Articles Posted in Motor Vehicle Accidents

News sources say several people were injured when a Clyde-Savannah school bus, packed with 22 elementary school children, and a snowplow collided on Route 31 near Hogsback Road in the Town of Savannah, New York at about 7:50 this morning. A woman, apparently the bus driver, and an 11-year-old boy, were airlifted from the scene to Upstate (SUNY) Hospital in Syracuse. The woman is apparently in critical condition. Eight ambulances and two helicopters reported to the scene.

Our hopes to a speedy recovery to all victims. As the father of 5 children, I can feel the worry, pain and anguish of the parents! And as a lawyer, I have already started to think about this unfortunate accident from a legal perspective. Here are some complications that I see, from my perspective as a Central New York and Syracuse car and bus accident lawyer, in this school bus accident case:

In New York, if the snowplow driver was on the job removing snow or salting for a municipal employer, such as the County, and was “actually engaged in work on a highway”, under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1103(b) the injured victims can only prevail in court if the snowplow driver was driving in such a careless manner that it amounts to “reckless disregard” to the public. But as to any claim against the school bus driver, a mere “negligence” standard applies. Therefore, for the injured children to get liability compensation for their injuries, they are going to have to show that either the bus driver was “negligent” and/or that the plow driver was “reckless”, unless the snowplow driver was not working for a municipality, or was not actually engaged in plow work at the time, in which case the injured victims will have to show only that both or either the plow driver or the school bus driver were “negligent”. Complicated? You bet.

I guess some folks are just born mean, grow meaner, and keep on being mean right through old age. A little over a year ago, an 80-year-old mean-to-the-bone guy from Fulton, William L. LeVea, got drunk, jumped in his car, found a reason to get enraged at another motorist, and then hunted that motorist down, repeatedly ramming him from behind until the poor guy lost control and swerved into the lane of an oncoming motorist. The bullied motorist died from the collision, and the oncoming motorist got seriously injury. I blogged about the case last year (click here to see). The Central and Syracuse New York auto accident lawyers of Michaels Bersani Kalabanka, led by attorney David Kalabanka, represented the oncoming motorist in the motor vehicle accident case.

LeVea’s victims, and their families, can breathe a sigh of relief today — LeVea finally pleaded guilty to the road-rage related charges, including aggravated vehicular homicide, and will get six to eighteen years in jail. He will be sentenced on March 2.

Goodbye and good riddens Mr. LeVeal. I hope you (don’t) enjoy your last years rotting in a State prison. By the way, your victims and their families will oppose any request you ever make for early release, so unless you have the longevity of a sea turtle, you might as well order your casket special delivery to the prison.

I represent a guy who was badly injured in a Central New York car accident. After all discovery had been exchanged, and the parties had been deposed, I felt I had a pretty good shot at getting “summary judgment” for my client establishing that the other driver was 100% responsible for the collision, and that my client had no fault at all. “Summary Judgment” means that the right answer about who was at fault is so clear that it doesn’t even have to go to a jury. If a plaintiff gets “summary judgment” on liability, it means that the jury does not have to decide whether the defendant is responsible (the court already decided that) but only how much the case is worth.

I lost the motion. The trial judge ruled that there were “issues of fact” for a jury to decide regarding whether my client was also to blame for the accident.

I hate losing. But “sucking up” loses from time to time is part and parcel of being a Central New York car accident lawyer. And don’t believe any lawyer who tells you he or she has never lost a case. If they are handling tough cases, or any significant volume of cases, they have to lose from time to time.

The last three days have dumped 30 inches of snow on Syracuse. And lots of snow usually translates into lots of car accidents. This storm is no exception. The Syracuse Post Standard today reports that between midnight and 2 p.m. last night, 150 car were involved in crashes inside the city of Syracuse!

So does what do New York car accident lawyers, judges and juries say about that? Does a snow storm excuse a driver who loses control of his car and crashes into someone? Absolutely not! (Well, usually not).

Make no mistake; even if snow is a contributing factor in these car accidents, the drivers are usually at fault. A driver is required to drive at a speed that is safe for the weather conditions. If the roads are snowy and slippery, guess what? You have to drive slower. Not only that, you have to leave more space between you and the car in front so you have more time to stop. Duh! And another thing; you can’t drive with your windows fogged up and snow clinging to your windshield, crash into some other guy, and then claim it was the storm’s fault.

