Personal Injury Lawyers in New York

The trucking firm involved in a fatal accident on Highway 82 in Colorado earlier this month violated its operating permit by not displaying lights on the side of the modular trailer it towed, a Colorado State Patrol investigator has reported.

Trooper Dennis Gibbons said the truck could legally haul the trailer at night - as long it had proper lighting. In this case, that required lights on each of the four corners that were visible from the sides, as well as one light on each side of the trailer between the corners.

That would have resulted in three lights on each side of the trailer, Gibbons said. The trailer didn't have any lights visible on the sides.

The 1984 Kenworth Truck driven by Mark Chamness, 48, of Littleton, pulled out of a private driveway on the north side of Highway 82, crossed the westbound - or downvalley - lanes, then stopped in the median while waiting to turn left toward Aspen. The truck was delivering a temporary office of the type seen at construction projects.

The modular trailer blocked both westbound lanes of Highway 82 while Chamness was stopped and waiting to turn. A downvalley-bound 2000 Kia Sephia with three passengers slammed into the trailer at about 6:40 a.m. The driver and a passenger in the front were killed at the scene. A passenger in the back survived the crash with serious injuries.

Investigators found no sign that the Kia was braking. The car was traveling at or around the posted 65-mph speed limit, Gibbons said. Speed and alcohol were eliminated as factors in the crash.

There were reports that another vehicle, a "Penske truck," stopped in the right lane for the tractor-trailer. The Kia was in the left lane. The other vehicle wasn't involved in the accident and departed the scene before investigators could interview the driver.

Chamness received a citation from the state patrol on suspicion of four violations: careless driving causing death, careless driving causing bodily injury, stopping in an intersection when prohibited, and violating a permit by operating during the hours of darkness. He was released after he received the summons. The case is currently under review.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a truck accident in Queens, Brooklyn, or the Bronx, New York, please contact the experienced truck accident attorneys at Silberstein Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

All Metro Home Care, the Long Island-based company was sued for sending a transvestite with a known criminal record to care for a frail 84-year-old woman and has agreed to pay the victim $170,00 in damages. The settlement came just as lawyers for the victim, Clara Migden, were to call ex-convict Jonathan Uzzell to testify in an Albany, New York courtroom where the negligence case was being heard. The man, dressed as a woman, sat quietly, wearing high heel boots, long hair and lipstick.

The recent settlement ends a painful six-year ordeal that began when Hedy Migden, a doctor in Albany, turned to All Metro for a home health aide to come in and care for her mother after a hospitalization for a spine injury. Uzzell actually seemed caring and responsible at first, but five weeks after being on the job, the victim called her daughter in tears, telling her she awoke to find her apartment ransacked and her bank card missing.

Police then arrested Uzzell, with previous arrests for prostitution, crack cocaine, and stabbing a teenager many years ago. Uzzell served 18 months in prison for the Migden theft and was released in 2003.

Testimony in the negligence trial revealed that Uzzell never underwent a criminal background check.

If you or a loved one has suffered or died due to nursing home negligence or abuse in Long Island or Queens, New York, please contact the experienced nursing home negligence attorneys at Silberstein Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

A Hartford, Connecticut toddler recently died from a severe brain injury after his baby sitter swung him around in a sleeping bag hitting his head on a wall. The little boy, Elijah Gasque, was just 19 months old when he was pronounced brain dead at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. He had been kept on life support overnight as doctors prepared his body for organ donation.

The babysitter, Yalines Torres, 25, was charged with risk of injury to a minor and reckless endangerment; additional charges are likely as the investigation progresses. The boy’s grandmother said she regrets leaving Elijah in her care.

If your small child or the child of someone you know has been injured or killed while in someone else’s care in Brooklyn, the Bronx, or Queens, New York, you may be entitled to monetary compensation to cover your expenses and suffering. Please contact the experienced attorneys at Silberstein Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

A drunken driver went about four miles down a highway in the wrong direction before his pickup truck slammed into a minivan, killing a woman and four children and injuring three others in Toledo, Ohio on New Year’s Eve.

Michael Gagnon, 24, drove north in the southbound lane of Interstate 280 late Sunday, colliding with the minivan and leaving scattered toys, stuffed animals and bits of gift wrap along the edge of the road, Toledo police said. An 8-week-old girl was among those killed.

