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

Earlier this week, the New York City Comptroller’s Office, which is responsible for settling and adjusting claims for and against the City, released its fiscal report for the year 2012.  In FY 2012, the City paid out $485.9 million in personal injury and property damage tort settlements and judgments, 12 percent less than in FY 2011. In FY 2012, the costliest personal injury claims category was medical malpractice. The second costliest category was motor vehicle claims. Civil rights claim settlements and judgments were the third costliest. The fourth costliest category was police action claims. In FY 2012, medical malpractice settlements/judgments accounted for 34 of the 79 tort cases that settled for $1 million or more.The Comptroller's report also cited as cause for concern the growing number of tort claims filed against the NYPD, which reached an historical high of 9,570 claims filed, and cost the City 464.4 million, in 2012.

Every year 80,000 to 160,000 patients in the United States suffer misdiagnosis-related significant permanent injury or death that were possibly preventable, estimate the authors of an analysis published online in BMJ Quality and Safety.  Analyzed were 350,706 diagnosis-related claims of medical malpractice reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank over a period of 25 years (1986–2010).  The study found that diagnostic errors were the leading type and accounted for the highest proportion of total payments. The most frequent outcomes were death, significant permanent injury, major permanent injury and minor permanent injury. The inflation-adjusted, 25-year sum of diagnosis-related payments was $38.8 billion.

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that the state will work with hospitals this year to improve the quality and safety of care provided to patients at key stages of hospital admission, treatment, and discharge, and more particularly with respect to sepsis.  Sepsis is the number one cause of death in U.S. hospitals, striking at least 750,000 people in the country each year, and kills as many Americans annually as heart attacks, and more than AIDS, prostate cancer, and breast cancer combined.  Also, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation announced a new pay-for-performance agreement that will reward doctors with up to $59 million in incentive payments over the next three years for meeting the public hospitals system's goals to improve patient care, efficiency, patient satisfaction and align with the new demands of healthcare reform.

In Lofton v. Grieco, the plaintiffs argued that Glen Cove Hospital delayed performing necessary surgery on a patient who died before the surgery was performed.  The hospital record contains a doctor's note purportedly documenting the decedent's refusal to have the surgery, but the plaintiffs contend that the doctor's note was written after the decedent died in an attempt to cover-up medical malpractice.  The plaintiffs moved for an order compelling the hospital to produce the original record for a non-destructive examination, inspection and photographing by plaintiff’s forensic handwriting expert. Plaintiff's motion was granted by Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Randy Sue Marber.

In Del Terzo v. The Hospital For Special Surgery the court rebuffed a defendant’s demand for a medical malpractice victim’s HIV-related information, alcohol/drug treatment information and mental health information. The plaintiff successfully argued that Public Health Law § 2785(2) (HIV-related records) and Mental Hygiene Law § 22.05 and § 33.13 (records of chemical dependency) protected her from having to give defendant's attorneys authorizations to obtain those sensitive records.  Hopefully the courts will pay heed to this decision, and not limit it to HIV-related information and chemical dependence situations (or just to medical malpractice cases as opposed to motor vehicle or slip-and-fall- cases).

The decision of First Department, in King v. St. Barnabas Hospital., 2011 WL 2567782 (June 30, 2011), a medical malpractice case,interestingly found that the evidence from which a jury could find that the proximate cause of the death of a heart attack victim came not from expert testimony on behalf of the plaintiff but from [t]he very fact that advanced life support protocols exist for patients in an asystolic (no electrical activity in the heart) state . According to the court, the existence of advanced life support protocols for patients in an asystolic state in and of themselves means that adherence to the protocols afford a chance of reviving the patient, notwithstanding the grave nature of the condition. It necessarily follows that failure to follow the protocols reduces the chances for reviving the patient. The cour

The decision of First Department, in King v. St. Barnabas Hospital., 2011 WL 2567782 (June 30, 2011), a medical malpractice case,interestingly found that the evidence from which a jury could find that the proximate cause of the death of a heart attack victim came not from expert testimony on behalf of the plaintiff but from [t]he very fact that advanced life support protocols exist for patients in an asystolic (no electrical activity in the heart) state . According to the court, the existence of advanced life support protocols for patients in an asystolic state in and of themselves means that adherence to the protocols afford a chance of reviving the patient, notwithstanding the grave nature of the condition. It necessarily follows that failure to follow the protocols reduces the chances for reviving the patient. The cour

Theres much talk these days about the proposed $250,000.00 cap on recoveries for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases. Ive seen a television advertisement crowing how medical malpractice reform will enhance patient safety (without mentioning the proposed cap), when common sense fails to explain how reducing a doctors or hospitals potential liability will make them act with more care towards the patient. At the same time, the proponents of the cap show no interest in fixing one of the most unfair aspects of current law - the absence of an extension of the 2-1/2 year statute of limitations that applies to medical malpractice when the victim of medical malpractice did not discover that there had been malpractice until after the 2-1/2 year period has elapsed. Two

Theres much talk these days about the proposed $250,000.00 cap on recoveries for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases. Ive seen a television advertisement crowing how medical malpractice reform will enhance patient safety (without mentioning the proposed cap), when common sense fails to explain how reducing a doctors or hospitals potential liability will make them act with more care towards the patient. At the same time, the proponents of the cap show no interest in fixing one of the most unfair aspects of current law - the absence of an extension of the 2-1/2 year statute of limitations that applies to medical malpractice when the victim of medical malpractice did not discover that there had been malpractice until after the 2-1/2 year period has elapsed. Two

The plaintiffs in DeRiggi v. Krischen, 20753/08, NYLJ 1202476938011, at *1 (Sup., Nassau Decided December 17, 2010) sought to recover for the wrongful death of Patricia DeRiggi, who died at the age of 30 during percutaneous disk decompression surgery, an out-patient procedure used to treat lower back pain. Plaintiffs allege that Mrs. DeRiggi's left common iliac vein was perforated twice during the surgery resulting in an intra-abdominal hemorrhage and death. They also allege that the defendants HydroCision and/or New York Spinal Implants, the manufacturer and/or distributor of the Spine Jet HydroDisectomy System used in the procedure, were negligent in their design, manufacturer and dist