Bronx Personal Injury Lawyers Blog
When parents send their children to school, they generally assume that they will be properly monitored, kept safe and protected from harm. Inevitably, however, New York City’s school children do, on occasion, suffer injuries – sometimes very serious injuries – while at school. Of course, a parent’s first instinct and priority is to make sure that their injured child receives immediate medical attention to treat their injuries. After the immediate emergency of the injury has been dealt with, however, parents want to know how and why their child was permitted to be seriously injured while they were supposed to be under the care and supervision of school officials and teachers. If a parent suspects that negligence of the school’s faculty, staff and/or administration is to blame for their child’s injuries, and the child’s injuries are potentially permanent, exploring the possibility of bringing a personal injury lawsuit against the school may be advisable. In this article, we discuss how a parent might go about bringing such a personal injury lawsuit if their child was injured at a public school within the City of New York. It should be noted that many of the procedures and rules discussed in this article may not apply if the child was injured at a private school, or due to the negligence of anyone apart from public school officials, staff or teachers.
Justice Denied: President Trump’s Immigration Policies Effectively Close the Courthouse Doors to Immigrants
Whatever you think about President Trump, it is undeniable that he has kept his campaign promise to stringently – and, in many cases, cruelly – enforce the immigration laws of the United States of America. Though he has not successfully put forth any significant immigration legislation in Congress, he has stepped up – to a seemingly-exponential degree – enforcement of existing laws and rules, and has also signed several Executive Orders directing immigration officials and agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (known as “ICE”) to increase efforts to find and deport hard-working, law-abiding, though undocumented immigrants. In following the President’s orders, ICE has undertaken extremely-unsavory – nay, un-American – tactics in an effort to catch, process and deport undocumented immigrants in New York and all over the United States.
Among these distasteful methods of furthering President Trump’s agenda to deport more undocumented immigrants involves conducting raids and searches at courthouses across New York State, catching undocumented immigrants as they attempt to comply with our laws, respond to legal process, or seek justice to which they are entitled. This tactic deprives the undocumented from vindicating their legal rights – yes, the undocumented do have a substantial number of legal rights and do have access to our courts – and puts the undocumented at risk of suffering inhuman and un-American abuses without the possibility of the legal recourse to which they are entitled.
The Benefits of Medicaid Expansion Under Obamacare to New York Personal Injury Plaintiffs
Among the hallmarks of President Barack Obama’s signature piece of healthcare legislation – known officially as The Affordable Care Act, but most-commonly referred to as “Obamacare” – was its expansion of Medicaid benefits to more Americans. By way of background, Medicaid is a program run by the several States which is designed to provide medical coverage to vulnerable individuals among the population, and has a means test (i.e., an income-based test, as well as an asset-based test) to determine eligibility for benefits. Prior to the passage of the Obamacare law, generally, only the neediest Americans had access to Medicaid. This left many hard-working Americans who simply could not afford the high cost of health insurance and whose employers did not offer health insurance benefits in connection with employment without health insurance coverage. For these Americans, a single serious illness or injury in the family could – and often did – lead to abject financial ruin, as, without health coverage, the medical bills associated with a serious illness or injury were simply too large to pay. This was, unfortunately, the case of many victims of serious personal injury accidents or medical malpractice, who, despite having been injured by no fault of their own, were left to contend with mountains of medical bills that they simply could not afford to pay. Even for those victims who were ultimately awarded compensation through a personal injury lawsuit or a medical malpractice lawsuit, during the years in which their case was pending, these bills often went unpaid as the victim and their family simply did not have the money. Furthermore, these unfortunate victims often were denied the medical care necessary to treat their injuries, as, without healthcare coverage, many physicians and hospitals would refuse to treat them because payment for medical services simply could not be made.
I’ve Won my Personal Injury Trial. Is My Case Over? Do the Defendants Have to Pay?
