New York Personal Injury Law Blog

Linkworthy (Double Edition)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:15:00 +0000

Sarah Palin rants against frivolous ethics complaints. Then threatens her own frivolous action, for defamation. (PopTort, Turley, Sugerman); Roy Mura celebrates 500 posts over at Coverage Counsel; A million bucks for an ankle fracture? John Hochfelder describes how that happened; Kevin, MD. asks: Did propofol, or Diprivan, kill Michael Jackson? And a slew of commenters add their two cents; The Namby Pamby Attorney is proposing new legislation: The title of this act is "The Pedestrian Commuter Protection Act" (This act may also be referred to as "Move Bitch, Get Out Da Way"). Proceed with caution; From Carolyn Elefant: If bloggers must disclose, why shouldn't bar associations? New ...

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Prior Sotomayor Document Says "Sotomayor & Associates" Was NOT Law Related -- Updated

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:18:00 +0000

The mystery surrounding "Sotomayor & Associates" gets curiouser and curiouser. Still trying to figure out exactly what Judge Sotomayor was doing with this firm she ran from her home between 1983-1986, I dug into her questionnaire from her 1997 appointment to the Second Circuit, now available at the Clinton Library. (Box 0001, Folder 00003) In that document, she gives her non-judicial legal experience as a state prosecutor (August, 1979 to March 1984) and as a civil litigator at Pavia & Harcourt (April 1984 - October 1992). There is no mention of a solo practice law firm under the name "Sotomayor & Associates." (See question 10, page 4). But then she adds in "Sotomayor &...

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"Sotomayor & Associates" Under Senate Investigation ( A preview of 6 potential issues)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:00:00 +0000

I was called yesterday by a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's minority's legal staff regarding my postings on "Sotomayor & Associates" and potential ethics issues, and the subsequent New York Times article regarding the firm. It probably comes as no surprise that Judge Sonia Sotomayor's small, solo practice is being investigated. The committee is not, after all, a potted plant. And this little law firm that Judge Sotomayor ran out of her Brooklyn home from 1983-1986 was unknown to the world until she submitted answers to an extensive questionnaire on June 4th. What follows are the five issues that I believe they are exploring, based upon my conversation (plus one more from...

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Sotomayor Offers Lousy Defense To Ethics Charge Over Firm Name

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:41:00 +0000

It's been bugging me since I saw it in the New York Times this morning: Sonia Sotomayor gave a lousy defense to an ethics charge over the name of her solo law practice, "Sotomayor & Associates." To backtrack a bit, she had a home office that overlapped her tenures at the District Attorney's office and her stint at Pavin & Harcourt back in 1983-1986. Despite it being a solo practice, she called it "Sotomayor & Associates," which is misleading since the Times has now confirmed what I had guessed at a month ago: That there were no actual associates. Here is the defense, as laid out by an expert that the White House apparently retained after my posting appeared: The authority for...

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Welcome New Visitors: (NYT on Sotomayor & Associates, And On Failing to Credit Story Source)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:56:00 +0000

It's funny how one can be in the news without actually being in the news. As mentioned earlier today, the New York Times ran a story about "Sotomayor & Associates" and the fact that she didn't have any actual associates. I wrote that story up back on June 4th, and it's laid mostly dormant since then. But when the Times failed to credit me with having found this item as they furthered the investigation, other bloggers took notice and the issue of journalistic ethics reared its head. To my new readers (at least for a day), I welcome you. If you want to know more of the types of stuff I write about here, and whether this obscure little blog should be part of your RSS feed, you can skim...

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NYT: "Sotomayor & Associates" Becomes an Issue For Nominee and White House

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:14:00 +0000

On June 4th Sonia Sotomayor released an extensive, completed questionnaire about her past to the Senate, and I picked up on the fact that her solo law firm "Sotomayor & Associates" didn't have any actual associates. This raised an ethical issue, albeit a small one, because it was misleading to the public. The private firm overlapped both her time in the District Attorney's office and her time with her next gig, Pavia & Harcourt. And there my little post sat, relatively ignored. Until the Washington Times picked up on it in an editorial on June 20th. While I don't agree with their premise that it was indicative of larger issues, it was nice that they at least gave attribution to me...

