Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog

Finger Lakes NY Boating Accident Lawyer’s Memorial Day Boating advice.

May 23, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

It’s looking like a gorgeous Memorial Day weekend in New York’s beautiful Finger Lakes. The Finger Lakes are my home. I live on Seneca Lake, my office is near Owasco Lake, and my family has a cottage (“camp” as it is known locally) on Skaneateles Lake. These lakes, together with the other 8 Finger Lakes — Otisco Lake, Cayuga Lake, Keuka Lake, Canandaigua Lake, Honeoye Lake, Canadice Lake, Hemlock Lake, and Conesus Lake – form a natural water-bejeweled necklace.

Admiring the lakes from the shore is one thing, but many of us Finger-Lakers like to get out ON them. Unfortunately, every year I have an opportunity to blog about a serious, or fatal, boating accident on one of the Finger Lakes (see the blog links below this article). And sometimes my personal injury law firm ends up representing injured boaters in lawsuits against boat operators and others who cause boating accidents.

Almost every boating accident I have seen has been avoidable. But don’t worry – I am not going to lecture you about boating safety rules (like checking the weather forecast, maintaining a safe speed, designating an assistant skipper, avoiding alcohol if you are operating the boat, taking a boating course, checking your vessel for safety). Oops, I just did lecture you!

Why Are New York No-Fault Insurance Regulators Targeting “Crooked Doctors” Who Support No-Fault Claims?

May 21, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

I read this article in the Syracuse Post Standard the other day about how no-fault insurance regulators plan to start “kicking crooked doctors out of New York’s no-fault program“, referring to such doctors as “linchpins in fake-accident scams that cost insurers and policyholders hundreds of millions of dollars”.

As a Central and Syracuse New York auto accident lawyer, I have represented many, many auto accident victims over the years. And I have some questions for the regulators who are targeting no-fault victims’ doctors. The first is, “what planet do you live on?!”

I have never, in my career, known any auto accident victims’ doctors or other medical professionals to take part in “fake” no-fault claims. Instead, I have known no-fault insurance carriers to hire biased doctors to issue one-sided reports used to justify denying car-accident victims their medical treatment. These doctors butter their bread with a regular stream of income from the no-fault insurance industry, which asks them, time and time again, to give an opinion as to whether their insureds’ no-fault funded medical treatment is “reasonable and necessary”. With surprising (actually, not) regularity, these doctors, bought and paid for by the insurance company, find the insured’s medical treatment NOT necessary or reasonable. The no-fault carriers then use these reports to justify denying payment of any further medical treatment for their insured, who by the way, dutifully paid their no-fault insurance premiums for years.

Words Matter To Syracuse NY Personal Injury Lawyer

May 6, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

What are the most important weapons a personal injury lawyer brings to court? Give up? OK, I’ll tell you: words.

Words are the arrows in the personal injury lawyer’s quiver. The “mot juste” (the right word), as the French say, can make all the difference. That’s why the best New York personal injury lawyers spend lots of time before a trial deciding what words to use in describing what happened to their client, and how they are suffering as a result.

Don’t think words matter that much? Watch this short video and you might change your mind:

Van Soaring Over Guardrail On New York’s Bronx River Parkway Is Deja Vu.

May 1, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

Last Sunday a van careered across several lanes of traffic on a highway overpass on the Bronx River Parkway before plunging off the side of the road and landing, upside down, in the Bronx Zoo, where all seven occupants, including three children, met their death. Yes, the van driver was surely at fault. He was probably speeding (68 in a 50 mile per hour zone), and he should not have lost control of his vehicle. But that doesn’t let the State of New York off the hook if it failed to design and maintain a safe roadway.

And it sure looks like New York State screwed up here. The van apparently hit a concrete curb on the right side of the roadway, which catapulted the van so high that it completely cleared, without touching, the four-foot high guardrail/fence.

This is totally unacceptable. What kind of engineering genius would put concrete curbs that act as launching pads for errant cars and send them flying over the guardrails? Make no sense at all.

Fellow NY Personal Injury Lawyers, Please Stand Up!

April 28, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

I consider myself in pretty good shape for my age. But when my brother just a year older than me recently died of a sudden heart attack, I decided to get all the testing I could for heart disease. One test I got is called a “cardiac CT scan for calcium“. It measures the amount of plaque deposits in the arteries near your heart.

Alas, I did not do so well. I scored a 61, which is in the 59th percentile for my age. That means that 59% of American men my age have less plaque build up than me. Very surprising considering my lifestyle: I exercise regularly (about an hour and a half a day of biking, swimming or running), eat well, keep my cholesterol under control, and am thin.

So I started investigating why I might have such plaque build-up. Clearly genetics is one factor, and I can’t change that. But there was one thing in my lifestyle, I discovered, that could be causing the fat in my blood to deposit on my artery walls; sitting. Recent studies show that, even if you work out regularly, if you are sitting a lot during the rest of the day, you are more likely to develop plaque in your arteries, and thus more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes.

Why NY Personal Injury Cases Settle On The Eve Of Trial

April 24, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

Monday I was scheduled to try a Seneca County NY motorcycle accident case in the Seneca County Courthouse in Waterloo. But as often happens, the case settled on the eve of trial, in this case Sunday afternoon.

