The usual ruse will be that the investigator goes to the residence of the injured person, or that of the neighbor or relative, because he has "important information" for the person who's been in the accident or needs to speak with them to make sure their case is "handled correctly." In fact, these duplicitous and deceitful insurance representatives are looking for the following: a way to discredit the person; establish that they are working; find out what kind of work they do; what type of car they drive; or their previous medical history (such as a prior accident or lawsuit) that could be helpful to the insurance company in denying the claim. These "helpful" insurance representatives will go so far as to leave their card with their e-mail and cell phone information that can be accessed 24/7 to be of "extra assistance."

We represent a client who suffered very serious leg injuries in a Westchester County car accident when an oil company van driver backed up his van in a gas station, knocking down our client, and then rolled over his leg, causing severe injuries. Despite the fact that we were immediately retained to represent our client, weeks after we notified the insurance company of our representation, they unethically sent one of these investigators to our client's brother's house, since it was "vital" that they speak with the client to make sure that he was "doing o.k." Luckily, in our client's case, the brother sent the lying investigator on his merry way with an admonition never to return, as we had warned our client ahead of time about this practice.

A word to the wise: When you are in an accident and are making a claim, make sure your friends, colleagues, neighbors and relatives "just say no" to the nice insurance investigators at the door that want to "be of whatever assistance they can"--they are lions in sheep's clothing.

The alleged incident occurred on April 7, 2008 when the 48 year old Newburgh resident and special education teacher at the Felix Festa Middle School in Clarkstown, New York was pulled over for aggravated driving while intoxicated on the Sprain Brook Parkway in Greenburgh. Luckily, Ms. Kayser's two infant children were not injured. Mrs. Kayser has been banned from any contact with her children and is due back in Greenburgh Town Court before Justice Doris Friedman on April 25, 2008.

The driver of the other car, Paul DeBerry, was not injured. Mr. DeBerry was charged with second degree vehicular assault, a felony, and driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor. DeBerry was also cited for the traffic violations of following too closely and speeding.

According to police, DeBerry's blood alcohol content (BAC) was 0.12 percent, over the legal limit of 0.08 percent. DeBerry was to be arraigned in Greenburgh Town Court on April 8, 2008.

The results will be made available to the public in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics. Experts say that the problem is larger than the study concludes, because it only reviewed selected charts, and didn't include results from general community hospitals, where most U.S. children are treated.

This fatal Putnam County DWI case arose from an accident on Super Bowl Sunday 2007 in which Longchamps drove her Ford Explorer (after being served 12-14 drinks at the Paddock) on Route 22 head-on into a minivan operated by 34 year old Kirsten Henry, who was driving with her three children and husband in the car. Both women were killed in the car accident, but Ms. Henry's three minor children ranging in age from 2 to 7 survived, as did her husband.

Knox' attorney requested that Town Justice John King not sentence Paddock to jail time, pointing out that it is unusual for a bar owner with no record to get jail time in a DWI misdemeanor case. However, the families of the late Ms. Henry and her surviving husband submitted victim impact statements to the Court, and the special prosecutor had urged the court to sentence Mr. Knox to the maximum one year sentence. Knox's attorney indicated that he would appeal the sentence, claiming that Knox did not serve Longchamps that evening or have direct interaction with her--essentially, a claim that Knox did not know Ms. Longchamps was intoxicated that fateful Sunday.

The nurses were supposed to give the twins a dosage of "Hep-Lock", a weak form of Heparin to keep IV lines open. Instead, they gave the twins Heparin in a dosage which Quaid described as "10,000 times the normal dosage", causing a drug overdose which could have been fatal. Apparently the almost tragic mistake was caused by the very similar blue backgrounds on the vials of Hep-Lock and Heparin. Quaid said that "our kids were bleeding from everyplace they were punctured...it was blood everywhere."

Shockingly, this same event occurred in Indianapolis a year earlier, which resulted in the deaths of three infants. Despite this fact, Baxter International, being sued by the Quaids in a multi-million dollar defective product lawsuit, did not change the colors of the two vials until after the Quaid twins incident--now, one vial is red and the other is blue, making a mistake by nurses much less likely.

On that date, Mr. Emery lost control of his 1999 BMW and crashed into a guardrail on the Sprain Brook Parkway near Jackson Avenue, causing the car to flip over and land on the other side of the parkway. Mr. Neal died of blunt force trauma to the head. In exchange for his guilty plea to all charges, Mr. Emery will serve 4-8 years in state prison, according to the Westchester District Attorney's Office.

The people in the study suffered head injuries, broken limbs, chest or abdominal trauma and other injuries in motor vehicle crashes, slip/trip and fall accidents and other circumstances. The most common areas of pain were in the joints and limbs (44 %), the back (26 %), the head (12 %), and the neck (7 %).

The American Pain Foundation, a Baltimore-based advocacy group, said the financial cost of chronic pain in the United States, including lost income, health care expenses and lost productivity in the workplace, is estimated to be $100 billion per year. According to this foundation, back pain is the leading cause of disability in Americans under 45 years old.