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July 2nd: A Day to Declare Independence (And Celebrate Juries)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:29:00 +0000

On July 2nd, 1776, the Continental Congress voted for Independence. We celebrate, however, on the 4th when the Declaration was signed. I discussed this last year in: United States of America Declares Its Independence (Jury Trials Are One Reason) But it's worth repeating this year on the heels this week of the WSJ op-ed by high profile law professor Richard A. Epstein, who proclaimed that the right to a jury trial was a mere "procedural feature," among other ludicrous claims. And so it's worth repeating that not only is the mere "procedural feature" enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but it's also in the Declaration of Independence. In the long bill of particulars of reasons we took up arms...

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Congratulations to Overlawyered

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:50:00 +0000

Overlawyered today celebrates its 10 year anniversary, making it the longest legally-themed blog around. It has also provided me with one of the biggest surprises that I've experienced, and invaluable lessons about how to blog. Its proprietor, Walter Olson, uses the site to document the high cost of litigation. He has his conservative political views, which are often diametrically opposed to mine. In fact, if the proposals of the Manhattan Institute (where he is a fellow) were followed, the rights of many (if not all) of my clients would likely be eviscerated. That means we knock heads every so often, as I do with his co-blogger Ted Frank. And despite this, while still in my rookie year...

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The False Premises of Medical Malpractice "Reform" (Response to Richard Epstein in WSJ)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:59:00 +0000

There's an old saying, "garbage in, garbage out." If you use a false premise to substantiate an argument then the result will be worthless. And that is exactly what University of Chicago law professor Richard A. Epstein does today in the Wall Street Journal (via PofL). His column How Other Countries Judge Malpractice pretends to support the "reform" of problems in the medical malpractice system. But he supports his arguments with some whoppers and fallacious arguments that don't hold water. Whopper #1, Epstein writes: "American courts commonly think it proper for juries to infer medical negligence from the mere occurrence of a serious injury."This is just flat out false, and every...

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Metro Train Accident and Client Solicitation

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:34:00 +0000

In the wake of Continental Flight 3407 crashing near Buffalo, I tracked how a number of firms from around the nation using Google ads to hustle clients (see here, here, here, and here). The point was to discuss New York's attorney anti-solicitation rules, and see if they were effective by comparing the local attorney advertising response to two other disasters. The other disasters were the Staten Island Ferry crash in 2003 and the Metrolink train crash in Southern California in 2008. So now we can add another disaster to the mix: The Washington City Paper reports that: Lawyers Use Web Site, Google Ads to Find Metro Crash Victims (via Overlawyered). An individual named Jared Reagan...

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Michael Jackson: The Mother of All Malpractice Suits?

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:43:00 +0000

With Michael Jackson's sudden death yesterday at 50 have come swirls of rumors about prescription medications he was taking for dancing related injuries. And if toxicology tests show over-medication being a substantial cause of death, that leads to the inevitable questions regarding potential medical malpractice as well as potential criminal liability. So these are the issues and questions that would/should float about if those rumors prove accurate: 1. Were the medications all provided by a single doctor? If the self-proclaimed King of Pop was getting all the medication from one place, then the prescribing doctor ought to have a good lawyer due to issues of criminal prosecution...

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Why is LegalX.net Spamming Me? (Ethical Issues with Attorney Search Sites)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:43:00 +0000

LegalX.net is one of the gazillion attorney search sites that seem to float about the web. You pay them a fee, and they add you to their directory while they try to hustle clients. Many of them seem to me to have questionable ethics. But this one, LegalX, has been trying to spam the comments of my blog like crazy over the last couple weeks. And it appears they are doing it to others. Now I'm used to getting comment spam from various companies hustling gold, drugs and knickknacks of all sorts. And even on occasion from lawyers. But I've never been hit with this kind of persistence from a law firm or lawyer search company. This is interesting on two different levels. First, attorneys that...

