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A report in the New England Journal of Medicine confirms a 2002 study that arthroscopic knee surgery is not effective in reducing the joint pain or stiffness associated with arthritis. Arthritis is caused when cartilage that protects bones at the joints (knee, hips, shoulders, hips) wears down abnormally, causing pain and stiffness due to the bones rubbing together. Arthritis affects approximately 27 million Americans, usually beginning after age 40.

Arthroscopic knee surgery is a technique in which the surgeon is aided by images from a camera in the joint. It is most commonly used in repairing injuries such as ligament and cartilage tears. in 2006, there were 985,000 arthroscopic knee surgeries in the United States, according to figures for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those surgeries, approximately 200,000 to 300,000 were performed to treat arthritis.

The study in question examined 178 adults with moderate to severe arthritis who underwent arthroscopic surgery, during which bone and cartilage are removed with tiny incisions. The main conclusion, as stated by Dr. David McAllister, associate professor of orthopedic surgery at UCLA, is that: “…for this level of arthritis, surgery is not any better than nonsurgical treatment…[including physical therapy].”

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https://www.injurylawny.com/The American Association of Justice recently released their report named “The Ten Worst Insurance Companies in America: How They Raise Premiums, Deny Claims, and Refuse Insurance To Those Who Need It Most.” In the report, Allstate is cited as the worst insurance company in the U.S. The methods by which Allstate obtained its “award” are essentially the tactics that this writer has been seeing more insurance companies adopt each year. That is, they deny claims, delay payment as much as possible, even in the most clear cut cases, and defend cases to trial that ought to be settled out of court. To give a classic example of Allstate and State Farm’s tactics, (State Farm was ranked as 4th worst, but in my opinion, they should be ranked a very close second behind Allstate) in a Brooklyn car accident case about four years ago, my client was in a car that was rear ended by a driver who was later convicted of DWI. He suffered a severely injured shoulder which required surgery, as well as 4 herniated discs. Allstate’s driver had a minimal insurance policy. Rather than settle the case, when their driver was 100% at fault and the injuries he caused were severe, Allstate delayed, fought, and defended an indefensible case, all in an effort to try to get our office to accept a slightly lower offer, which we ultimately refused to do and Allstate had to pay the policy anyway. I would love for someone to explain to me exactly how my client, or Allstate’s insured, were “in good hands with Allstate.”

Allstate began the strategy that resulted in its status as worst insurance company in the mid 1990’s when it hired the “efficiency” consulting firm McKinsey & Company, who specialize in redesigning product delivery systems for Fortune 100 companies to maximize profits. McKinsey created a plan for Allstate’s claims operations known as the “Claims Core Process Redesign” or simply CCPR. According to the author of “From Good Hands To Boxing Gloves”, David Berardinelli, CCPR has generated between $15 to $25 billion in excess profits for Allstate’s stockholders.

The ranking of the 10 worst insurance companies by the AAOJ is as follows: 1) Allstate, 2) Unum, 3) AIG, 4) State Farm, 5) Conseco, 6) WellPoint, 7) Farmers, 8) United Health, 9) Torchmark, and 10) Liberty Mutual.

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New York City Councilman David Weprin has introduced a bill which would ban the sending or reading of text messages while driving within New York City. As the Queens Democrat stated: You’re not looking at the road and you don’t have both hands on the wheel when driving while text messaging… the probability for auto accidents is too high to ignore.” The bill will be modeled after New York State’s ban on the use of cellphones while driving, which imposes a $100.00 fine for this violation of the New York Vehicle & Traffic Law.

The proposal was prompted by the tragic fatal car crash in New York’s Finger Lakes region last summer when 5 teenage girls riding in an SUV died. The accident investigation revealed that the driver was sending a text message when she swerved into oncoming traffic and the vehicle collided with a tractor-trailer.

There are only four states that currently ban texting while driving, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association–Alaska, Minnesota, New Jersey and Washington. Legislation to do the same is under consideration in 16 other states, according to Mr. Weprin’s staff. Based on a 2006 study by Nationwide Insurance, 19% of drivers text message at the wheel, including a whopping 37% of drivers between the ages of 18 and 27.

