dearly.

So guess what? I did not file a frivolous claim. And my farmer friend did not ask me to file a frivolous claim on his behalf. He understood and accepted my explanation as to why he had no claim. He was grateful to me for having explained how the law works and why he had no case.

Even if I had been an unethical lawyer who wanted to file a frivolous claim, I would not have filed the frivolous claim. Why not? It would have made no economic sense. The claim would have cost me lots of money and time and would have eventually been dismissed. And no, the manufacturer would not have paid us big bucks to go away. He would have paid us nothing, or next to nothing, and certainly not enough to pay for my time and expenses on the case.

This case is no different than any other in this regard: It never makes any economic sense to file a frivolous claim.

Real flesh-and-blood personal injury lawyers (as opposed to the figments of tort reformers' imagination) live by this refrain: "you make money on the cases you turn down". What this means is that you can only make a living in this business by turning down frivolous cases, and taking only legitimate ones.

So please contact me if you believe you may have a legitimate New York personal injury claim.

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

As a Central Syracuse New York products liability lawyer, I take a keen interest in news about dangerous products or false safety claims by manufacturers. That's why an article in the New York Times caught my eye yesterday. The article talked about how United States Senator Tom Udall (Democrat, NM) is formally requesting that the Federal Trade Commission investigate the alleged deceptive advertising practices of sports helmet manufacturers.

The senator says two major helmet manufacturers, Riddell and Schutt, have been fooling the public with their claims to increased concussion prevention. But Udall has his crosshairs mostly on Riddell, whose ads claim that that its "Revolution" helmets decrease the risk of concussions by as much as 31 percent. This 31 percent figure is deemed deceptive because the "Revolution" helmets were compared with second-hand helmets in unknown condition and with unknown manufacture date.

The advertising is clearly aimed at cashing in on parents' increasing worries about the long-term effects of concussions on their child-athletes
.
Deceptive safety claims in advertising are not new. The truth is that unsafe products are often marketed and sold as safe. Think about the tobacco industry and how they continued to claim that their cigarettes were safe even years after the entire medical community had determined they were not.

Let's face it; companies often fail to give full and proper warnings about the dangers of their products. Why? In a word, "money". They can sell more products by keeping their customers in the dark about the dangers that lurk beneath the smooth veneer of their products.

How can we dissuade companies from deceptive safety claims? Two ways: Strict government oversight, with heavy fines for deceptive practices (thank you Senator Tom Udall!) and product liability lawsuits (my job!).

When weighing the pros and cons of making exaggerated safety claims, companies place increased sales earnings on the "let's do it" side of the scale. New York product liability lawyers like me sit on the other side of the scale, the "you'd better not" side. And I'm pretty proud to be sitting here.

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

If you're like me, you wouldn't mind being Spiderman. Hey, he's got a cool way of getting around, shooting spider-gook from his wrists and swinging around town. Beats driving in city traffic.

But every job has its drawbacks, even Spiderman's. We learned this week that he plummeted 30 feet during Monday night's performance of the Broadway production, "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark". Doctors say he is in serious condition, with broken ribs and internal bleeding.

Little is known about how this accident happened. We do know, however, that somehow the wire he was swinging from failed. (In this Broadway show, he was swinging from wires rather than his spider-gook --- go figure!) We do not know whether the wire failed because it snapped or because it became unfastened. Either way, it appears certain that Spiderman was the victim of someone's negligence (unless it was Green Goblin's sabotage).

Who could Spiderman sue? If the wire snapped, he may have a New York defective product (product liability) claim against the manufacturer. If stagehands failed to properly fasten the wire, he could have a New York negligence claim against them and their employer. There are all kinds of variations on these possibilities; maybe someone negligently failed to instruct or train the stagehands in the art of wire fastening, or someone neglected to properly inspect the wire before use, or perhaps the manufacture failed to provide proper warnings, or warranted the wire for greater weight than it could hold. A New York accident lawyer should thoroughly investigate all these possibilities so he can catch all possible villains in his legal web.

Is it possible that our superhero was a victim of a mere "accident"? Is it possible that everyone did everything right and that this accident just "happened"? No. That's not possible. Almost all "accidents" are caused by someone's carelessness. This one is no different. Someone, somewhere, somehow screwed up. In fact, news sources say that the Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Actors Equity representatives have already recommended new safety measures to prevent a repeat. I wish I Knew what those new measures were, because that would tell me who did what wrong.

