By: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Injury Lawyer)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Venue refers to the county in New York State where a lawsuit is fought and brought to trial. The party bringing the lawsuit selects the venue when filing a complaint. In personal injury cases venue can be especially important because juries in different counties have reputations for being more or less generous with accident victims.

For example, suing a homeowner in a county which has a jury pool heavy with homeowners might put the injury victim at a disadvantage. Some suburban counties have a reputation for stingy verdicts. Sue the police for false arrest or even for hurting someone in a motor vehicle accident and you may have greater success in some big cities than you might have elsewhere.

Some counties have "bifurcated" trials, where a jury first decides the issue of liability and then, if the injured person wins, goes on to a second trial on the issue of damages, or how much money the accident victim recovers (which could still be zero). Other counties have a "unified" trial, where liability and damages are decided together. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages or the injured personal injury plaintiff.

The general rule for selecting proper venue is set forth New York's Civil Practice Law and Rules, Section 503. This law provides that venue for a lawsuit is usually in the county where one of the parties resides when the case is started. This rule changes for corporations and various other types of lawsuit defendants.

Of interest is the rule for lawsuits against municipal defendants - such as The City of New York. Civil Practice Law and Rules Section 504 requires that The City of New York must be sued in the county where the claim arose, usually that means the county where the accident happened.

Improper venue can be changed under Civil Practice Law and Rules Section 510 by a defendant applying to the court for a change of venue, showing that the venue chosen was improper, that an impartial trial can not be held in the county selected, or even that the convenience of material witnesses and the ends of justice would be promoted by the change.

Every litigating personal injury attorney has his or her own ideas about which counties are preferable to others in bringing different types of accident claims.

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Injury Lawyer) In a lawsuit to recover for personal injury suffered in a motor vehicle accident, sometimes liability is clear cut. When I represent a client in a lawsuit claiming injury because a car rear-ended his or her vehicle, or because the other car ran a stop sign, I usually file papers with the court, known as a "motion," seeking "summary judgment." This means that I am asking the judge to direct a favorable verdict for my client based just on the papers submitted, without need for a jury trial. Winning such a motion saves considerable time and expense later, makes a case far easier to settle, and even starts statutory interest running on the eventual judgment against the defendant. However, winning a summary motion still leaves for a jury trial the determination of how much money the injured person's injuries are worth, and even to determine if the injured person breaches New York State's No-Fault "serious injury" threshold. (For more on this, see my free book, Warning! Things That Can Destroy Your New York Accident Case [And The Insurance Companies Already Know These Things].) A second benefit of making a summary judgment motion on the issue of liability is that it forces the defendant driver to set forth his or her version of the accident in writing, sworn to under oath. This saves time and money for my client as it makes an oral deposition of the defendant-driver unnecessary - because we learn from defendant's papers the defense position about the happening of the accident. We do not have to chase after the other side to force the driver to give a deposition, and we save the expense of utilizing a court reporter to transcribe the driver's oral deposition testimony. There are also occasions where the driver does not put in a sworn statement (or affidavit) and, under New York case law, that is an automatic win for my accident victim's summary judgment motion. Third and finally, even if the defendant-driver does put in papers and defeats the summary judgment motion, without a deposition he or she must still come to court to testify at a liability trial. Under certain circumstances if a driver can't be found (maybe he or she has moved away) or dies, the deposition testimony could be used as trial evidence against my client. Without that deposition the absence of the driver from trial pretty much guarantees my personal injury client a win; an additional benefit of making a summary judgment motion and getting the other side's story on paper.

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Brooklyn Injury Lawyer) This past Friday morning, October 24th, a hit-and-run driver struck and killed 74 year-old Alzheimer-sufferer Bridget Morrissey. She was crossing 75th Street at 14th Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, at 6:50 a.m. when she was struck by a west-bound car that kept going. She leaves seven children, 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. She was mortally injured in the accident, and declared dead at Lutheran Medical Center.