Gagnon had a blood-alcohol level of .254 after the crash, more than three times Ohio's legal limit of .08, police said. He was charged Monday with aggravated vehicular homicide.

Gagnon's brother, Samuel Gagnon, told The Baltimore Sun they had been drinking at a hotel Sunday night and that his brother left in the truck without telling anyone before their sister arrived to drive them home.

Michael Gagnon stopped at a fast-food restaurant just before the crash. Workers called to alert police, but Gagnon left before an officer arrived, said Lt. Hank Everitt of the Oregon Police Department. Soon after, a 911 call came in about a driver going the wrong way on the interstate, he said. Other drivers also alerted police before the crash, he said.

Danny Griffin Jr., the minivan's driver, was rounding a curve when the minivan hit the truck, said Ron Spann, a deputy chief with Toledo police.

If you or a loved one has been injured or killed in a car accident in Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx, please contact the attorneys at Silberstein Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

In New York, a construction worker fell to his death at a Donald Trump hotel-condominium tower in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. At the time of this writing, the man’s identity has not yet been released. The crane accident sent the man plummeting 40 stories, killing him and injuring three others. Two of those had serious injuries and one had minor injuries, all being treated at area hospitals.

Construction of the Trump project is being overseen by Bovis Lend Lease, the main contractor handling the dismantling of a former bank building across from the site of the 9-11 attacks that caught fire in August 2007 killing two firefighters.

A witness to this construction accident said he saw it happen from his office window. According to C.J. Franzitta, part of the crane was holding steel beams and appeared to let go. He said the crane was 40 stories up, and the accident caused one floor to collapse into another.

This Trump construction site was cited for two high-risk violations on October 26, 2007, one for operating a crane in an unsafe manner and the other one for failing to safeguard public property affected by construction operation.

If you or a loved one has been injured or killed in a construction accident in Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, or anywhere else in New York, please contact the experienced construction accident attorneys at Silberstein Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, domestic violence affects more than 32 million Americans (more than 10% of the U.S. population). Also, in the United Stated, 20% of all crime experienced by women are cases of intimate partner violence, compared to 3% of violent crime experienced by men.

Men Can Be Victims, Too

Very little is known about the actual number of men who are in a domestic relationship in which they are abused or treated violently by their male or female partners. Few of these incidents are ever reported to the police, so data is limited. However, approximately 23% of men who had lived with a man as a couple reported being raped, physically assaulted and/or stalked by another man, while 7.4% of men reported violence by a female spouse or cohabitant.

While data regarding abuse on males is limited, the following is available:

· 3.2 million men experience minor abuse each year (pushing, slapping, hitting)
· 800,000 men per year are raped or physically assaulted by their partner
· 370,000 men are stalked each year
· In 2002, men comprised 24% of domestic violence homicide victims

The causes of domestic violence are just as varied as the types. In some relationships, violence arises out of a need for power and control. Some domestic violence is learned behavior from previous generations. Abusers' efforts to dominate their partners have been attributed to low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy, unresolved childhood conflicts, poverty, hostility, misogyny (hatred of women), personality disorders, substance abuse, etc. Some experts claim that all domestic abuse relates to men's need to devalue women and view them in negative ways.

Regardless of the causes, domestic violence remains a very serious problem in the United States today, and domestic violence can be very difficult to spot. Some of the worst abusers may appear perfectly calm and normal at work or in social situations. A common pattern of domestic abuse is that the perpetrator alternates between violent, abusive behavior and apologetic behavior with sincere promises to never do it again. The abuser may even be very pleasant most of the time. This is why so many people do not leave abusive relationships. They fall for the abusers lies about never doing it again and being able to change.

If you or a loved one has been involved in a divorce or is about to get married in New York City, Long Island—including Nassau or Suffolk Counties, please contact the experienced Divorce Attorney Law Offices at Silberstein, Awad & Miklos.

When most people think of abuse, they think of physical or sexual abuse, but there is another kind of abuse that has become quite pervasive in our society and that is financial exploitation of the elderly. This kind of abuse is not as easy to see as the more obvious physical abuse, but it can be just as devastating for the victim. Financial exploitation of the elderly often goes undetected, and the damage done to the person's finances may not be discovered until months or even years later.