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Welcome Washington Time Readers (And Sonia Sotomayor Fans)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:14:00 +0000

I am quoted in an editorial of The Washington Times for Wednesday, June 24 (Sotomayor's Ethical Oversight). The editorial deals with Sotomayor's former firm Sotomayor & Associates, when there don't appear to have been any associates. My original post can be referenced here: Did Sotomayor Violate NY Ethics Rules in Private Solo Practice with "& Associates" Name? The first half of the editorial comes pretty much straight from my posting. From there the Times goes off on a tangent trying to find greater significance. I will leave it to others to comment on whether the Washington Times took a long stretch in the significance of the violation. (For the last two weeks I've been too...

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Linkworthy (Round-Up of Round-Ups)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:36:00 +0000

I've been way too busy to post much of anything this week, but these round-ups have a ton of great stories: Ron Miller has personal injury related links; TortsProf with the weekly personal injury law round-up; Nikki Black rounds up New York's legal news; Blawg Review #216 is up at Family Lore. I've been called a lot of things in my life, but this is the first time I've been called a Lord.

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The Deadlocked NY State Senate and The Big Cookie Solution

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:11:00 +0000

The New York State Senate is now deadlocked at 31-31, and the lawsuit to impose a judicial solution on a legislative problem was tossed out today. What to do with this mess? The solution is actually quite easy. First, the idea of one party or the other being in charge because one particular vote was legitimately taken or not is a waste of time. For elevating form over substance is useless when both parties have the power to deadlock Albany. To get anything done, an agreement is necessary. The solution for the Senate is the same one my father used for dividing The Big Cookie between two sons. One kid cuts it in half and the other kid gets to pick which one he wants. That way the cutter...

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Shortening the RSS Feed - Some Blog Changes

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:45:00 +0000

Over the last couple of months I've had a couple folks scrape all the content from my RSS feed and use it on their own "blogs." I use quotes because they looked like they had no other purpose than taking the content produced by others and surrounding it by ads for their own commercial benefit. I made clear to them that simply because content is syndicated in an RSS feed doesn't give them the right to scrape it for their own. Nevertheless, to prevent this in the future, I'm going to experiment with truncating the RSS feed. If folks find the lede interesting, they can then come to the site and read the rest. It isn't really the way I want to blog -- reading this stuff should be easy -- but...

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Linkworthy

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:24:00 +0000

The Citizen Media Law Project does a step-by-step analysis of how Tony La Russa's lawsuit against Twitter went viral; Did a local news reporter cross the line of propriety here in a Sexaholics Anonymous report? In an breathless "expose" ... an obviously inexperienced "investigative" reporter for a local cable news organization climaxed her over-the-top report by melodramatically bursting into a closed meeting of Sexaholics Anonymous "demanding answers" to her "disturbing questions" and expressing "frustration" that the startled sex addicts would not interrupt their meeting to sit down with her for impromptu on-camera interviews.White Coat Notes continues his series of what it's like to be...

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NY Ct. of Appeals: Attorney Newsletter Not an Advertisement (And What of Blogs?)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:59:00 +0000

Two New York blogging attorneys found themselves in a decision today out of our highest court, in Stern v. Bluestone. Andrew Bluestone writes the New York Attorney Malpractice Blog, and was sued when he sent his newsletter via fax to local attorneys. He was defended by Scott Greenfield, of Simple Justice fame, who argued the matter in the Court of Appeals. And since SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor may play a roll in the First Amendment issues I'm about to discuss, this could be particularly interesting. Bluestone was sued by Peter Stern, another local practitioner, for violating a federal law (the Telephone Consumer Protection Act) that prohibits using a fax for unsolicited...

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Ken Feinberg: The New Human Punching Bag

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:00:00 +0000

You have to admire the mettle of the man. Kenneth Feinberg is stepping into a new role that comes with this one thankless guarantee: No matter what he does people will hate him. The President called and he answered the call. But the role that he fills is one of overseeing executive compensation for companies that had been bailed out by the government, to see that taxpayer money isn't wasted on overpaying executives. Is that easy? Of course not. Many revile the policy and the whole concept of such stringent government oversight. And that means, as the government's delegated front man on the issue, that he will suffer the slings and arrows of angry people. People will yell that he allowed...