Why do personal injury cases settle so late in the game, after the attorneys have put so much work into preparing for trial”? In one word, “pressure”. The pressure of an upcoming trial transforms the psychology of the parties and the lawyers. The weaknesses of your own case suddenly come into focus as never before. The risks of trial loom larger. This happens on both sides. When the parties’ positions are not far apart to begin with, splitting the difference suddenly seems more palatable.

Trying cases is exciting, fun and, yes, frightening, especially for the client who usually has never been to court. The cases that get tried are the ones where the parties are miles apart. Where the positions are “within firing range” of each other, the pressures of trial often lead to a settlement on the courthouse steps.

More Motorcycles Means Fewer Motorcycle Accidents, Says Syracuse NY Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

April 23, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

The Syracuse Post Standard reports, in an article titled, “Oswego County Motorcycle Deaths Increasing“, that three motorcyclists have been killed already this year in Oswego County, and we are only in April. This totals more than the full-year of motorcycle fatalities in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Why? Warm weather has meant more bikers out earlier and, as the Post Standard notes, “drivers may not be prepared to see them”.

But the warm weather is not the only factor responsible for more motorcycles on the road: high gas prices have pushed more motorists to switch to motorcycles. As a result, motorcycle registration is up all over New York State, including in Oswego County.

My Car Hit A Wandering Cow. Can I Sue The Farmer?

April 13, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

Eric Turkewitz, a celebrated New York personal injury blogger, recently blogged about the case of Hastings v. Suave, in which a cow wandered from a fenced-in pasture into a road at night and caused a car to collide with it, injuring its driver. Eric noted that the Third Department (intermediate appellate court) affirmed dismissal of the case because, under a weird quirk of New York law, an owner of a domestic animal cannot be held liable for negligence in allowing his animal to escape. Rather, he can only be held liable if he knew or should have known the animal had vicious propensities. The Third Department Court was reluctant to dismiss the case, but its hand was forced by existing case law, which clearly requires a finding that the animal was vicious or at least “abnormal”. As Eric points out, the law in New York does not recognize a cause of action for negligent failure to restrain a large, but passive, animal such as a cow.

Here’s my personal footnote to Eric’s great blog post: In upstate New york, where I practice personal injury litigation, there are lots of cows, and some of them invariably stray off into roadways. And I have settled “wandering cow” cases with insurance adjusters for significant money. I recall a case a few years ago where the cow had escaped at night because the dairy farmer had failed to mend a gap in the fence for several weeks. A car collided with the cow, causing injuries to its driver and passengers. The insurance adjuster never even challenged me on liability.

Yes, I know the law. But I also know that most insurance adjusters do not. They simply assume a farmer can be held liable for negligently failing to fence in, leash, or restrain an animal. That’s because such a rule makes sense, even if it is not the rule in New york.

What is a “voluntary” product safety recall? Central and Syracuse NY Product Liability Lawyer Explains

April 12, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

I always chuckle a bit when I read that a manufacturer or distributor is “voluntarily” recalling one of its products for safety concerns. From my perspective as a Central and Syracuse New York products liability lawyer, companies never “voluntarily” recall anything. In fact, left to their own devices, most corporations wouldn’t even recall an exploding toy, as long as its sale is turning a profit.

Why not? Because a “corporation” is a legal creature designed for one sole purpose – to maximize profit. Nothing else matters. All that counts is the bottom line. Corporate boards are duty-bound to maximize their shareholder’s dividends and share value, and morality is completely outside, even contrary, to their duty.

So why do manufacturers and distributors of dangerous or defective goods sometimes “voluntarily” recall them? Because they have no choice. They are required to report safety concerns about their products within a short period of time (days) subject to significant sanctions if they don’t. Then, if they don’t recall the product, the Consumer Protection Safety Commission (CPSC), or a similar government safety agency, will start proceedings against them or simply “mandate” the recall. (The CPSC, by the way, is charged with protecting the public from injury or death from unreasonably dangerous consumer products.)

Can Syracuse Be Sued By Sodomized Child And The Child’s Parents?

April 10, 2012 | by Michael Bersani

The Syracuse Post Standard published a story today titled, “How the city of Syracuse hired a registered sex offender“. When I first glanced at the title, I thought — “hmm, there could be some liability here”. I was thinking that perhaps the City had unwittingly hired a registered sex offender to work around kids and the guy had raped or abused one of them. But that’s not what happened.

Here’s what did happen. Three years after the City of Syracuse hired a garbage collector, he was indicted for sodomizing a boy (not on-the-job, though). When the City hired the guy, the City had not checked his criminal history, nor New York’s sex offender registry. If the City had done so , it would have turned up several criminal convictions, including one for sodomizing a 15-year old boy, which is in fact just about the same thing he is again being accused of.

The City makes no apologies, nor should it, in my opinion. The City’s policy, which makes sense to me, is to perform criminal background and sex registry checks only for sensitive job hiring positions, like camp counselors, summer park staff, firefighters, police, etc. In fact, for jobs like garbage collecting, the City often knowingly hires ex-cons. The City feels, and I agree, that someone has to give these guys a way to make a living, and a second chance in life. Hiring ex-cons keeps them off the Syracuse “streets” where, without a job or a penny in their pocket, they are likely to commit more crimes.