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Deaths such as actor Heath Ledger’s drug overdose from a mixture of medications have soared since the 1980’s according to a study published in The Archives of Internal Medicine yesterday. The authors studied 50 million death certificates since 1983, and found that there were more than 224,000 fatal medication errors, including mixing prescription drugs with alcohol and street drugs. Astonishingly, deaths from medication mistakes at home have risen 700 percent from 1983 to 2004, with 1,132 deaths in 1983 and 12,246 in 2004.

This huge increase in fatalities is attributable to several factors, including the widespread home use of prescription medications like Oxycodone, (which 25 years ago was much more likely to be prescribed in hospitals than for home use), people sharing prescriptions, patients ignoring the risk of mixing alcohol with prescriptions, and as in the case of Heath Ledger, the mixing of medications which are contraindicated. The huge increase in deaths is highest among people in their 40’s and 50’s.

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There was a shocking and sobering story on the ABC’s 20-20 program several weeks ago. Tires sold throughout this country in stores such as Sears, Wal-Mart, and Goodyear have expiration dates, and become dangerous after 6 years regardless of whether they have ever been placed on a vehicle and put in use. Despite this fact, and the tire manufacturers and retailers’ knowledge that unused tires are dangerous after several years, they are routinely sold as new to unsuspecting consumers, often with tragic results.

The headline story was that of 19 year old Andy Moore, who was driving his family’s van on a graduation trip to Canada with a friend. Although the tires on the van had been purchased 4 years earlier and appeared to be in good shape, they were in fact 9 years old, and very dangerous. The accident was caused when the tread on one of the tires literally peeled off, Andy lost control of the vehicle, and Andy and his friend were killed in the accident. Apparently, as in numerous cases across the country, the tires on the Miller van had been sitting on the retailer’s shelves for years, looking new, but drying up and becoming increasingly dangerous.

The 20-20 story was very informative in showing consumers how to tell the expiration date on these dangerous tires. At the very end of the series of numbers along the side of the tires, are numbers such as “414” or “4202”, for example. The first number, “414”, means that the tire was manufactured in the 41st week of 1994! The second number, “4202”, signifies that the tire was made in the 42nd week of 2002. One commentator noted that the tires are “like ticking time bombs on people’s cars”, and in England, unlike the United States, dealers are now warned to stop selling any tires that are six years old or older. 20-20 found 12 year old tires being sold as new in a New Jersey Sears, a 7 year old tire sold as new in an Indianapolis Wal-Mart, and 9 year old tires sold in a San Francisco Goodyear store. In one instance, the salesperson acknowledged that the tires were old to the 20-20 narrator, and suggested that the tire should be used as a spare tire only!

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90 year old Henry S. Piotrowski of Staten Island was mauled by two pit bulls in his yard earlier this month, causing severe injuries which required doctors at Richmond Hospital to amputate one leg. The two male pit bulls were apparently owned by Mr. Piotrowski’s neighbor, and managed to get into the yard through a fence which separated Mr. Piotrowski’s house from the dog owner’s residence. Another neighbor, Reginald Bell, stopped the pit bull attack by scaring the dogs off with a butcher knife. He described the attack as like “lions attacking a gazelle.” The dogs were found by police around the corner, corralled, and taken to a Brooklyn shelter, where they were euthanized.

Under New York State law, a dog owner will be found legally responsible if he or she knew or should have known of the “vicious propensities” of their dog. Generally speaking, Pit Bulls are frequently believed to be dangerous by a large segment of the public, but the law does require that the dog owner have prior knowledge that the dog was dangerous (through prior bites or menacing) before they will be held legally responsible.

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Since 2007, there have been seven fatal motorcycle crashes in Westchester County . The vast majority of these Westchester County motorcycle accidents have been caused by two factors: speed, especially around curves, and the rider’s failure to wear helmets. Most recently, this past Sunday, Marco Gomez, a 28 year old man, was killed in Yonkers when he apparently lost control of his bike and was thrown into a chain link fence. Preliminary police investigation has determined that Mr. Gomez was not wearing a helmet and was driving at an excessive speed.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that registered motorcycles climbed to 6.68 million in 2006 from 3.9 million in 1996, with fatal motorcycle accidents increasing to 71.9 per 100,000 riders from 55.8 per 100,000 riders. During that same ten year period, car accident deaths dropped substantially due to increased seat belt usage and the ready availability of air bags in most vehicles.