The Syracuse Post Standard reports today that two Auburn (NY) girls, one 12, the other 13, were hit by car as they were crossing East Genesee Street in the marked crosswalk at the East Genesee/Howard Street intersection at about 7:25 a.m. The driver of the car said she did not see the girls.

New York pedestrian accident law (Vehicle & Traffic Law 1151) protects pedestrians walking in crosswalks. Specifically, the law says that if a pedestrian is struck in a crosswalk, the driver is automatically liable unless he can show that the pedestrian suddenly left the curb and walked or ran into the path of the vehicle. In other words, the driver here is automatically liable unless the girls darted out in front of her, which does not appear to be the case.

The Auburn New York pedestrian and car accident lawyers at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka wish these two girls a speedy recover.

It happened again. I think I have blogged at least 5 times within the last six months about this happening. It seems to be happening with greater and greater frequency. In fact, as a Central and Syracuse New York car accident lawyer, I am handling more and more of this kind of case.

What am I talking about? I am talking about Central and Syracuse New York car accidents caused by drivers distracted by texting, phoning or looking at their electronic devices.

The latest distracted driving accident? The Post Standard reports that a driver admitted he had been checking a missed call on his cell phone when his vehicle swerved off onto the shoulder of Route 5 and struck a woman who was out walking her dog on Route 5 in the Town of Sullivan (near Chittenango). When he looked back up from his cell phone, he saw the woman hitting his windshield.

Motorists, welcome to deer season in Upstate New York. Watch out! The white-tailed deer this year are more populous than in recent years. And they still haven’t learned how to look both ways before crossing the road! They are a moving target you want to miss.

Hey, last time I checked the law books, you can’t sue a deer. So if you run into one, and your car, or you, or both, are damaged, you are out of luck. Sure, you may have collision insurance, and no-fault insurance will pay the medical bills and lost wages (for a while!), but if you are seriously injured in a car-on-deer collision, you really have no good options legally.

Unless you are a passenger. Then you can bring a New York car accident claim against your driver for failure to drive in a careful enough manner so as to avoid the deer collision. Don’t worry; you won’t be dipping into your friend’s pocket. His or her car insurance will compensate you, if you can, with the help of a good New York car accident lawyer, prove the driver was at least partially at fault for failing to drive more slowly, look more carefully, or brake more quickly.

A police officer who risks his life trying to catch the bad guy, and is injured while doing so, ranks high up there among this Syracuse New York injury lawyer’s pantheon of heroes. And that’s what happened yesterday in Syracuse. The Syracuse Post Standard reports that a Syracuse police officer, in hot pursuit of a burglary suspect, was seriously injured when he crashed his police car into the back of another car, and then into a tree on East Fayette Street in Syracuse.

The fact that the police officer may have injured innocent bystanders (the occupants of the car he rear-ended) is, though, problematic. You might be wondering how the law deals with that. Do those injured by cops pursuing criminals have a right to sue the police officer, and his police department, for their injuries?

The answer is “yes”, but they have to show more than that the police officer was negligent. They have to show he was driving with “reckless disregard” for the public’s safety. This is a pretty tough standard, and for good reason; we want our brave police officers to pursue criminals, even at high speeds when necessary, without having to worry about getting sued for accidents they inadvertently cause in trying to protect us from criminals and other dangers.

Holy Kamoli! Lots of car accidents reported in Sunday’s Geneva Finger Lakes Times. Here are three: A car blew past a stop sign in Hopewell causing a motorcycle to run into its side, ejecting the biker. In another Hopewell car accident, a woman pulled out from a stop sign without looking carefully, causing a car coming through the intersection to collide into her. And in a Canandaigua car crash, four vehicles (four!) were involved in a chain-rear-end collision on Routes 5 & 20.

Actually, these kinds of car accidents are all too typical. As a Geneva and Canandaigua New York car accident lawyer, I can tell you that 70 to 80 percent of my New York auto accident case load consists of either drivers failing to yield the right of way at stop signs, or drivers rear-ending the car in front.

The only somewhat unusual accident of these three is the four-vehicle chain rear-end crash. This is somewhat unusual during the summer and fall months with the good weather we have been having. Usually this kind of multi-vehicle rear-end collision happens in icy or foggy conditions where motorists are just driving too fast for those conditions. In fact, I am handling one right now, a Yates County collision involving four cars rear-ending one another in wintery conditions.