The elderly are prime targets for financial abuse because they typically have a nest egg; they've been saving money for years so they can enjoy retirement. They usually own their own homes and have wonderful credit. According to Consumers Digest, approximately 70% of all funds deposited in financial institution are controlled by people 65 and older. This is why they make such appealing targets for thieves.

The most common perpetrators of elder abuse through financial exploitation are family members, care takers, and family accountants or legal advisors. Older Americans are less likely to report fraud because they don't know how to report it or don't have the means to report it (car, telephone, etc.). Often times, the elderly have some chronic condition such as Alzheimer's that prevents them from even being aware that they have been the victim of financial exploitation. Many times, the elderly live in isolation and aren't in contact with other people on a regular basis.

If your elderly loved one has been the victim of elder abuse in the form of financial exploitation, please contact the Nursing Home Malpractice Law Offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, serving clients in the New York City and Long Island areas.

Over 150,000 new lawsuits are started each year in New York State Supreme Court. Medical malpractice cases comprise 2% of these lawsuits. For example, the Office of Court Administration reports that its data show that 170,892 new lawsuits were filed in the State of New York in 2006. Medical malpractice cases comprised a total of 4140 of these new lawsuits, or about 2% of all new lawsuits started in the state of New York in 2006. This 2% figure has remained steady over the past decade for medical malpractice lawsuits in New York State. The quantity of medical malpractice lawsuits started in New York State has also remained stable over the past 10 years at approximately 4000, but never 5000, medical malpractice lawsuits started in New York State Supreme Court annually.
Interestingly, big and small business use the New York State Supreme Court civil justice system a lot more than consumers. Contract, tax and other non-personal injury lawsuits and nine matrimonial lawsuits and comprise 55% of the 170,000 new lawsuits started in 2006. Business is suing businesses and corporations suing other corporations use the resources of the New York State’s civil justice system often and without any criticism of the civil justice system or juries reaching verdicts in very complicated multimillion dollar controversies involving commercial litigation.
Most patients who been subjected to medical error and medical malpractice are reluctant to sue doctors and hospitals and only do so because of the great debts they have incurred because of medical negligence. Similarly every patient who has been a client of our law firm wants to settle their case rather than incur the financial and emotional costs of a full jury trial. However, the insurance companies for the doctors and hospitals, as well as doctors and hospitals themselves, often believe that they can manipulate the evidence at trial, and by doing so prejudice the jury against the injured patient. By doing so doctors and hospitals and their insurers can then avoid responsibility and accountability for their choices and actions while avoiding paying a debt.

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Recently Dr. Ronald Marcus, assistant professor from Harvard Medical School and director of operations for the Department of obstetrics at the Beth Israel medical center in Boston lectured
at a meeting of the New York State medical malpractice task force. This Harvard professor de fined medical malpractice problem to include the fact that 100,000 patients die in hospitals in the United States every year due to medical mistakes and that there is one medication error per patient per day and every United States hospital. This of course creates a very dangerous situation for any patient admitted for medical treatment at a hospital in the United States. As was reported by Time magazine in 2006, one third of all physicians in the United States have stated that even a family member has suffered harm due to medical errors occurring in hospitals.

Medical malpractice and medical errors occur not because of medical judgments. Medical malpractice in medical errors occur because there is a failure in the clinical setting with the patient to manage prudently and reasonably the medical care of the patient. For example, the leading causes of medical malpractice and medical errors include physician fatigue, multi tasking, interruptions, failure to follow up, poor ears off, and any effective communication.

Harvard itself looked at its closed medical malpractice claim files involving obstetrical medical malpractice. This review included 10 years of closed obstetrical medical malpractice cases by three review worse with a very structured review form and specific consensus being required. Harvard found that team related deficiencies in the obstetrical care of patients was the most significant reason for medical malpractice errors and identified poor communication to be present in 67% of obstetrical claims and failure to cross a monitor to be present in 76% of malpractice claims.

If you or a loved one has had surgery with an unexpected bad result and have questions about the quality of the medical care you received please call Silberstein, Awad & Miklos’ attorneys for answers. Together we will continue our fight against FRIVOLOUS DEFENSES and DECEPTIVE DEFENSES.

Serving clients in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County.

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