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

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood last week announced the 2011 Click It or Ticket mobilization with a reminder to motorists about the severe risks of driving unbelted, day or night. In a surprising statistic, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) research shows that fewer people buckle their seat belts at night, making evening hours especially dangerous. In 2009, 62 percent of nighttime vehicle occupants who were killed in crashes were unbelted. In contrast, 44 percent of daytime occupants who were killed were unrestrained. NHTSA Administrator David Strickland cautioned that holiday periods, like the Memorial Day weekend, are unusually dangerous for unbelted motorists. Of the 306 people who died on U.S. roads during the 2009 Memorial Day period, 55 percent were unb

If I had a dollar for every time a defendant argued in a summary judgment motion that it was not negligent because the condition that caused my clients accident was open and obvious . With words that every defense counsel (and Judge) should never overlook, the Appellate Division, First Department opened a recent opinion with the sentence: In this personal injury action, we reiterate the well established principle that a finding of open and obvious as to a hazardous condition is never fatal to a plaintiffs negligence claim. It is relevant only to plaintiffs comparative fault. Saretsky v. 85 Kenmare Realty Corp., 2011 WL 1796367 (May 12, 2011). Even though this is not new law, you would be surprised how many times cases are dismissed solely because the condition is open and obvious. What is often overlooked is that although there is no duty to warn where a dangerous condition is open and o

Throughout New York City and other places drivers are becoming accustomed to seeing radar-equipped speed boards that tell them how fast they're going, and flash when their speed exceeds the speed limit. This past week Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that some of the speed boards will now also show the words SLOW DOWN and the image of a healthy pedestrian turns into a skeleton on electronic signs when drivers exceed the city speed limit. As long as a driver obeys the citys 30 mph speed limit, no skeleton will appear. The signs have been placed along stretches of Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx and Richmond Avenue in S

With National Dog Bite Prevention Week upcoming on May 15-21, the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) has released a statement concerning the costs that result from dog bites based upon an analysis of homeowners insurance data. I.I.I. statistics show that from 2009 to 2010, the average cost of dog bite claims rose from $24,840 to $26,166, up 5.3 percent, although the number of claims dropped 4.9 percent from 2009 to 2010 ($16,586 vs. $15,770). The decline in the number of claims was almost exactly offset by an increase in the average cost. Dog bites accounted for more than one-third of all homeowners insurance liability claims paid out in 2010, costing nearly $413 million, according to I.I.I. A December 2010 report from the Tagged with: Personal Injury Dog Bite Personal Injury Lawyer Accident Attorney

Entitled Experience Is Not Enough, the new multi-lingual campaign is designed to emphasize that all workers must use proper fall protection, such as safety harnesses, guardrails and netting, regardless of how long they have worked in the construction trades and how much experience they possess. A worker falling is the most commonconstruction related accidentin New York City, representing 42% of all accidents reported to the Department in 2010. Since 2008, 16 construction workers have lost their lives due to the lack of basic fall protection. In February, two ironworkers, ages 49 and 51, were killed when they fell approximately 65 feet while installing a steel beam at a job site on West 83rd Street i

No, I didnt get a ticket for failing to obey the new Ambrose-Searles Move Over Act that requires drivers to exercise due care to avoid colliding with an authorized emergency vehicle which is parked, stopped or standing on the shoulder of a road or highway with its emergency lights activated. More specifically, on parkways, interstates, and other controlled access highways with multiple lanes, drivers are required to move from the lane immediately adjacent to the emergency vehicle, unless traffic or other hazards exist to prevent doing so safely. So there we w

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

In 2009, the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) released the Motor Coach Safety Action Plan setting forth concrete steps for improving motorcoach safety. The action plan addresses major safety issues such as driver fatigue and inattention, vehicle rollover, occupant ejections and oversight of unsafe carriers. With the two recent fatal charter bus accidents, efforts are being speed up the implementation of the safety improvements. Available technology includes collision warning systems that alert drivers to obstacles in their paths and tell them when they are swerving from their lanes, strengthening bus roofs so that they aren't sheared off, as happened to the New York bus when it hit a signpost, and using anti-ejection glazing windows to prevent passengers from being

The safety, or more specifically the lack thereof, of football helmets has been a source of concern for some years. One of the problems is that it is common for a football helmet to be used for many years when its condition can deteriorate such as its foam cushioning becoming too stiff or the plastic helmet becoming too brittle from aging, leaving the players more vulnerable to concussions and other head trauma. There are no laws that place a time limit on how long a helmet can be used. Football helmets more than 10 years old are worn by about 100,000 young players every fall. Although there are tests that the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) requires when helmets are refurbished, a few years ago

A bit of a chill swept through the plaintiffs bar in 1994 when the Court of Appeals, New Yorks highest court, held that persons injured in motor vehicle accidents couldnot recover damages for injuries causedbymunicipal motor vehicles responding to an emergency responsible for the damages unless it could be proven that the driver a showing of reckless disregard for the safety of others, a much higher standard than the usual negligence. The court's interpretation in Saarinen v. Kerr, 84 N.Y.2d 494 ofsection 1104 of the Vehicle and Traffic Law ("VTL") caused attorneys to give great pause to taking on such cases. The courts dismissed many lawsuits that were brought where the conduct complained of seemed egregious. But some relief came last month in