Articles Posted in Personal Injury

In situations where a person feels that another has attacked their credibility as a professional, most states provide the option to sue that person for libel or defamation of character. Some states limit the ability to charge a person for criminal defamation of character but still preserve the civil outlet for libel. In the situation of criminal defamation of character, many states have brought up the problem that exists between this charge as a criminal offense and the protections of free speech provided by the United States Constitution. It is just this issue that has caused many states to eliminate criminal defamation of character from their legal statutes by reason of unconstitutionality. However, there have still been cases that have caused people to suffer from personal injury related to this offense.

There was one case in Georgia in 2008, where a woman went to a rural county to file a charge of criminal defamation of character against another woman. The complaint involved the father of the woman’s child. The wife of the child’s father had posted on her “My Space” computer networking page that the woman was a whore and her child was a bastard. Her contentions were based on the fact that the woman had had sexual relations with the wife’s husband shortly before he left to serve in the United States military. The result of that union was the woman’s child who was technically speaking the bastard child of the married man. The sheriff’s department investigator who spoke to the woman stated that he was not very familiar with computer “stuff” so he arranged a conference with an assistant district attorney for that county. The assistant district attorney advised the man to charge the wife with criminal defamation of character.

Apparently, that assistant district attorney was not aware that Georgia had determined that criminal defamation of character had been ruled unconstitutional in that state in 1987. When the woman was arrested, she was taken before the county judge. That judge ordered the woman to pay a fine and delete all negative comments about the other woman from her networking page. She was ordered not to put any other negative comments about the woman or her child on the page. The wife went home and took off the previous comments from her page but added a new one. This time the judge ordered her arrested for contempt of court and placed in jail. The wife spent almost one year in jail. At which point she lost her residence, her child was placed in foster care, she lost her job, and her vehicle. It was only at that point that the woman was encouraged to hire a defense attorney. This attorney immediately filed papers to have the wife released from jail since she had been incarcerated illegally. He confronted the judge who had incarcerated the woman and asked him how he had managed to find a woman guilty and sentence her to jail for a crime that had been ruled unconstitutional more than ten years earlier. The judge’s comment was that no one had told him that the charge was unconstitutional. This woman was released and has filed a personal injury and false imprisonment suit against this judge, the district attorney, and the police department of the Georgia County to recover punitive damages. In this case, it was clear that the comments of the wife were made with malice, however, her comments fell under freedom of speech. The reason that they fell under freedom of speech was because anyone reading the comment that was posted would clearly know that the comment was the woman’s own opinion and not a legally proven fact. Any comments that referred to the child of the illicit affair as a bastard were not credited as being defamatory because the definition of a bastard is a child that is born out of wedlock. That made that particular statement a factual statement and not one that could be considered defamatory.

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In the 1980’s most police departments, especially those that were located in the southern United States stopped using police dogs. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, police departments had struggled with excessive force issues that often involved the use of police dogs. Many departments still refuse to reincorporate the use of these specially trained dogs into their departments because of the public image problems that are associated with them. There is no doubt that some officers in the 1960’s and 1970’s were guilty of misusing the police dogs that were assigned to them. Just as some officers misuse the police powers that are given to them. Most police officers are well meaning public servants who are called to police work to make a difference in the lives of other people. An officer who considers police work a calling will never abuse the power that is given to them either in the form of a badge, or a well-trained police dog.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, police departments in the United States were undergoing a fundamental change in their ideology. Prior to this stage, police work was considered a blue collar job. During this new phase, police departments began to strive for a more professional image. With the advent of the professional era of law enforcement, the agencies began to divest themselves of any and all associations that would give them a negative public image. That included police dogs. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, dogs were slowly reincorporated beginning with search and rescue dogs. Drug dogs became popular again. There was no question that the advantage of having non-violent police dogs was beneficial to the entire goal of the justice system. During the time period when police dogs were not in use, violent interactions between police officers and citizens increased dramatically. The public began to call for better non-fatal methods to subdue and arrest criminals. The best way to apprehend a criminal who is running from the police without killing him is to allow a dog to outrun him. A dog bite or two, while painful, is seldom life-threatening. Police dogs had made a come back. No chemical weapon or electrical device was better suited to non-fatal apprehensions than were police dogs. There was no risk involved in using police dogs except for superficial bite injuries. Chemical weapons have been known to cause allergic deaths and electrical weapons can cause heart failure, or fire. Dogs were again recognized as the best tool for the job.