But the show must go on. We wish the fallen Spiderman a speedy, full recovery, and we hope the producers and others on the set have learned some valuable safety lessons so as to avoid injuring other spidermen.

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.

Convenience and safety often clash. Quick example: In the old days, before the era of car seats and booster seats, getting the kids into the car was so easy, so convenient. You just threw them in and off you went. Early on, there weren't even seatbelts. Only problem was that kids were getting mangled, crushed and killed in car accidents. Enter car seats and booster seats. What a pain in the a--! All that strapping in, tying down. Inconvenient, isn't it? But safe.

Now let's take cribs. Several decades ago some smart engineers invented a great convenience: Drop-side cribs (see photograph featured here). No more leaning over the side of the crib to awkwardly place baby to bed. It was a hit!

Only problem was babies were dying. The drop-side sometimes created a V-shaped gap between the mattress and side rail where babies got caught, suffocated and died. At least 32 infants have died this way since 2000.

When you think of all those babies, thousands of them, who have successfully used drop-side cribs over the last decade, 32 deaths do not seem like a lot. Unless it's your baby. Then it seems like way too many. Then, after you have buried your baby, and have cried rivers of tears, you may say to yourself, between spasms of guilt and grief, "hey, the guys who made this crib knew that other babies had died in them, but they sold it to me anyway. They made money. And they killed my baby". You might long for justice. Then you might stop in to see someone like me, a New York defective product lawyer. And then together we might file a New York products liability lawsuit against the company who put the baby-killing product on the market.

Many of the companies who made these cribs had recalled them over the year. They knew they had a problem. And despite repeated attempts, they were unable to design or manufacture a fool-proof drop-side crib. So last Wednesday the Consumer Product Safety Commission finally voted unanimously to ban the manufacture, sale and resale of the cribs.

The ban makes sense. Convenience is not worth the lives of 30 babies a decade.

OK, I'll admit it. I have never gotten a $66 Million Dollar verdict. Although all the lawyers in our firm have either gotten million dollar settlements or verdicts, and even multimillion dollar ones, we have never come close to that number. $66 million? That's a lot of money. That's a Western New York personal injury verdict record. And that's what a Western, NY jury awarded a woman who suffered severe spinal in a workplace accident last week.

I am sure there was very good lawyering here (hats off to Michael Law, a good friend of this law firm, and his partner Kevin English) but that alone can't explain a verdict of that size. In my experience as a Central New York personal injury lawyer, a jury will only give that much money away when (1) it really dislikes the defendant, and/or (2) the injuries are devastating beyond belief.

Both of these things appear to have been present here. This was not just a run-of-the-mill back injury. This twenty-something woman was rendered quadriplegic after a large piece of exercise equipment toppled onto her, shattering her cervical vertebrae, and causing massive spinal cord damage.

How did that happen? She was a massage therapist at a business that provided physical therapy. She leaned against a 600-pound "leg extension machine", which then toppled over on top of her. (How could that happen without some negligence on the part of either the manufacturer of the product or the owner who installed and maintained it? Answer: It couldn't). Her Rochester, NY personal injury lawyers brought a New York products liability claim against the manufacturer of the machine and a negligence claim against the business that owned and maintained it. The jury said that the manufacturer was the most at fault (75%) but that the owner was to blame, too (20%). The jury found that the plaintiff had barely any fault at all (5%).

My guess is the jury got angry with the defendants for refusing to accept responsibility for the accident (this same thing had happened to 7 other people before, so clearly there was something dangerous about this machine). The trial strategy, often employed by defense lawyers, of trying to blame the injured plaintiff for the accident can backfire big time, as it appears to have done here. Really, how could this poor young lady have been much to blame for this 600-pound machine, which she did not design or install, toppling over on her?

Quadriplegic cases often result in very high verdicts because of the great expense of long-term medical care. And when the victim is in her 20's, as here, multiplying the yearly medical care cost out into the future makes for a big number. Also, lost wages over a life time adds up.

Here, the jury determined that the injured woman's medical care would cost almost $30 million. In fact, almost exactly half the $66 million award was for "economic loss" (a life time of medical expenses and lost wages) and only half was to compensate her for pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.

Is $33 million too much for her pain and suffering? What is having to live your life as a quadriplegic really worth? Would you allow me to crush your cervical spinal chord and render you quadriplegic if I paid you $33 million dollars? Think about it and let me know if this verdict was excessive.

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

I don't know about you, but every time I back my car out of my driveway or in the supermarket parking lot, I worry about hidden toddlers. This could be a side affect of my job as a Central New York personal injury lawyer. But it could also be because I have read way too many reports of toddlers getting backed up over by cars, pickup trucks and SUV's. The problem is that small children are below the view of your rearview mirror.

So I was glad to come across a Bloomberg article yesterday reporting that rearview cameras with in-vehicle displays will probably be required in new cars and trucks by the year 2014. The auto industry will, of course, oppose this requirement, but hey, they also opposed requiring seatbelts and airbags in their day, and look how many lives those have saved.

I remember a story I read in the Geneva Finger Lakes Times last year where, in Geneva, New York, an uncle backed his car out of his driveway and ran over his 3 year-old nephew. After the accident, he disappeared for a few days while he contemplated suicide.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics show that vehicle back-ups kill 300 and injure 18,000 people a year in the U.S. Nearly half the deaths are of children under 5 years old. Tragically, in 70 percent of the cases, family members are responsible for the backup death or injury.

Imagine the lifetime of remorse, shame and indescribable sadness that backing up over your own child brings on.

Right now, backup cameras are available on many vehicles, but they are optional. If forcing the auto industry to equip all vehicle with this technology will save 300 lives a year, and avoid 18,000 injuries, I'm all for it.

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

In a blog post earlier this week, I talked about last Saturday's Seneca Lake boat accident that killed the owner of the Glen Harbor Marina and injured the Marina's head mechanic. More recent news reports now indicate that the accident may have been caused by a defective steering system in the high-speed boat.

If in fact the steering system was at fault, the family of the deceased boating accident victim, along with the injured survivor, may both have a New York products liability (defective products) case against the manufacturer of the boat for marketing and selling a boat with a defectively designed or manufactured steering system.

The two men were test driving the high-speed boat when, according to the survivor (the Marina's mechanic), the steering, on its own, started malfunctioning, causing a sharp turn that threw the two into the water.

In order to determine whether a valid New York products liability case against the boat's manufacturer can be brought, an engineer would have to be hired to carefully examine the steering system for defects in either its design or manufacture. Products liability cases by necessity require careful expert evalutation. Anyone considering a defective products case should be carfeful not to alter, destroy or sell the thing that malfunctioned or failed and caused the injury or death. The defective product itself, well preserved, is the best evidence, and without it, the case is bound to fail.

If you or a loved one is ever injured by a product you consider defective, dangerous, or that malfunctioned, be sure to carefully preserve the product, without opening it, taking it apart, or otherwise altering it. Instead, call a qualified New York products liability lawyer. He or she will then have the product preserved and examined at the appropriate time with all the appropriate experts and liable parties present.

Let's say a guy with a completely limp arm walks into my office. The arm just hangs there, lifeless. The guy will never be able to use that arm again. What happened? Let's say his sleeve got caught in a machine, which drew in his arm, and that his arm was stuck in the machine for many hours while emergency response teams tried to extricate him. My client appears blameless. He was just doing his job the way he always did it, and the way his employer instructed him to do it. Why did the machine suck his arm in? Was it defectively designed? Was it improperly maintained? Why wasn't there a kill switch he could reach? Were the warnings and instructions on it sufficiently clear? Was my client simply not trained right on how to use it?

These facts are similar to several cases I have handled, including one I just recently took in. And I can't answer those questions I just posed, at least not yet. New York workplace injury lawyers like me need to rely on engineers to help us answer these questions. The main question, though, is whether the machine was "defective". By "defective" I mean "unreasonably dangerous", which is the standard for proving a New York product liability lawsuit. My client has a case only if the machine is "defective", and the engineer's main job is to determine whether it is defective.

I have already consulted with such an engineer. We are going to carefully examine the machine together. My expert engineer will then be able to tell me whether, in his opinion, the machine was defective. He will research the relevant standards for designing and building such machines during the time period when this machine was built, and also will research the standard warnings and instructions that should be placed on this kind of machine.

Since my client is poor and can't afford to pay the engineer, I have agreed to "front" the money for it. And it's expensive! But it's also the only way to find out if the client has a case. I sure hope he does have a case, because his workers' compensation payments (60% of his regular wages) don't pay all his bills, and he's got kids to feed.

If there is a defective machine case, it will be against the designer and builder of the machine. He can't sue his employer because workers' compensation law bars him from doing that.

I feel really bad for this client. He is a nice guy, with a bad injury, and has a tough economic situation. One of my worst jobs is to tell a seriously injured and blameless client "you have no case". I am hoping I don't have to tell him that.