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Injury Attorney) When: October 11, 2008 at around 6:30 A.M. Where: 401 West 18th Street in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, the 7th floor apartment of the Balbuena family. Firefighters arrived within four minutes of a 911 call. While some battled flames that engulfed the kitchen and spread to a living room and long hallway, others rushed into the 20-foot long hallway and the three bedrooms and bathroom at the back of the apartment. In the bathroom, they found the mother, Delkis Balbuena, 34, with her 8-year-old daughter, Nanny Joa Balbuena, in a bathtub filled with water, where they had tried to seek refuge. A 3-year-old girl, Bet-el Joa Balbuena, was also found in the bathroom, under a sink. On the floor in a small bedroom at the back, huddled under bunk beds near a window, firefighters found the 40-year-old father, Maschay Joa Valdez, with his 15-month-old daughter, Ruth Joa Balbuena, and his 10-year-old son, whose name was not released. "It was not a big bedroom," Deputy Fire Chief James Daly said. "They were definitely trying to make their way out." Witnesses said the victims were unconscious when firefighters brought them out of the building. "The firemen were giving them CPR but that wasn't helping. The kids weren't breathing." Smoke inhalation injured and killed them. The 10 year-old boy, the only survivor of the fire, was transferred from St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, where he was pronounced brain dead. (Jacobi has a hyperbaric chamber that treats victims of smoke poisoning by increasing the oxygen flow to body tissues.) Contributing to the fire: 1. The place where the fire began and layout of the apartment contributed to the deadliness of the fire. The only door opened onto a small foyer, with the kitchen to the left and a living room to the right. Beyond those rooms, a long hallway leads to three bedrooms and the apartment's only bathroom at the back. Fire officials said the long hallway acted like a chimney, drawing smoke from the kitchen - which was near the front door - into the living quarters in the rear. "It was intense heat that trapped the family in the back," said Deputy Chief James Daly. The fire quickly engulfed the kitchen and spread to the living room, blocking the exit, Chief Daly said. "That fire didn't allow them to get past the door," he added. "They were trapped in the rear." As smoke filled the rooms and flames spread, the family apparently retreated along the hallway to the back of the apartment. "That narrow hallway is now basically a chimney that they're trying to get down, and they can't," Chief Daly said. Recommended was for them to have shut the bedroom doors and use wet towels to cover the openings at the bottoms of the doors, and wait for rescue by fire fighters. 2. Smoke detector disabled. The apartment's partially-melted smoke detector had been doubly-disabled. It should have been wired into the building electrical system, and had a battery back-up. The battery had been removed and the wires disconnected, the Fire Department said. A working smoke detector might have saved the six. Comment: Make sure you have working smoke detectors - press that "test" button.

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Injury Lawyer) An article appeared in one of my local daily newspapers today about people afraid their bank will fail and they'll lose their money. This despite FDIC insurance on bank accounts being raised from $100,000 to $250,000. A big picture of a Manhattan man who just withdrew his life's savings from his local bank. He's flashing a shoe box with his cash in it - he plans to take it home. Any thieves out there, please look away. It seems a lot of consumers are afraid of bank failure and taking drastic measures to protect their hard earned savings. Many are investing their money in precious metals: gold, silver, and the like, or real estate. Experts agree that taking out your money in a panic is probably a bad idea. A spokesman for the American Bankers Association points out, "Not one penny of insured deposit has ever been lost by a depositor throughout the entire history of the FDIC." Flash back to the failure of IndyMac Bancorp Inc. earlier this year. Customers lined up to pull out as much money as they could from the failed financial institution. The mortgage lender, which succumbed to the pressures of tighter credit, tumbling home prices and rising foreclosures, is the largest regulated thrift to fail and the second-largest financial institution to close in U.S. history, regulators said. Some 10,000 depositors had funds in excess of the insured limit (then $100,000), for a total of $1 billion in potentially uninsured funds, the FDIC has said. Comment: Watch your account balances in any single bank and remember, money in a shoebox earns zero interest; and precious metals and/or real estate could tumble too.

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Brooklyn Injury Lawyer) The date: September 8, 2008; the time: about 8:00 at night. Jose Silva, age 43, of White Plains, Westchester County, New York, was driving his son and nephew in his 2004 Saturn and following his G.P.S.-based navigation system. It told Silva to turn right, so he turned right. Right on to Metro-North railroad tracks. Now you know this wouldn't be much of a "Really Dumb Stuff People Do" accident story if Silva's car didn't get stuck on the train tracks, which it did: the car got stuck on the train tracks. Fortunately, Silva and his passengers fled his car before it got hit by a Metro-North commuter train, which stranded some 400 passengers for hours. Thankfully, no one on the train was hurt or injured. Some interesting asides: 1. Authorities gave Silva three summonses, claiming he had adequate warning of the presence of the train tracks. 2. Silva claimed that some seven minutes passed before the train crushed his automobile, and that he had called "911" to try to stop any trains. Metro-North said that Silva might have had a chance if he had dialed an MTA hotline number posted at the intersection - 888-MTA911PD, which would have cut steps out of the train-stopping process. (One wonders if an all numeric telephone number might make more sense.) 3. The same kind of car accident occurred on January 2nd, when a different driver, Bo Bai of Sunnyvale, California, made the same turn in a rental car at the direction of his in-car navigation system. He was not hurt in that incident, but was also ticketed for blocking the Metro-North tracks. Commentary: Moral of this story is, I guess, don't blindly follow your navigation system - but why should I even need to say this?