Albany Personal Injury Blog

By a vote of 45-1, the New York state Senate passed a bill aimed at curbing the dangerous influence of drunk driving in January of 2012.

Named after an 8-year-old girl who was tragically killed in a car crash in 2009, Abbagail's Law would make it illegal for a supervising driver to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs while sitting in the passenger seat. Abbagail's father was drunk when he convinced a 17-year-old family member with a learner's permit to drive him to the store so he could buy more alcohol.

If signed into law by the governor, a person supervising a driver with a learner's permit will be guilty of a Class A misdemeanor, which carries a fine of up to $1,000 and a jail sentence of up to one year. The law also creates an additional crime, aggravated supervision, which will be considered a Class E felony and punishable of a fine of up to $5,000 and a prison sentence of up to four years.

Concern about excessive taxation is not merely some Washington parlor game. In New York State, the concern about excessive taxes garners daily headlines - particularly in counties north of New York City. The problem affects both commercial and residential property and has been there for years.

The issue is well documented. A non-partisan research group, the Tax Foundation, has compiled data showing that 15 of the country's highest-taxed counties are in New York State, as measured by the percentage of taxes compared to home values. Business property taxes are also often excessively high, compared to the actual value of the property.

Cases of nursing home abuse at private residential facilities, VA hospitals and other locations in New York may be based on various types of harm, including physical symptoms such as bed sores, dehydration and malnutrition. In other cases, the harm arises from direct abuse, including physical and mental abuse, as well as sexual abuse.

Regardless of the injury suffered, nursing home residents who are harmed by their caretakers have specific legal rights that are detailed in New York's Public Health Laws. Section 2801-d provides that physical and emotional harm to patients, as well as financial losses and death, are subject to damages sufficient to compensate patients, with a minimum established figure of 25 percent of the daily per-patient rate assessed by the facility for each day that the injury exists.

Who is a better driver? A man or a woman? Ask any man and the answer is likely to be "a man." Ask any woman and the answer is likely to be "a woman." Well, recent research is supporting the ladies.

According to a new study from online auto insurer 4autoinsurancequote.org, male drivers are three times more likely to get traffic violations and cause 80 percent of all deadly or serious car accidents. The study, "Women Are Bad Drivers - Fact or Fiction?", reveals not only that men dominate nearly every category of traffic violation but also pay for it. Due to their more aggressive driving habits, men, on average, pay higher insurance premiums than do their female counterparts.

As parents and loved ones age, families are faced with the tough decision of whether or not to place a loved one in a nursing home or rehabilitation center. Families often times wrestle with this decision. It can be difficult to request a facility to care for a family member for an extended period of time, especially because the loved one is typically not able to speak up and ensure that they receive the care they need, and family members are concerned that their care will be neglected.

Recent allegations of nursing home abuse at Northwoods Rehabilitation and Extended Care Facility have again highlighted the reason many families wrestle with this difficult decision. Several nurses have been charged with failing to properly care for a patient at the facility in Troy, New York. The allegations have been brought by the family of an unnamed resident of the facility who had multiple sclerosis and was unable to move. Investigators had installed cameras in the room of the woman to document the care that she was receiving.

To enhance public safety, New York legislators passed the Move Over law in 2011, requiring drivers to shift lanes whenever possible to avoid police or emergency vehicles stopped on the roadside with red lights flashing. If it isn't safe to change lanes, drivers must slow down.

On January 1, 2012, the law was expanded to include maintenance and tow trucks with flashing amber lights, according to Online.wsj.com.

The law ─ called the Ambrose-Searles Move Over Act ─ was named in part for Robert Ambrose, a New York state trooper who was hit and killed in 2002 by an inattentive driver while Ambrose was filling out a roadside accident report.

Injuries to muscles, tendons and ligaments are considered soft tissue injuries. These types of injuries are usually sprains, strains or contusions (bruises) and do not involve the bones or organs. Such injuries may occur over a long period of time (often job related) or due to a single incident, such as an automobile accident. The most common example of a soft tissue injury due to a single event is whiplash, which is an injury to the neck due to a sharp backwards/forwards motion. Additional types of soft tissue injuries may include tendonitis, bursitis, damage to nerves, dislocation or tearing of a ligament, muscle or tendon. These injuries can be very painful and may take an extensive period of time to heal; some injuries may even be ongoing. If you have been injured, it is important to seek medical attention to evaluate your injuries and treat them. If you have suffered soft tissue injuries, a personal injury attorney may assist you in determining your legal options and seeking compensation for your injuries.

Research has shown that the quality of care received by patients at nursing homes depends on a number of factors, including, as the New York Times notes, the ownership of the facility. Generally, higher-quality care is received at nursing homes owned by non-profits, as opposed to corporately owned facilities.

There may be a number of reasons for the disparity in the quality of care offered at these facilities such as the need to drive profits at corporately owned facilities. Dr. JiSun Choi, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Kansas Medical Center School of Nursing, was part of a study that sought to determine of another reason, other than money, could play a role in the level of care provided. She was part of a study to determine if the feelings staff members had toward their jobs contributed to the quality of care.

Impaired driving can take several different forms - all of them potentially serious or even deadly. Statistics show that three of every 10 people will be involved in a car crash involving alcohol at some time during their lives. And that's not even counting the number of drivers who are driving with other drugs in their systems.

That adds up to a lot of drunk driving accidents in Albany and across the U.S, as well as a lot of drugged driving accidents.

As experienced New York personal injury lawyers, we know that the holidays are often an especially dangerous time for these types of accidents. Too many people get on the road after having too many drinks. Or they give in to holiday stress and medicate themselves with too many drugs, yet still think they can get behind the wheel and drive safety.

Sadly, such drivers often cause crashes that result in injury or death to innocent people.

Even if a driver is sober, it's cause for concern from a safety standpoint when someone is violating traffic laws and transporting drugs.