So you say you don't like tort lawyers, product liability lawsuits, or personal injury cases? Well, guess what? You need them, as demonstrated (once again) by the headlines in the New York Times!

The New York Times reports that, as early as the fall of 1999, SmithKline Beecham, maker of a popular diabetes medicine called "Avandia", found out, through studies it conducted, that the drug posed significantly greater cardiac risks than other leading diabetes medicines. So what did they do about it? Let's see how smart you are with this multiple choice test: Did SmithKline Beecham: (a) stop production of Avandia; (b) call the FDA and informed them; (c) do more studies to make sure; or (d) bury the study, tell no one, and continue to churn out huge profits on the sale of the dangerous medicine.

If you guessed "d", you get a gold star, not only for getting the right answer, but for understanding how corporate America, with its single-minded profit-lust, works.

The risks to the heart from Avandia did not become public knowledge until eight years later, in May 2007, when the company was forced by a lawsuit to make public its data. During those eight years, the company did some other studies, but not on the drug itself. Rather, they studied how much money they stood to lose should the truth about Avandia become public knowledge. Those studies, which projected lost profits of more than $600 million, spurred the company to undertake a massive cover-up of the drug test results, and thus to put thousands of diabetics (whose health is already at risk) at even greater risk of early death or serious health deterioration.

My experience as a New York product liability and defective consumer goods lawyer has taught me that hiding the results of negative studies, and the dangers of consumer goods generally, is not only widespread in the drug industry, but in every industry across the board. I have said it before and I will say it again: We the people have only two weapons at our disposal for curbing big business' appetite for building castles of wealth on the corpses of our citizens: (1) tight federal regulation and (2) tort lawsuits.

As for number (1), government regulation, when vigorously enforced and fairly applied, is the people's watchdog. It is our way of looking over the shoulder of the producers of potentially life-saving products to make sure they are not producing life-threatening ones.

As for number (2), that's what I, and my fellow New York product liability lawyers, are here for: Good product liability lawsuits are, arguably, even more effective than government regulation at preventing dangerous products from reaching the store shelves. Product liability lawsuits force corporations and manufacturers to factor into their profit equations the high cost, (i.e., a slew of big-verdict lawsuits) of producing dangerous products. It gives them pause --- not always enough pause, but some at least, -- before they embark down that road of putting safety last, instead of first, where it belongs.

As a mere local Central New York personal injury attorney, I really didn't want to get into commenting on the national disaster that is the ongoing Gulf of Mexico BP oil "spill". (I put "spill" in quotes because this word, bantered about by BP and echoed by news media, hardly seems appropriate. It is more like an underwater oil "volcano". Take a look at the video of it here).

I don't even want to comment about the "perfect storm" combination of cascading mistakes that led to the "spill" itself. After all, as an accident lawyer, I know all too well that big-company accidents, even cascading series of them, are all too common (because corporate cost-cutting carelessness is all too common). Nothing new here. BP, join the club of about a zillion other big corporations who have injured countless Americans with their crappy defective products!

And, heck, I don't even feel like commenting about BP's deliberately underestimating the extent of the "spill". Corporate lies are just too common to push my buttons.

So what do I want to comment about? Glad you asked. Excuse my French, but what really pisses me off, what has my fingers pounding on this key board right now, is that BP HAD NO PLAN TO DEAL WITH THIS KIND OF A LEAK, NO PLAN AT ALL TO STOP IT IF IT HAPPENED!!! This hole they created at the bottom of the sea, which is spewing death to the Gulf, apparently can't be plugged! The latest brilliant idea?: Throw "heavy mud" at it, and if that doesn't work, knotted rope, pieces of tires and golf balls,

Golf balls? Come on! Do you think if BP had put as much money into designing a "what-if" safety device for dealing with this leak as they spent on designing drilling techniques for reaching deep sea oil they could have developed a stop-gap? Of course! But spending the money to GET the oil made them a buck, while spending the money to STOP the oil from reaping an environmental disaster didn't. It's that simple.

So how do we motivate corporations to develop safety devices if the profit motive isn't there? Two answers: (1) better and stronger government regulation and (2) lawsuits. Lawsuits make them "pay" for accidents, and therefore motivate them to be safe.

And I would just love to sue these guys. Come on, somebody, bring me a case against BP! Punitive damages? No question. Maybe as the oily mess makes its way up the east coast (as some are now predicting, via the Keys), there will be some mom-and-pop beach hotel (I love representing the little guy) on the shores of Long Island that will go bust and want to bring a New York lawsuit to recover their losses.