The problem is that if one officer abuses the power of a police dog, it becomes national and sometimes international news. It is important for the officers and the public to recognize that controlled dog encounters are the safest non-fatal approach to a violent felon in an arrest situation. If an officer abuses this power, it is no different than if that officer abuses any other tool that is provided to him for the protection of law abiding citizens. So when an incident takes place that threatens the public image of the police dog, it is especially important for that officer or officers to be brought to justice.

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On May 6, 2009, a homeless man was sleeping in a vestibule of a building. He claims that at some point that night, a police officer with a police dog and several other police officers rousted him from his sleep. He claims that after waking him, he was set upon by the officers who also made the police dog attack him. He claimed that he was hospitalized due to his injuries and that he suffered a personal injury as the result of this unprovoked attack. He filed a lawsuit to recover damages associated with this assault.

The officers who arrested the man that night claim that it was not an unprovoked attack on a sleeping homeless man. Rather, they claim that the man attacked the officers and that he was finally subdued by a police dog. The police department and the officers requested that the court make a motion for summary judgment in their favor dismissing the lawsuit in its entirety.

The homeless man contends that he should be awarded damages based on improper training on the part of the police officers and the police dog. He also makes the charge that they used excessive force on him. He maintains that the police department is guilty of negligent hiring, negligent retention, and lack of proper training. The defendant further claims that he was falsely arrested.

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When an officer is charged with police brutality it is viewed as a serious crime. The abuse of power that is associated with an officer of the law violating his oath of office to protect and serve the public is a terrifying notion to most law abiding citizens. Police officers are entrusted with the power to remove another person’s freedom and even take their lives if they have to. This type of power can sometimes cause a person to forget that the calling that first directed them to law enforcement must not be violated at any cost. However, historically, there have been a few police officers who have proven that they are not trustworthy. It is a simple matter of numbers. People are only human. Law enforcement officers are also, only human. By sheer numbers, the more police officers are employed, the larger the chances are that one will be employed who is capable of great evil.

There is not a single police department in the world, that has not terminated a person who managed to get through the tough screening processes that are in place to eliminate those applicants who are not up to the standard of the rest of the department. Usually, they are uncovered early in the hiring process, however, occasionally one can remain hidden in a department for many years before his crimes are revealed. In 2009, a homeless man who was arrested in New York filed a police brutality case that reminded many people of the abuses that were publicized in the 1960’s. Many police departments eliminated all police dogs from their ranks in the 1970’s because of the police brutality charges that were plaguing them. Police departments attempted to distance themselves from the negative associations that mishandled police dogs had brought to the departments. In recent years, police departments have come to recognize that the benefits of having police dogs in departments far outweighs the negative connotations that they sometimes create.

In the case of the homeless man in 2009, he filed a lawsuit in which he maintained that while he was asleep in a doorway in New York, several police officers approached him with a police dog. He testified that the officers took sport in beating him and set the police dog to bite him repeatedly. The police officers that were named in the suit maintain that the man is lying. They contend that they were attacked by him and in the course of accomplishing the arrest, they used the minimum amount of force necessary to apprehend him.

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In March of 2009, a vagrant accused several police canine officers of using their police dogs to abuse him. He advised the court that he was sleeping when the officers approached him and ordered their dogs to bite him repeatedly. He stated that it was a brutal and unprovoked attack on his person. He filed a lawsuit against these officers, the police department, and the state of New York. He also claims that following this assault, the officers arrested him illegally. He requested that the court issue a summary judgment finding that the officers, state, and department, are responsible for his injuries.

The officers involved advised the court that they were acting under color of law when they responded to a situation involving a violent man who appeared to be mentally ill and homeless. Upon their arrival, the man turned on the officers and began to attack them. Two of the officers had canine units who were used to assist the officers in arresting the man without additional harm to the police officers who were on the scene. Records indicate that one officer was injured prior to the introduction of the police dogs into the affray. Because of the surrounding issues involved in this arrest, the police department requests that a summary judgment be issued in their behalf dismissing this man’s claims.