According to just about every television show or Hollywood movie ever made about a legal case of any kind (including personal injury cases), once a jury returns a verdict in favor of one party or another, the case is over. Many a famed courtroom drama has ended just after the jury delivers its verdict, with the final scene often depicting a cathartic and celebratory scene on the courthouse steps between the victorious lawyer and his or her clients. However, in this regard (as in many others), cinematic depictions of legal cases of all sorts are, to phrase it generously, inaccurate. In a real personal injury or medical malpractice lawsuit, a jury verdict in favor of an injured plaintiff is very often not the end of the case. This is because, under the court systems of every state across the United States, including the Federal Courts of the United States, the losing party at trial has the right to “appeal” various aspects of a jury verdict against them to a higher court and request that the jury verdict be overturned. The post-verdict appeal process is extremely complicated, and to address all of the salient aspects of this process would require authorship of a textbook, rather than a blog post. In this article, we explore some very basic concepts pertaining to the post-verdict appeals process as applied to personal injury and medical malpractice cases in the state court system in New York. The reader is encouraged to take the following lesson from this article: The jury verdict is not the end of the story, as the appeals process is expensive and fraught with risk; thus, if possible, it is usually advisable to attempt to obtain a final settlement of a New York personal injury or medical malpractice lawsuit (settlements cannot be appealed in almost every circumstance), rather than proceed through a jury verdict and an appeal.
The Value of Life Care Plans to Proving Damages in Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Cases
Ultimately, the goal of most every personal injury and medical malpractice case is to obtain compensation for a person who has been injured. New York law recognizes several categories of damages in these cases, which include, but are not limited to, pain and suffering, lost earnings and earnings capacity, and medical expenses. In personal injury and medical malpractice cases involving very serious injuries – those which leave an injured victim with a lifetime need for ongoing medical care and treatment – the cost of future medical care is often the largest item of damages for which the injured person can receive compensation.
An important tool used by skilled personal injury or medical malpractice attorneys to prove future medical expenses is known as the “life care plan”. In brief, a life care plan is an analysis of the future medical needs of an injured person which describes appropriate and necessary future treatment and its costs. In fact, while the main focus of the life care plan is future medical costs, they also help to substantiate an injured victim’s claims of future pain and suffering. In this article, we explain the details of what a life care plan is, and its value to personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers representing very seriously injured people who require long-term medical care and treatment due to having suffered very serious injuries at the hands of negligent actors.
Informed Consent Claims in New York Medical Malpractice Cases: The Basics of a Claim
The relationship between physician and patient is a partnership when it is functioning properly. This is a partnership in which trust is a foundational and indispensable component. When a patient seeks medical care and treatment from a doctor, the patient is entitled to trust that the doctor is providing full disclosure, informing the patient of all of the pertinent risks and benefits to a particular course of treatment, as well as alternative courses of treatment – which may include no treatment at all – for a particular medical condition. This way, the patient can make an informed decision along with his or her doctor, and give informed consent to a course of medical treatment that may have both positive and negative effects upon the health of the patient. However, in all too many circumstances, a doctor or other medical provider does not provide the full disclosure to which the patient is entitled, and the patient agrees to undergo a course of medical care and treatment that the patient might not have opted for had full disclosure been provided.
When physicians breach the trust of their patient, fail to provide full disclosure to a patient, and harm the patient as a result, a species of medical malpractice claim known as “lack of informed consent” may accrue to the patient and entitle the patient to substantial compensation in a medical malpractice lawsuit. These claims are often brought in tandem with medical malpractice claims involving a breach of the standard of care applicable to a particular course of medical treatment. In this article, we explain the basic legal elements of a claim for “lack of informed consent” under New York medical malpractice law, and hope to educate readers about their legal rights if a doctor does not fully disclose all of the information regarding a particular course of medical treatment that he or she is obligated to discuss with a patient before undertaking to render care and treatment that may be harmful or undesirable.
The Burden of Proof: What Is it? How Does It Affect My Personal Injury or Medical Malpractice Lawsuit?