The Westchester County Police has implemented parkway checkpoints (4 of the 7 fatal accidents have occurred on the County’s winding parkways) in an effort to reduce these tragic accidents. They hope that these checkpoints, in which bikers are stopped to determine if they have the proper safety equipment and documentation, will motivate motorcyclists to enroll in safety programs such as one given by Bob Simpson, owner of the Smart Rider Motorcycle Safety Program. Mr Simpson’s program emphasizes turning properly, as a large percentage of motorcycle fatalities happen on curves, due to speeding, swerving or braking improperly.

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Under a federal plan known as the “287g” program, local legislators including Ron Ball, R-Carmel are seeking to arm local police with the ability to start deportation proceedings against Putnam County illegal immigrants convicted of felonies. Essentially, Ball’s plan is to implement the federal government’s 287(g) program on a statewide basis, by which local police or correction officials would perform deportation duties normally handled by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement department, known as “ICE.” Advocates of the 287(g) program say that it only targets serious criminals who are in the U.S. illegally and whose immigration status is not discovered until after the arrest. However, opponents of the program are numerous and widespread, including such groups as The Hudson Valley Community Coalition, the Rockland County Immigration Coalition, and the Westchester Hispanic Coalition, who state that the program would destroy trust between police and immigrants and lead to racial profiling.

Damon K. Jones of the Westchester County Corrections Department noted that “involving local law enforcement in illegal immigration will increase the existing poor relationship of law enforcement and the immigrant and minority communities.” Another substantial problem which Mr. Ball will have to confront in attempting to implement his plan is that State and local officials have made clear that they will not take custody of federal detainees.

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This past week, our firm won a significant Westchester County car accident verdict in a case in which Allstate Insurance, as its custom, refused to make a reasonable offer. The case was simple. Our client, a woman in her late fifties, was hit by a car while walking to work and suffered a left hand injury, and other injuries of lesser severity. Allstate knows that attorneys are now fearful to go to trial in Westchester car accident cases, (not to mention slip and fall cases, dog bite cases or product liability cases as well), because Westchester juries tend to be very conservative and favor defendants, either because they think verdicts are too high in general, there are too many lawsuits, or their insurance rates will go up. Additionally, under the No-Fault Law in New York, plaintiffs must meet the “threshold”, which generally means that they must have a fracture, a disfigurement, or some type of permanent injury to recover any compensation. Thus, Allstate, more than any other insurance company, has a practice of forcing plaintiff attorneys to go to trial (Allstate’s strategy is well known and has been posted on various Internet sites) in the hope that plaintiffs won’t sue and lawyers won’t take cases when they see that Allstate is the insurance company for the wrongdoer.

We called Allstate’s bluff, (they offered a measly $10,000) and the jury awarded our client a total verdict of $105,000 for past and future pain and suffering. In addition to the fact that this Westchester auto accident jury taught Allstate the lesson that they will be held accountable when the evidence is there, the other positive development from this case was our experience with the new “Summary Jury Trial Program”, with Judge Gerald Loehr presiding.

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Our personal injury clients in New York slip and fall cases, automobile accidents, various premises liability cases and construction accidents are often contacted within a few days of the accident by “concerned” investigators hired by insurance companies (especially Allstate, State Farm, Progressive, New York Central Mutual and Countrywide) allegedly to “help” them or “assist you in any way we can.” This is insurance code speak for destroy your case before you get a chance to hire a lawyer.

The usual ruse will be that the investigator goes to the residence of the injured person, or that of the neighbor or relative, because he has “important information” for the person who’s been in the accident or needs to speak with them to make sure their case is “handled correctly.” In fact, these duplicitous and deceitful insurance representatives are looking for the following: a way to discredit the person; establish that they are working; find out what kind of work they do; what type of car they drive; or their previous medical history (such as a prior accident or lawsuit) that could be helpful to the insurance company in denying the claim. These “helpful” insurance representatives will go so far as to leave their card with their e-mail and cell phone information that can be accessed 24/7 to be of “extra assistance.”

We represent a client who suffered very serious leg injuries in a Westchester County car accident when an oil company van driver backed up his van in a gas station, knocking down our client, and then rolled over his leg, causing severe injuries. Despite the fact that we were immediately retained to represent our client, weeks after we notified the insurance company of our representation, they unethically sent one of these investigators to our client’s brother’s house, since it was “vital” that they speak with the client to make sure that he was “doing o.k.” Luckily, in our client’s case, the brother sent the lying investigator on his merry way with an admonition never to return, as we had warned our client ahead of time about this practice.

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