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New York's Extraordinary Government

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:56:00 +0000

Let me briefly summarize the state of New York's government. As I write, the Senate is in disarray due to a coup. The Republicans were ousted in the last election after holding that chamber for 40 years. Eight months later two Democrats allegedly switch sides and dump their party in the name of "reform" but no one can decide if the vote was legal. And they are actually fighting over who has the keys to the Senate chamber. Our governor was ousted in a prostitution scandal. Our new governor has approval ratings so low you need a shovel to find them, largely due to his fiasco in trying to replace Senator Clinton. Our judiciary has sued the governor and the legislature because they haven't...

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Welcome New Readers (USA Today, Fox Business News -- Ken Feinberg Story)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:02:00 +0000

After my interview with the Financial Times the other day regarding Ken Feinberg -- Special Master of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and now the Obama administration's delegated compensation czar for bailed out companies -- I was called by USA Today and Fox Business News. I did the Fox segment yesterday live on Neil Cavuto's show at 6 PM. The role of talking head on a live cable news show was something new for me. While I'd been interviewed many times before for news shows (where I sometimes hit the cutting room floor), I'd never done the live thing. The subject was my experience with Feinberg in conjunction with the Victim Compensation Fund, in an attempt to glean some tidbits...

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Brooklyn Man Sues Match.com for Humiliation and Disappointment

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:44:00 +0000

A Brooklyn man filed suit yesterday against Match.com for humiliation and disappointment. That humiliation, of course, will be nothing compared to being known as the guy that sued Match.com for humiliation and disappointment. His name is Sean McGinn. It seems that the women McGinn was sending missives to were no longer on Match.com, but the service kept their names and profiles up anyway. Having sent hundreds of letters, this tended to waste a lot of time. He was steamed. He started a class action based on deceptive practices. But it seems to me that if he has a legitimate beef about his time being wasted, then that is what he should have sued for. Overreaching into the realm of a...

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NY Ct. of Appeals: Code Violation Is Insufficient In Dog Case

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:59:00 +0000

The New York Court of Appeals today tossed out a personal injury case premised on a violation of a local leash law. (Petrone v. Fernandez, June 9, 2009) The dog in question here did nothing wrong. Rather, the defendant's rottweiler was lounging on the unfenced lawn of its owner and the plaintiff, a mail carrier, made a bee-line back to her car in panic. She broke her finger trying to leap through the window to safety. The dog never barked or attacked and returned to its owner when called. Plaintiff wanted to prove negligence against the owner by virtue of the unleashed dog, as being unleashed was a violation of a local ordinance. But New York's high court tossed that out, since a suit...

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Welcome New Readers (Financial Times of London, Ken Feinberg Story)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:10:00 +0000

For those finding this site after reading my quotes in a June 9th story in the Financial Times (of London), welcome. (For other readers, the story deals with appointment of former September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Special Master Kenneth Feinberg to "a new role overseeing banks' compensation schemes to ensure that they do not reward unnecessarily risky behaviour." See: From 9/11 heartache to bankers bonuses) I had previously written quite a bit of praise of Feinberg and his endless hours hearing the stories of victims in order to administer the fund that had been set up in the wake of the attack. (See: The Days After September 11th -- A Tribute To An Attorney) From the article...

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What It's Like To Lose

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Turkewitz) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:16:00 +0000

There is no way to get around it: If you try cases for a living you will lose some. That's just the way it is. But it's not exactly the stuff you would read on someone's website or firm brochure. Writing about your losses is the biggest taboo there is. So I guess that's what blogs are for. While someone at some point must have written on what it is like to lose a trial, I surely can't find it. So, taboos be damned, here goes. First off, there are different ways to lose a case. It could be the failure to present a bit of evidence. It could be a judge looking to torpedo your case or an unethical opponent. A pure question of fact (who had the green light?) could do it. Or just a case...

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