NY Accident Lawyers Blog

Well there’s one Brooklyn pol who won’t be whining for tort reform anytime soon.

Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn Borough President, took a bad spill outside the Albany Econo Lodge hotel in 2001, and the proceeds from his slip-and-fall suit are helping to finance his new $1.4million three-bedroom apartment in Windsor Terrace.

He shattered his ankle in three places and had to have serious reconstructive surgery.  The suit, quietly filed in Brooklyn in 2003, emerged from a February 2001 accident, when the then-state senator slipped on the ice outside the motel.

The case eventually settled for $350,000, of which Markowitz took home $255,000.

Among the more ridiculous and frivolous lawsuits filed against the city of New York in recent memory is this one involving a Queens softball player who is claiming she busted her ankle because her high school coach never taught her how to slide.

Alina Cerda,15, says she’s been sidelined for seven months and wants the city Education Department andFrancis Lewis High School coach Bryan Brown to pay.

What if she was hurt walking, or running, or swinging the bat, or catching a line drive, or colliding with another player, or getting hit by a ball?  These activities are all part of playing softball, as is sliding into home plate.  Players of any age, and their parents, must assume a certain degree of risk when they choose to participate in games where accidents happen all the time.

Alina’s lawyer, Clay Evall, says Brown wasn’t supervising the sliding drill but had some of the team’s veteran players teaching the new girls how to do it.

Big deal! I grew up playing baseball in a sand lot.  No one taught us how to slide.   And, if we got hurt our parents took us to the hospital.  And, when our injuries healed we went back out to the lot and did it all over again.

Does anything, I mean anything really work in this town?  Sure there are things that do, but for the most part New Yorkers don’t expect things to work as they should.  Look at the subways, buses, sanitation, traffic flow.  You name it.

Now it’s defibrillators.  That’s right, defibrillators.  According to a story in The Daily News this morning, the FDNY has canceled regular maintenance on the life-saving machines, which opens the city up to who knows how many negligence lawsuits. This bone-headed move on the part of the FDNY will surely end up costing the city millions more in fines then the maintenance program cost them when the $25,000 cardiac monitors eventually fail and someone is killed.

The department’s Advanced Life Support ambulances used to receive a tuneup every six months, according to FDNY sources. But on Nov. 18, Assistant Chief of EMS John McFarland abruptly canceled the maintenance program and, in an e-mail obtained by The News, ordered ALS coordinators to “keep all expired LP12s in service.”

I’m thinking of starting a blog and calling it: Penny Wise and Pound Foolish, and solicit ideas from fellow bloggers for ways the city can improve it’s act and save lots of money in the long run.

Though the FDNY yesterday strenuously denied that the change would affect the performance of the ambulances, several EMS sources and unions expressed worry that the cutback could endanger lives.  But we New Yorkers know better; as does every personal injury lawyer in the five boroughs.

The anticipated lawsuits from a highly publicized accident a few months ago are starting to surface.  Relatives of two men killed in the Taconic State Parkway wrong-way crash filed suit Thursday against the estate of drunken and drugged-up driver Diane Schuler.  

They said they hope a trial will answer some of the many lingering questions about the tragic July 26 accident that left eight people dead.  What questions could it answer that haven’t already been asked and answered?

Roseann Guzzo- who lost her brother Guy Bastardi , 49, and her father, Michael Bastardi 81 – said a civil suit was her only option after prosecutors declined to press criminal charges.

“How do you correct something without knowing all the facts?” she asked.  All of facts are known.  Schuler was drinking alcohol and smoking pot before getting behind the wheel of her car.

“If we have the facts we can strengthen the laws. We are not mean people. We just want to know what happened that day.”  The family already knows what happened that day.  A drunken driver, whose SUV was filled with innocent young passengers, was heading the wrong way on the TSP and ran head on into an oncoming vehicle killing all but one.

The Bastardis’ family has insisted that Schuler’s family must have realized she was drunk when she got in the car with five kids.   She was probably too drunk and stoned to know anything.  But they’ll never be able to prove that.  Schuler is dead.

Schuler’s husband denies she was intoxicated.  Now that statement is reason enougn for the Bastardi family to hire a great New York  personal injury lawyer and go after Schuler’s estate.  The point is, we already know what happened.  What the Bastardi family needs to do is prove it, which shouldn’t be all that hard if they hire the right lawyer.

Hundreds of students and teachers at Lafayette High School in Brooklyn may need a personal injury lawyer someday after having been exposed to asbestos by a contractor who ripped out piping at the school last week.