When police dogs are deployed on the scene of a crime, it is common knowledge that someone is likely to be injured. However, that injured person is most likely not going to be injured fatally. In this society, we are constantly striving to find better non-fatal ways to apprehend criminals. This is especially true of mentally ill criminals who can be extremely dangerous to deal with. Mentally ill criminals are often unaffected by chemical weapons. In some cases, chemical weapons increase the violent actions of the person. Electric weapons are also not always the answer. Stun guns and Tasers have been associated with numerous fatalities. Electric shock is not good for the heart or the brain. Applying external electric shocks to a person is very likely to cause lasting injury or even death. However, a police dog is trained to bite and hold on to reduce the overall trauma of the injury and to prevent the person from assaulting a human patrol officer. The goal of a police dog is not to bite the throat or cause a fatal injury. The bite of a police dog does cause superficial trauma to the bite location. However, that trauma is much less than the trauma caused by a bullet which can be the next level of force that is required to control the actions of a person who is out of their minds due to illness or drugs.

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A physician and a pharmaceutical company filed an appeal from a judgment of the Supreme Court upon a jury verdict which awarded a girl of damages in the amount of $300,000 for personal injuries she allegedly sustained. The vaccine was administered by the physician and it is manufactured by the pharmaceutical company.

It was started when the physician was called by the mother of the girl, who told him that her daughter had stepped on a nail with her left foot the previous day. The physician testified that he took some tetanus toxoid, some duracillin and some polio vaccine with him in the woman’s residence. He injected the mixture of medicines into the girl’s shoulder but he denied having injected a four-in-one shot of vaccine. The next morning the physician received a call from the mother of the girl informing him that the girl was weak and she could not sit up and had trouble moving her right leg. The physician visited the girl immediately after the call and diagnosed her illness as between a myelitis and polio, although he thought it was atypical polio. The physician advised the family to confine the girl at the hospital. The final diagnosis of the girl’s illness was made in the hospital and it was a transverse myelitis and its reason is still unknown. Consequently, the girl was sent to the rehabilitation institution. The records there state that the attempts were made to clarify the reason of the illness without any definite results. So far as the medical records and the testimony disclose, the girl never had an abnormal fever reading at any time after the injection.

Although the physician denied that he had injected the girl with the four-in-one shot vaccine, there is sufficient other testimony in the record to sustain a contrary finding.

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This case involves consumption of alcohol by our youth. The defendants, where charged of aiding and abetting and acting in concert, of hosting a party for their daughter at their home where they allowed 13 persons, each of which was under the age of 21 years, each having dates of birth after the year of 1989 to consume alcohol on their property. The proponent alleged that defendants knew that the 13 persons were under that age of 21, due to the fact that they were the same age as the defendants’ daughter, who was under age 21, and defendants knew that the youths were not legally allowed to consume alcohol. Further, proponent alleged that the defendants admitted to knowing that alcohol was being consumed at their home by persons under the age of 21, and nevertheless allowed such activity to continue.

A Lawyer said that, in 1983, according to coroner’s data, 21% of all 19 and 20 year olds who died in New York were legally intoxicated at the time of their death. The leading cause of death for 19 and 20 year olds is motor vehicle accidents. Although 19 and 20 year olds represented only 4.1% of the licensed drivers in 1983, they were responsible for 13.4% of all alcohol-related fatal crashes and 12.8% of all alcohol-related injury producing crashes.

Defendants move to: (1) suppress defendants’ statements pursuant to CPL § 710.20; (2) suppress evidence pursuant to CPL §§ 710.20, 710.60 and 710.70; (3) dismiss the accusatory instrument for facial insufficiency; and (4) obtain disclosure of prior bad acts pursuant to CPL § 240.43.

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Personal Injury accidents can have life altering effects on the person who is injured. Sometimes, the problems that the person suffers exceed the physical injuries that have occurred. When a person goes from being active and unimpaired one day to infirmed the next, it is impossible for the person to not have some depression about the change in life circumstances. In some of these cases, the injured person becomes so depressed by the changes in his or her life circumstances that they lose the will to live. In these cases, New York law has stipulated that if the person filing a wrongful death suit must be able to show that there is a causal link between the person’s suicide and the injury that they received at work.

One case that involved this type of wrongful death action involved a man who was injured twice at work. He was injured 14 years before his death and then again five years before his death. In 1945, the decedent was an usher at a movie theatre when a fight broke out in the men’s room. He attempted to break up the fight and was pushed into a marble wall, and suffered a brain injury. He was diagnosed with a cerebral concussion as a result of the accident and eleven days later a workers’ compensation doctor announced that he was fully recovered. His wife claims that although he went back to work. Her husband suffered from headaches blackouts, and fainting spells following this accident.