When a victim of negligence – whether due to a serious personal injury accident or medical malpractice – brings a lawsuit seeking compensation from those who caused him or her grievous harm, the victim (known as the “plaintiff” in the parlance of the courts) is obligated to prove that the negligence of each defendant was a proximate cause of all personal injuries claimed by the plaintiff. It is not enough for an injured person simply to allege negligence in order for compensation to be paid. Every single element of an injured victim’s claim – which vary, depending upon the circumstances through which the victim’s injuries came about – must be proven in accordance with certain standards in order for an injured victim to obtain compensation from those who have done him or her harm. This requirement to prove all of the elements of a case in accordance with applicable legal standards is called the “burden of proof”, and applies to every personal injury and medical malpractice case brought under New York law. If an injured victim does not meet his or her “burden of proof”, their case will be dismissed and no compensation will be awarded, no matter how serious the victim’s injuries may be. It is also true that the “burden of proof”, in some instances during a personal injury or medical malpractice trial, is placed upon the defendant, such as when the defendant make a summary judgment motion asking the court to dismiss an injured victim’s personal injury or medical malpractice case. In this article, we will explore the general concept of the “burden of proof” in medical malpractice and personal injury cases and how it is applied in practice.
Liability for a Rear End Car Crash in New York City
Rear-end car accidents are among the most common types of car accidents that occur in New York City. This should come as no surprise, given that traffic conditions are often quite congested, and stop-and-go traffic as well as myriad distractions are ever-present throughout NYC. Taking one’s eyes off the roadway even for a moment in such congested driving conditions can – and often does – result in a rear end collision which can result in serious injuries. For this reason, rear-end car accidents are among the most commonly litigated types of car accidents in the courts within the five boroughs of New York City.
If you are involved in a rear-end car crash anywhere in New York City, you should be aware of the legal framework that the courts of the State of New York have built to determine liability in a rear-end car accident. In this article, we will explore this framework so that readers will understand the claims that accident victims who are injured in rear-end crashes should make in their cases, as well as the defenses that those responsible for causing a rear-end car accident may try to use to escape liability. We hope that this article is helpful to victims of rear-end car accidents in teaching them what their rights are if they are injured in a rear-end car accident anywhere in New York City, or elsewhere throughout the State of New York.
I’ve Been in a Slip-and-Fall Accident. What Do I Have to Prove to Obtain Compensation?
If you slip and fall because of a dangerous condition on someone else’s property – say a puddle of water on a supermarket floor, or grease on a staircase within a restaurant – your natural instinct may be to assume that you are automatically entitled to collect compensation for any injuries that you sustain as a result of this type of accident. After all, in almost all slip-and-fall accident cases, had the property owner or management of the establishment at which such an accident occurred bothered to remove the dangerous condition that caused you to fall, your accident would not have occurred. However, collecting compensation in a slip-and-fall accident case is not as simple as pointing the finger at whoever is responsible for maintaining the property. The law has established several elements that even the most seriously injured person must prove in order to collect compensation if they have slipped, fallen and become injured. If an injured person cannot prove every one of these elements by a “preponderance” of evidence (i.e., by a showing that it is “more likely than not” that each element of the test is satisfied), their case will likely be dismissed, leaving them unable to obtain any compensation at all, no matter how serious their injuries may be.
How Much Can My Medical Malpractice Lawyer Charge Me to Litigate My Case in New York?
The State of New York is among the states with the highest incidence of medical malpractice litigation throughout the United States. With respect to legal fees, nearly every New York medical malpractice attorney (as do most medical malpractice lawyers around the country) charges a type of fee known as a “contingency” fee, the amount of which is determined based upon the size of the settlement or judgment obtained when the case concludes. This fee structure is important for several reasons: (i) It allows people who have been harmed by negligent doctors to obtain high-quality legal representation without having to pay large legal fees out of their own pocket, which most victims could never afford; and (ii) it aligns the financial interests of the medical malpractice attorney with his or her client, as, under a contingency fee arrangement, the more money the client gets from his or her case, the more the attorney gets paid. It used to be, prior to the year 1985, that medical malpractice lawyers in New York customarily charged a contingency fee equal to one third of the recovery in a medical malpractice case. However, since 1985, and as a result of extensive lobbying by the medical industry designed to reduce medical malpractice litigation, the contingency fees that medical malpractice lawyers in New York may charge their clients have been restricted. This article intends to explain what the current limits on medical malpractice contingency fees are, and why those limits are detrimental to medical malpractice victims and attorneys alike.