Practice Areas

SOME REPRESENTATIVE CASES:

• Eight year-old girl visiting a neighbor’s home bent down to pet Peek-a-Poo dog. As she bent down to pet the dog a second time, the dog, jumped up and nipped her on the lip causing four small lacerations, requiring 16 sutures to close. The injuries healed well, but there were small faint scars remaining. $25,000 settlement.

• Rear-end auto collision. 24 year-old wife and mother was driver who suffered post-traumatic facial palsy, requiring surgery. Permanent nerve damage. $250,000 settlement (defendants’ insurance policy limits).

• Slip & Fall in outside garden center of major retailer. 42 year-old unemployed husband and father suffered fractured wrist with non-union of fracture fragments. Multiple surgeries, culminating in wrist fusion. $750,000 arbitration award.

• