Posted on May 09, 2017 in Personal Injury

It’s no secret riding motorcycles is one of the most dangerous forms of transportation. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), motorcyclist deaths occurred 27 times more frequently than fatalities in other vehicles, based on 2014 crash data. Here are some of the most common reasons bikers get into so many accidents.

Lane Splitting

Lane splitting is what happens when a motorcycle drives between two lanes of stopped or slow-moving cars. While in many states, this is illegal,in other states it is a widely recognized as a standard practice. However,accidents can occur because the bike is in such close proximity to cars,which are larger and can cause more damage. Likewise, being in between two cars reduces the space motorcyclists have in which to maneuver. So,if a car starts to change lanes without realizing a bike is next to it,the rider has less room in which to avoid the oncoming car. This is mostly the result of the fact that car driver’s don’t anticipate any vehicle or motorcycle will be passing them in slowed traffic.

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 Posted on May 02, 2017 in Personal Injury

Now that the weather is warming up, more and more people will be flocking to the water to cool off during the hot summer days. At the same time, hospitals around the country will see an increase in swimming-related accidents. More alarmingly, there will also be unintentional drowning,which is the 5^th leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). From 2005 to2014, there were more than 3,000 unintentional drownings, and around 1in 5 people were children 14 years of age and younger.

Children are, of course, some of the most vulnerable to swimming accidents.If someone leaves a gate open near a pool, a curious toddler might venture out into the yard and accidentally fall into the water. Kids are also not particularly strong swimmers, especially the younger they are. Once they fall in, if no adult is there to take them out quickly enough, they could sustain permanent brain damage or even death from lack of oxygen.

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 Posted on April 27, 2017 in Personal Injury

Car accidents can be particularly disorienting and stressful. People never expect them to happen, and when they do, they may be completely blindsided by the events. Likewise, accidents can be dangerous and can also often cause our stress responses to increase. Our heart rates intensify, and our adrenaline levels rise, which is our bodies’ ways of preparing us for danger.That same response, however, can often numb us to the situation at hand.Without thinking about it, you could find yourself apologizing to another driver involved.

While this is a natural response, it may not do you any favors in the long run. You and the other driver might not know who caused the accident. In fact, both of you might have contributed some part to it. However, if other people witnessed the events and stopped to help you, all they might be seeing is you apologizing to the other driver. If a police officer later investigates the accident,he or she may take witness statements that place you at the scene apologizing to the other driver. The other driver’s insurance company may use this as evidence you actually were at fault in the incident.

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 Posted on April 18, 2017 in Personal Injury

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2017,there was a total of 999 car accident fatalities in the state New York alone. In fact, car accidents are one of the leading causes of death and injury in the United States.Part of the reason people carry car insurance is to avoid costly medical bills and car repairs in the event they do get into an auto accident.

All states require people to drive with car insurance to cover the cost of any injury and damages in case of an accident. New York is no different.If you’re caught driving without insurance in New York, it is considered a criminal offense. All New York drivers must have a policy with the following minimum coverage:

• Property damage - $10,000 per accident
• Basic personal injury protection - $50,000
• Bodily injury - $25,000 per person up to $50,000 per accident
• Uninsured motorist bodily injury - $25,000 per person up to $50,000per accident

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 Posted on April 12, 2017 in Personal Injury

Real-time ridesharing is a type of service that began being offered only a few short years ago.It’s a service that arranges one-time shared rides on short notice.Typically, this carpooling uses devices such as smartphones and GPS devices to find and take rides. Two of the most popular services include Uberand Lyft, which have both been growing in popularity.

While the process seems simple enough-picking a destination, ordering a ride, paying through the app, waiting for the driver-using a businesslike Uber and Lyft to find a ride presents its own complications. For example, if you were driving your own car, you would know that you are either insured or uninsured and know how much your policy limit is in case an accident occurs.

However, when getting into the car of a complete stranger, you trust that they meet all of the following criteria:

• They can drive well
• They can drive safely
• They have insurance to cover damages

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 Posted on April 03, 2017 in Personal Injury

According to the Mayo Clinic, whiplash is a kind of neck injury that results from a powerful, rapid back-and-forth movement of the neck. It creates a motion like the crack of the whip. In the majority of cases, it’sthe result of a rear-end auto accident; however, it can also occur in the wake of a sports accident, physical violence, or other trauma.

Symptoms of the injury can include neck pain, stiffness, tenderness in the upper back, fatigue, and headaches. Less common symptoms include problems with concentration and memory, inability to sleep well, irritability,and ringing in the ears. Long term complications, however, can include chronic neck pain.