In our practice, we are frequently battling with insurance companies in New York car accidents who want to cut our clients off from No-Fault benefits based on a negative MRI despite the fact that it is abundantly clear that the client is still in significant pain--without any objective proof of this pain such as positive X-rays, CAT Scans, or MRI's. In these situations, our recommendation to our clients is simple: you must continue to treat with your chiropractor, physical therapist, physiatrist, or acupuncturist, in order to alleviate the pain and establish the evidence necessary to meet the "No-Fault Threshold"--the requirement in order to recover compensation for injuries in a New York car accident.

Construction has increasingly become a deadly business -- especially in New York, where laborers routinely dangle from skyscrapers, all part of a building boom that has defied the national slowdown. In January, in another New York fatal construction accident, high-rise concrete forms collapsed at the site of Donald Trump's hotel and condo complex in Lower Manhattan. An Ukrainian immigrant worker who was the father of several children was decapitated as he plunged 42 stories to his death. Three others were injured.
Two months earlier, another immigrant worker was killed when he fell 15 stories, prompting the creation of a task force to cut down on scaffolding accidents.

Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe says that he has no intention of offering Karben a reduced charge of Driving While Ability Impaired (DWAI) and that Karben's only options are to plead guilty to DWI or go to trial. Karben's attorneys intend to take the case to trial, possibly on May 12, 2008.

This past week, an off duty New York City police officer Robert N. Foley was charged with a Westchester County DWI when he crashed his car into the vehicle of a 70 year old man backing out of his driveway in Yonkers, causing the vehicle to careen into a parked car. The victim was taken to the hospital but his injuries are not believed to be life threatening. Officer Foley was observed by Yonkers police officers to have slurred speech, glassy eyes, an odor of alcohol on his breath, and was unsteady on his feet. He refused a chemical test. Officer Foley was charged with DWI and Refusing To Submit To A Chemical Test, both misdemeanors. The New York City Police Department has not yet indicated if Officer Foley has been suspended following the accident.

The USCIS has been under fire for not anticipating and planning for the huge increase in applications last July, although they did hire 750 additional agents for the sole purpose of working on applications. Michael Aytes, the associate director of domestic operations of USCIS has pledged that the agency will keep its promise made at the time of the increase: that in return for the higher fees, by 2010, applications for U.S. citizenship will be processed within 5 months, and petitions for green cards will be handled within four months.

This writer is somewhat skeptical about these optimistic predictions from the USCIS, but we will give the agency the benefit of the doubt and hope that these 750 extra officers will make the difference once the July 2007 surge in applications is two years behind us.

Seemingly forgetting about the thousands of injured victims of Vioxx, for example, who used a dangerous drug which had been approved by the F.D.A. and nevertheless suffered numerous deaths, heart attacks, and other complications, and without question needed the courts to redress their grievances, it appears that the Supreme Court is now ready to bar lawsuits against drug makers.

The Riegels brought a claim in federal court in New York, which was dismissed by the court, and upheld by the U.S. Circuit Court as being preempted by the Medical Devices Amendments (MDA). The MDA precludes lawsuits against manufacturers where the device in question complied with federal requirements. The problem with the Court's decision, as noted by Justice Ginsberg in her dissenting opinion, is what if evidence of the product's defect becomes known after the product has received premarket approval?

The Court stated in no uncertain terms its belief that juries are not capable of evaluating the risks associated with dangerous devices, with such language by Judge Scalia as the following: "The Dalkon Shield failure and its aftermath demonstrated the inability of the common law tort system to manage the risks associated with dangerous devices." And this quote from the opinion is even more frightening for those who believe in our civil justice system as a means to hold manufacturers of defective products accountable: "A jury on the other hand, sees only the cost of a more dangerous design, and is not concerned with its benefits; the patients who reaped those benefits are not represented in court."

The Riegel decision should send a chill down the spine of citizens in this country who believe that the civil justice system is vital in the effort to require manufacturers to ensure that their products are safe for the public before they are placed on the open market.

Heparin is made from pig intestines. In China and other developing countries, tracing the source of the animals used to make the product can be very difficult. The FDA also acknowledged that other problems which could have led to the manufacture of the dangerous product include the lack of specific procedures outlining removal of impurities, and no records showing the suppliers' source of the products.

The Food and Drug Administration estimates that over one million multi-dose vials of Heparin are sold per month in the United States, and half of those are manufactured and distributed by Baxter. However, the FDA has provided assurances that there is an adequate supply in the market to meet the demand for Heparin, which clearly is a necessary and lifesaving drug.

The answer as to whether you need a private attorney involves a few significant factors. To begin with, in the case involving the Westchester County driver, one of the big issues was whether the injuries were serious enough to result in a verdict which could exceed the car insurance policy limits. In that Westchester County car crash case, the answer to the question was yes, as the policy limits were the smallest available in New York, and the injuries included a broken leg, which without question could result in a verdict of more than $25,000.