Thursday night  school contractor disassembled piping surrounded by the dangerous substance  and carried it through the hallways of the school.

Teachers say almost all the students and most of the school’s staff walked through the affected basement corridor.

“I find that frightening but not surprising,” one teacher said.  ”It’s outrageous,” said United  United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew. “There should be a full investigation as to how this happened and people should be held accountable.”

Education Department officials said initial air quality tests indicated the building was safe. They said the school would follow a normal schedule today.

I’m sure these two teens have their hearts in the right place.  But, they have their heads stuck somewhere else entirely.

The two girls injured in the DWI crash that killed their friend in November are having a bake sale to raise bail money for the driver.  And the fund-raiser is churning the stomach of the dead girl’s father, who would like to see Carmen Huertas rot in prison.

Where are the parents?  The schools? The teachers?  The owner of the East Harlem deli where the sweets are being sold? These kids, who were also injured in the deadly crash, need a lesson in how the U.S. civil justice system works and why it’s important for people to pay for their crimes.  It’s outrageous that those who should know better are letting these bubblehead girls sell cupcakes and cookies to support a criminal whose irresponsible actions took the life of 11-year-old Leandra Rosado. 

Maybe Rosado’s father can find a lawyer who can put a stop to this.

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There are times when otherwise decent people lose it, pick up a gun, or a golf club as was the case recently with Tiger Woods’ wife, and do real damage, even kill someone.   That doesn’t make the victim any less dead or the perpetrator any less guilty.

Carmen Huertas, the Bronx mom who killed her daughter’s friend, Leandra Rosado, appeared in a Manhattan court for the first time Tuesday, and three of the other girls involved in the crash were there to see her.   

The New York Daily News reported today that the girls sobbed uncontrollably before the brief procedural appearance.  ”Strangely,” the paper reported,  ”the victims of the crash that killed their close friend were there to show support for Huertas, relatives said.”  The girls are also selling cupcakes to raise money for Huertas’ bail, which was set at $250,000 cash in October, Huertas’ defense lawyer said. 

Now would be the time for the parents of these children to intervene, forbid bake sales to raise money, and give these kids a lesson in how the criminal justice system works in this country.  All the tears, and apologies, however heartfelt, will not bring Leandra Rosado back.  It is a loss her family will have to endure for the rest of their lives.

Carmen Huertas committed a crime and should be punished.  What better way for a parent to send a message to their kids that drinking and driving is a serious crime than to have the children attend the trial (if there is one), listen to the arguments that will no doubt be put forth by the prosecution; listen to the testimony from the father of the dead girl, in order to get a real sense of the gravity of this crime.

The crash prompted a successful Daily News campaign for passage of “Leandra’s Law,” which makes driving drunk with children in the car a felony.

A 61-year-old secretary from Queens filed a lawsuit today against a midtown law firm for firing her just two hours after she informed her employers she had cancer.  I would like to see this woman hire a very-skilled employment lawyer and bring the house down on the two men who treated her this way.

Tarnow & Juvelier, the law firm she worked for, then tried to make what they did legal by closing their business and reopening the practice under a different name, the suit claims.  

These men give the legal profession a bad name and should be punished by the law and then again by a jury of their peers.

Naturally her boss, Martin Juvelier, denied the allegations, maintaining that the secretary walked out on her own.  Yeah, like she was told she has cancer, a condition that could be treated surgically, so she decides to quit her job.  Right.  Juvelier is not only a scoundrel, he’s a idiot and should face disbarment. 

Benedict had been a legal secretary for 20 years and had worked at Tarnow & Juvelier for about a year when she was diagnosed with a rare tumor behind her sinuses. She e-mailed the office from her desk in Oct. of 2007, informing everyone that she would have to miss a week for surgery and a week for recovery.  Two weeks, that’s all the work she would miss.

But, two hours later, she was given the boot, and Juvelier told her that she’d be able to collect unemployment, according to the suit, filed in Manhattan on Wednesday.

The Jackson Heights resident filed a complaint with the state Division of Human Rights, and a few weeks later, she got a letter from the firm inviting her back.

She returned to work — only to get another pink slip from her dimwitted employers. In early December 2007, the firm’s staff was called to a meeting and informed that Tarnow & Juvelier was going to be closed down at the end of the year. But  less than a month later Juvelier had reincorporated under a different name – a ploy to hide the discriminatory firing.