Normally, people who experience whiplash can expect to recover completely after a few months. In other cases, people might experience chronic pain as the result of the injury even long after the accident occurred. People rarely can predict the outcome of how whiplash will heal, but generally,chronic pain is more likely when the initial symptoms include rapid onset of pain, headaches, severe neck pain, and pain that radiates to the arms.

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 Posted on March 28, 2017 in Personal Injury

In the summer of 2005, the recently married Jennifer Hagel Smith was informed her husband, George Smith, was missing. They were on their honeymoon trip,a Royal Caribbean cruise in the Aegean Sea. The night before, both Jennifer and George were enjoying themselves on the ship casino, drinking and gambling until it closed. The next morning, 16-year-old Emilie Rausch discovered a bloodstain on the lifeboat canopy. George was partying the night before with three other men, who later became suspects in the investigation.

Jennifer, too, was under suspicion for the disappearance of her husband,though she claimed to have no memory of the night before. She was found at 4:30 in the morning passed out in the hallway, a blackout that could explain her memory loss.

George’s parents brought in Ivey, Barnum & O'Mara, LLC’s Michael Jones to help them investigate the case and to see if he could provide more answers. He immediately got to work perusing the ship documents and interviewing the 4 men last seen with George. Two of them plead the 5^th, one had a foggy memory of the events, and the last was serving prison time in Florida for trafficking. The man in prison, Greg Rozenberg, was the most forthcoming out of any of the suspects. All of the men claimed to have ordered room service at the time of George’s disappearance,but the timeline of the events is still suspicious. They were the ones who supposedly put him to bed before going back to one of their rooms and ordering room service. However, neighbors of George heard a loud commotion in his cabin around that time, and the ship made no record of a large room service order by the 4 suspects.

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 Posted on March 23, 2017 in Personal Injury

On September 18, 1966, Valerie Percy was murdered in her parents’ home in Kenilworth, Illinois. The attack was brutal, her cause of death being a fractured skill and 14 stab wounds. She was also so badly beaten she was beyond recognition. The police ruled out burglary, as nothing was taken. They also determined her attacker knew her. The crime suggests personal investment, and the family dog didn’t bark or cause any other kind of alarm during the attack. Authorities investigated thousands of people and tracked leads across the United States with no success.No one has ever been accused of her murder.

In September of 2016, a Cook County Judge ordered the Kenilworth police chief to release a 12-page memorandum, which outlined thousands of pages of secret evidence from the case. Most of the memorandum was redacted,making it almost as useless as the forbidden records. The reason for the redaction and the reluctance to release more details is that allegedly the investigation is still active. Later in December, a judge finally ruled that the thousands of pages of police reports related to the case will remain under wraps while the crime remains active. According to the judge, the release of the documents would, “jeopardize the investigation.”

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 Posted on March 14, 2017 in Personal Injury

Car accidents can be traumatic for anyone. Adrenaline runs high, and you might not notice an injury until much later, after your body and your adrenal system has calmed down. Likewise, even small fender benders can cause injuries, such as whiplash, which may not manifest until much later. If the accident was caused by someone else’s negligence, what do you do if you don’t discover an injury until much later?

The first thing you should do is see a doctor for treatment. Even if you don’t notice until much later, you need to take care of the problem as soon as you become aware of it. Taking action to solve your medical problem might be the evidence an insurance company needs to prove you’re not just faking an injury to get paid. Doctor’s don’t treat symptoms that aren’t there. If you’re getting treatment, such as physical therapy or medication, this will be helpful in a court oflaw to prove you sought help as soon as you realized you had a problem.

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 Posted on March 06, 2017 in Personal Injury

Car accidents are some of the most common ways people sustain injuries. Yearly, more than 2 million people a year sustain injuries or disabilities from collisions in the United States alone. While cars are designed to be as safe as possible,they can’t protect you from everything. Here are a few of the most common kinds of injuries you could get in a car accident.

Head/ Brain Injuries

You could sustain severe brain damage or mild concussions depending on the circumstances of the crash. If your airbag deploys on time, the force of the inflating item could cause you significant injuries, though they wouldn’t be as severe if the airbag had not deployed. Airbags have been known to cause concussions, bruising, fractures, hearing loss, eyeinjury, and irritation to the throat and skin. If your airbag doesn’t deploy in time, or you strike your head on something other than the steering wheel, you could sustain skull fractures, cuts, bruises, or more severe traumatic brain injury.

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