The second accident occurred in 1959, when he suffered a debilitating back injury while at work. The back injury changed his lifestyle and caused him to plummet into a state of deep depression. His wife stated that it was this deep depression that led him to take his own life. The workers compensation board disagreed. They contend that this man was suffering from many issues that affected his mental stability long before he took his own life. They contend that he was suffering from mental illness before he had his first work place injury in 1945.

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On March 20, 2008, a New York man filed a personal injury lawsuit naming among numerous others, the rap artist Jay-Z. this man claims among other various complaints that in many cases made no sense, that each of the defendants was connected to the Black slave trade in the 1600-1800’s. The case claims that each of these people, including Jay-Z who is black himself, were connected with the slave traders who brought African slaves into the British colonies in North America and the West Indies. The Kings County court redirected the case to the Supreme Court in April of 2008. That court determined that no case was made out that was cognizable for a federal court to handle. The case was sent back to the Kings County Supreme Court for review.

The case was laid out in a thirty page essay form that alleged that the trans-Atlantic trade in African slaves was connected with Barclays, the New Jersey Nets and Jay-Z. It is unclear, even upon reading the essay, how the complainant managed to make such a mental connection between the slave trade of the colonies and the defendants that he named in the suit. He alleged that all of the defendants should be required to start a trust fund that would benefit all of the black people in the United States. He contends that the trust fund should be five billion dollars as punitive damages for the crimes that the early colonists committed against the black community. The complainant fails to ensure that his historical “evidence” is correct and much of the rambling complaint is inaccurate. According to the complaint, blacks were the only group that were victimized. He fails to recognize the Irish slaves and indentured servants, the Romany Gypsies, the Jews, or even the native Americans who suffered from human rights abuse over the years. In fact, the most abused group of Americans who have suffered the most numerous human rights injustices in this country continues to be women of all hues. However, none of these groups are listed in his complaint.

The complainant names Barclays Bank as being a group that perpetuated the slave trade. Apparently, the discussion of naming rights of the New Jersey Nets Atlantic Yards arena is what provoked the complainant into filing the complaint. At one point in the absurd complaint, the complainant rambles about the Barclay Bank being responsible for the South African apartheid regime and Nazi financing. His claims of genocide stem from his allegations that the defendants of the suit, including black rapper Jay-Z are involved in building their reputations and wealth on the backs of blacks for over 400 years. He accuses them of continuing to profit from crimes against the black people of America.

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In an action to recover damages for personal injury, the complaint was filed by Raul Montanez against Jeffrey M. Brown Associates, Inc. (Brown), by order that action was consolidated with the action commenced by Raul Montanez against the remaining defendants. The complaints assert causes of action for common law negligence and violation of Labor Law §§200, 240, 241(6) and the Industrial Code of the State of New York 12 NYCRR §23-1.7(b)(1). This action arises out of an incident which occurred on August 1, 2005 wherein the plaintiff sustained injuries while working on a construction worksite and was caused to fall as a result of an open, loose and/or unsecure manhole cover and for which personal injuries the plaintiff seeks monetary damages. The defendant/third-party plaintiff Jeffrey M. Brown Associates, Inc. impleaded Wynne Management, the plaintiff’s employer on the date of the accident, by commencing a third-party action for common law indemnification, contractual indemnification, breach of agreement, and judgment over against the third-party defendant.

In cross-motion, the defendants GMH Military Housing-Navy Northeast, LLC, GMH Military Housing Management, GMH Northeast Housing Design/Build, LLC, Northeast Housing LLC, Centex Construction, LLC, and Balfour Beatty Const, seek an order pursuant to 22 NYCRR §202.21(e)vacating the Note of Issue and Certificate of Readiness.

In a cross-motion, plaintiff seeks an order pursuant to CPLR 3403(a)(3) granting him a trial preference in the interests of justice. In cross-motion, defendants GMH Military Housing-Navy Northeast, LLC, GMH Military Housing Management, GMH Northeast Housing Design/Build, LLC, Northeast Housing LLC, Centex Construction, LLC, and Balfour Beatty Const, seek an order, in part, pursuant to CPLR 202.25(a) denying the plaintiffs application for a special preference. Similarly, defendant/third party plaintiff Jeffrey M. Brown Associates, Inc. seeks an order pursuant to CPLR Article 34 denying a special trial preference to the plaintiff.

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