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

Sometimes parents can try to do the right thing but end up liable for someones injuries anyway. In Aquino v. Higgins, 891 N.Y.S.2d 853 (4th Dept. 2009), reversed 2010 N.Y. Slip Op. 08386, 2010 WL 4642476 (November 18, 2010), the defendant parents permitted their daughter to host a party at their residence following a high school dinner dance. Defendant father expressly told his daughter that alcohol would not be permitted to be served. Although defendant parents were home, they were not aware that there was alcohol present at the party until defendant mother entered the basement at the end of the party and observed approximately 12 beer cans. Defendant father suspected that his son, defendant Michael Higgins, had been drinking, and he escorted his son to the son's bedroom and instructed the son to go to bed. Meanwhile, defendant mother asked the guests whether anyone needed a ride home, but no one ac

New legislation that will immediately permit the introduction into evidence blood drawn by certified nurse practioners and advance emergency medical technicians without direct physician supervision from motorists who are suspected of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol was signed earlier this week by Governor David A. Paterson. Police officers will notbe permitted to draw the blood themselves. Under the prior law, if a police officer asked medical personnel to draw blood from a suspected drunk or impaired driver following a collision, and a physician did not directly supervise the procedure, the evidence was inadmissible. The prior law enabled some suspected drunk drivers to avoid punishment for causing accidents, even fatal ones. The new law, which amends Vehicle an

At least 30 states have statutes that went into effect on New Years Day. One of them in New York, The Child Passenger Protection Act,will require all drunken-driving offenders to blow into a breathalyzer ignition device before they can operate their cars. An article in The New York Law Journal last week (Dec. 28) discussed how the new law will create additional responsibilities for courts sentencing those defendants, according to state officials and court administrators. For example, although most drivers will be required to pay for the devices themselves, it has not been decided who will pay for the devices for indigent defendants. It costs about $100 for initial installation of the interlock equipment and about $3 a day for the monitoring necessary to ensure the drivers are not trying to thwart the mechanism or for G

Florida's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has ruled that judges should no longer "friend" on Facebook lawyers who appear before them. The committee ruled that online "friendships" could create the impression that lawyers are in a special position to influence their judge friends. The committee did conclude that a judge can post comments on another judge's site and that during judicial elections, a judge's campaign can have "fans" that include lawyers. Social networking sites such as Facebook were found to be troublesome because the judge selects the lawyer as a part of the group, and has the right to approve or reject the lawyer's being listed in the group. The ruling does not single out Facebook. It applies to any social networking site which requires the member of the site to approve the listing of a friend or contact on the member's site if: (1) that person is a lawyer who appears before the judge, and (2) identification of the lawyer as the judge

Governor David A. Paterson hassubmitted legislation, known asThe Child Passenger Protection Act, to increase penalties on those who drive while intoxicated (DWI) with children in the car. The Act would make it a felony for individuals to drive while drunk or under the influence of drugs with passengers under the age of 16. Currently, such an offense is considered no more than a misdemeanor and may be treated as a traffic infraction. In light of the recent fatal accidents involving Diane Schuler on the Taconic State Parkway and Carmen Huertas on the Henry Hudson Parkway where children were essentially captives in vehicles being driven by adults the children knew had something wrong with them, passing the law seems like a no-brainer. As if even necessary, in submitting the proposed legislation, Governor Paterson's press release states: In 2007, there were 9,480 accidents related to driver intoxication in New York and 344 resulted in deaths. Nearly 200 of those

Eduardo Henriquez is the father of an infant who he removed from the car of Carmen Huertas when he learned that she was about to drive drunk with the infant in the vehicle. He did not remove any of the other 7 children in the car. Ms. Huertas then allegedly drove off quickly, bragged to the children pleading for her to slow down that she would go even faster once they got on the highway, and then lost control of her car on the Henry Hudson Parkway, swerved off near the West 96th Street exit, flipped over and rolled several times before slamming into a tree. The car flipped several times before coming to rest on the shoulder of the road. Three children were ejected from the car. 11-year old Leandra Rosado died within minutes of the crash. One other girl, Yiselle Rosario, was hospitalized. Yiselle spent nine hours in surgery but survived with two broken legs and a back injury. Carmen

There is no doubt that the defendant Joseph A. Moses Harris, Jr. was driving drunk when the police pulled him over. Police had received an anonymous tip, including a partial license plate as well as his name, but the arresting officer did not see Harris break any traffic laws. The Virginia Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, overturned Harris conviction for drunk driving, requiring the officer to see suspicious activity in order to have probable cause to stop the motorist. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 7-2 vote, denied certiorari to the state of Virginia seeking to appeal the Virginia Supreme Court ruling. By doing so, the Supreme Court let the Virginia ruling stand. The issue is whether Harris Fourth Amendment right to unlawful search and seizure outweighs societys right to protect the safety of its citizens. The Virginia Supreme Court gave priority to the former. The appeal from Virginia prosecutors was backed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. There

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) has a policy of suspending a taxi driver upon notification of the driver's arrest, without providing either a pre-deprivation hearing or a post-deprivation hearing that does more than confirm the fact of the driver's arrest that is no attempt is made to verify the propriety of the arrest or the guilt of the driver. Four (4) individual taxi drivers whose taxicab or for-hire vehicle licenses were suspended following an arrest on charges that were later dropped, and by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), a not-for-profit corporation that seeks to improve the working conditions of taxi drivers, safeguard their rights, and promote reform of the industry, unsuccessfully challenged the TLCs policy in Nnebe v. Daus, Slip Copy, 2009 WL 3151809 (S.D.N.Y. 2009), decided by Southern

Today marks what would have been the 100th birthday of our founder, Louis H. Levine. Its hard to imagine that on this day 100 years ago he was just starting out, and how different the world was in 1909 and all the things that have happened since then. One of the important lessons Mr. Levine taught was tenacity dont think that a case is lost solely based upon first blush, such as an unfavorable police report. Sometimes, for instance, a defendant at a deposition says something that provides an opening to argue that what is on a police report is wrong. A recent decision, Kaufman v. Quickway, Inc.,--- N.Y.S.2d ----, 2009 N.Y. Slip Op. 05727, 2009 WL 1955864 (3rd Dept. 2009) is an example of that lesson, albeit that the lesson helped the defendant in that case.

21 percent of autopsies of New York City bicyclists who died within three hours of their accidents detected alcohol in the body, according to a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene study that examined fatal bicycling accidents in New York City from 1996 to 2005, as reported in The New York Times. 176 out of 225 bicyclists who died in fatal accidents during the 10-year time period were tested for alcohol. Because alcohol is metabolized with time, only 84 of those cases the bicyclist had died within three hours of the crash were considered to have valid tests. 18 of those (21%) showed signs of alcohol. On the drivers side of the equation, alcohol was detected in 6 percent of the drivers involved in bicycle crashes. Wearing a helmet can be a life saver. Head injuries contributed to three-quarters of bicycle deaths. Yet only 3 percent of the bicyclists who died were w