Personal Injury Attorneys - Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and the Bronx

It has become commonplace for attorneys and others sending faxes and e-mails to include at the end of such communications standard language stating that the contents thereof are confidential and priviledged. Such standard language should provide no comfort, however, for senders and receivers of e-mails that use an employer's server. A decision by Hon. Charles E. Ramos of the Supreme Court, New York County, holds that a pro forma notice at the end of an e-mail message did not inure the attorney-client priviledge to the e-mail when an employer's e-mail server is used. The Court was particularly persuaded by the fact that the employer had promulgated a Human Resources Policy and Procedure Manual that included policies requiring that its electronic mail system (as well as the Internet and other technology systems)be used for business purposes only, that employees using the e-mail system had no personal privacy right in any material using the e-mail system, and that the

An interesting discussion contrasting the technology, data storage characteristics and the discovery process of e-mails with instant messages (IM) appears in an article by attorneys Michael B. de Leeuw and Eric A. Hirsch in the "E-Discovery" special section of the November 5, 2007 New York Law Journal. IM is quickly becoming the medium of choice for informal communication in the workplace, offering far greater efficiency, speed and immediacy than e-mail. The article points out that although IM typically are stored locally in individual hard drives rather than in servers, some users of IM have found themselves in trouble because they did not realize that sometimes a log tracking their messages may be in use. As seen in <u>Scott v, Beth Israel Medical Center Inc.</u>, discussed above, employees may want to be particularly wary when using company-sponsored instant messaging program, as opposed to IM programs from America Online, MSN, Yahoo and the like. The l

The German pharmaceutical company, Bayer AG, announced that it will withdraw Trasylol, its controversial drug used for heart surgery, from the market. The withdrawal was due in part to a study performed in Canada which suggested that Trasylol increased rates of death. The New England Journal of Medicine published the results of a study it conducted finding that Trasylol increased the risks of stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, and death. The research concluded that stopping the use of Trasylol would result in the prevention of 10,000 to 11,000 cases of kidney failure per year along with the savings of over $1 billion dollars per year in the cost of dialysis. Bayer AG received pressure from the Food and Drug Administration to pull Trasylol from the market. According to Dr. John K. Jenkins, one of the F.D.A's leading officials, the F.D.A. was not able to identify a specific population of patients where Traysol's use would result in benefits outweighing its risks

State utilities regulators hit the Consolidated Edison of New York, Inc. with an $18 million penalty yesterday for its service disruptions last year, the largest the state Public Service Commission has imposed against Con Ed. The blackouts included a nine-day blackout in western Queens effecting Astoria and Long Island City that left about 174,000 people without power for as long as nine days in July 2006, and other power failures in Westchester County. The $18 million penalty is not intended to compensate customers for their losses during power failures. Instead, it will be spread to all customers in the system. It amounts to about $6 for each of Con Ed's 3.1 million customers, including big corporations, and just 1.5 percent of the $1.2 billion in rate increases the company is seeking. In early September, the commission's staff recommended that the rate increase, which would take effect in April, be limited to $618 million. The maximum penalty the commission

Aqua Dots, a/k/a Aqua Beads, a Chinese-made toy, was recalled Wednesday, November 7, 2007, by the Consumer Product Safety Commission after two children in the United States and three in Australia were hospitalized after swallowing the beads. Aqua Dots are packets of brightly colored beads that children arrange into mosaic designs. When sprinkled with water, the beads then stick together in as little as 10 minutes to form durable artworks.. The toy was pulled from shelves after scientists found they contain a chemical that converts into a dangerous, potentially fataldrug when eaten. The chemical coating on the beads, when ingested, metabolizes into the so-called date rape drug gamma hydroxy butyrate (GHB). The United States places GHB in he same category as heroin. When eaten, the compound - made from common and easily available ingredients - can induce unconsciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death.The AP's calculation is conservative, because the companies were required to disclose payments within a $25,000 range, and the AP used the low end in its calculation. Prosecutors alleged that from at least 2002 through 2006, the companies paid exorbitant amounts for doctors to be consultants and to use their products exclusively. The money includes such items as royalties for inventions and payments for teaching classes. They did not allege that all the money was i

We recently wrote about the efforts of the chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commision (CPSC), Nancy Nord, to oppose a Senate bill that would increase the budget and authority of the Commision to regulate consumer products such as children's toys. It seemed more than a little odd that the government official in charge of protecting consumers would oppose legislation designed to improve product safety. Now a review of internal CPSC documents by The Washington Post reveals that since 2002 Chairman Nord, as well as her predecessor, Hal Stratton, have enjoyed nearly 30 trips totaling nearly $60,000.00 that were paid for in full or in part by trade associations or manufactures of products ranging from space heaters to disinfectants. The destinations included China, Hong Kong, Barcelona, Spain, San Francisco, New Orleans and a golf resort on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Not bad. Sponsors of these trip

Two scientists have calculated that after clocks are turned back for the shift from daylight savings time to standard time, pedestrians walking during the evening rush hour are nearly three times more likely to be struck and killed by cars than before the time change, the Associated Press reports. Ending daylight savings time translates into about 37 more U.S. pedestrian deaths around 6 p.m. in November compared to October, the researchers report. It's not the darkness itself, but the adjustment to earlier nighttime that's the killer. Professors Paul Fischbeck and David Gerard, both of Carnegie Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, conducted a preliminary study of seven years of federal traffic fatalities and calculated risk per mile walked for pedestrians. They found that per-mile risk jumps 186 percent from October to November, but then drops 21 percent in December. They said the drop-off in deaths by December indicates the risk is caused by the trouble both driver

New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has been conducting an industry-wide investigation of doctor ranking programs, concerned that the insurers use their ranking system to steer their insureds to doctors who cost the insurers less but are not as well qualified to treat the insured as physicians who are more expensive for the insurer to pay. This investigation has led to an agreement, announced earlier this week, with healthcare industry leader, CIGNA Healthcare, regarding its doctor ranking programs. Investigations performed under the leadership of the Attorney General show that consumers cannot rely on these programs blindly. Previously, in letters to Aetna, United Healthcare and Cigna, Cuomo questioned the insurers' use of claims data to rank specialists. According to Cuomo, claims data does not contain complete information and can skew rankings. He also criticized the insurers for failing to disclose the accuracy of the rankings and said insurers "have a profit m

According to the New York Times, nursing home facilities owned by private equity firms receive worse scores than the national average in twelve of the fourteen indicators that regulators use in tracking the ailments of nursing home residents. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid state that residents of nursing homes owned by private investment firms suffer from higher rates of depression, mobility loss, and the loss of the ability to bathe and dress themselves. Facilities of these companies are also restrain residents for long periods of time more often than facilities that are not privately owned. The report in the New York Times influenced Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to request that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigate whether or not abuse and neglect are more common in nursing homes owned by private Wall Street equity firms. Last week, it was announced by two congressional committees that there would be investi