Menu
100% Free Consultation
718-539-3100menu
If you have been the victim of an attack by someone else’s dog in New York, the legal standard for obtaining compensation for your losses will depend on the type of damages you are seeking. If you are pursuing compensation for medical and veterinary expenses, there’s a strict liability statute that governs your claim. For all other types of damages, though, there is greater protection for the dog’s owner.
Essentially, strict liability means that you don’t have to show that the dog’s owner was negligent in any way. You need only show who owned the dog, that the attack was not provoked, and that you were either in a public place or legally on the dog owner’s property. Under such circumstances, you can recover any amounts you must pay for medical expenses or vet bills.
However, for other types of losses, including emotional distress, lost wages or income or loss of consortium, you must show that the owner knew or should have known that the dog had a propensity to be aggressive or to attack. In this respect, New York is what is commonly referred to as a “one bite state.” Unless you can show that the owner trained the dog to be aggressive toward humans or otherwise had reason to expect that the dog would bite you, the first bite does not impose any liability on the dog owner.
Under the statute, the court may consider “any evidence of a dangerous propensity.” New York courts have construed this fairly liberally, finding liability where a dog has been known to growl, snap or bare its teeth, or where the owner chose to restrain the dog.
To set up an appointment with an experienced New York motor vehicle accident injury lawyer, contact our office online [Link to Contact Us page] or call us toll free at 888-519-6400. Your first consultation is free of charge.
A Long Island man was arrested and charged with drinking and driving in the aftermath of a horrific accident that tore his car in half and left a passenger dead.
Police say that Police say that Shiva Sharma, a 32-year-old resident of Wyandanch, was driving in excess of the speed limit just before 4 am on Monday, May 30, traveling between W. 54th and W. 55th on Sixth Avenue, when he lost control of his Nissan Altima, went onto the sidewalk and hit a fire hydrant near the Warwick Hotel. The impact of the crash nearly split the vehicle in half, with the hydrant ending up in the middle of the car. Witnesses say that there were vehicle parts strewn for nearly half a block, and that there were personal items, such as tennis shoes, littered around the crash site.
A passenger in Sharma’s car, Juan Avila, a 33-year-old resident of Jackson Heights, died after being taken by ambulance to Mt. Sinai Roosevelt Hospital. Sharma was also taken to the hospital (Bellevue), where he was listed in serious, but stable, condition. Family members say that Avila, who worked for a company that sold pre-paid calling cards, left a four-year-old daughter behind.
According to police officers, Sharma was legally intoxicated at the time of the crash. He was charged with drinking and driving, and with vehicular manslaughter the day after the accident. Officials say that more charges may be pending, based on an ongoing investigation.
To set up an appointment with an experienced New York motorcycle accident injury lawyer, contact our office online or call us toll free at 888-519-6400. Your first consultation is free of charge.
For many, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are as much a part of their lives as a phone, computer or even a car. Most don’t think twice about posting pictures, messages and other information for the world to see. But if you have been injured because of someone else’s carelessness or negligence, especially in New York, you may want to give some serious thought to how actively you post to social media sites. Here’s why:
The phase of a trial during which the parties gather evidence is known as “discovery.” The state of New York has long had liberal discovery rules, requiring “full disclosure or all matter material and necessary in prosecution or defense of an action.” Under a 2011 ruling, a party in a civil lawsuit has a right to obtain evidence by any legal method that will “lead to the disclosure of relevant evidence or…reasonably…lead to the discovery of information that bears on the claim.”
So how does this relate to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? Well, if you are a regular user of those social media sites, you know that you can set your own level of privacy, so that posts are only visible to certain people. Accordingly, you might believe that you retain that right of privacy with respect to attempts to gather trial evidence from your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. But that is not necessarily the case in New York.
In a 2011 appellate court opinion in New York, the court held that a Facebook post was akin to a diary, and found that posting could be discoverable, regardless of the privacy settings the user had. That’s not to say that anything you post on a social medial site will be broadcast to a jury. Typically, the judge will review all proposed evidence, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media posts, to determine if they are relevant. If not, they typically won’t be allowed into evidence. But if they are, the user’s privacy settings will generally not preclude their introduction into evidence.
At Sackstein Sackstein & Lee, LLP, we have more than 60 years of experience protecting the rights of personal injury victims. For a free initial consultation,
contact our office online or call us toll free at 888-519-6400.
When you’ve been hurt because of someone else’s wrongful or careless act, one of your first thoughts is to seek compensation for lost wages or income, medical expenses and other damages. But what if the accident was partially your fault? Can you still recover a financial award to pay for the losses you’ve suffered?
For hundreds of years, the law of personal injury applied a concept known as the “contributory negligence” doctrine. Under the legal theory of contributory negligence, if you were negligent in any way and to any degree, and that negligence contributed to your injury, you could not recover damages from someone else for your losses. Because the doctrine seemed extremely harsh, and because defense attorneys would, often successfully, argue that a miniscule amount of negligence on the part of the injured party should absolve an egregiously negligent party from any liability, a new standard—comparative negligence—has become the law of the land in all 50 states.
Not surprisingly, though, there is no consensus on how comparative negligence should be applied. In the majority of states, the principle applied is what is known as “modified comparative negligence.” In those states, an injured party can only recover damages if his or her degree of liability falls below a statutorily determined level. Most states hold that level to be 51% (21 states) and all others adopting modified comparative negligence (another 12 states) find the level to be 50%.
New York, though, is one of only 13 states that apply what is known as “pure comparative negligence.” Under that legal theory, an injured party may still recover something, even if he or she is 99% liable. For example, if the total losses were $100,000, but the injured party was 90% responsible, he or she will still be entitled to $10,000 in damages.
At Sackstein Sackstein & Lee, LLP, we have more than 60 years of experience protecting the rights of personal injury victims. For a free initial consultation, contact our office online or call us toll free at 888-519-6400.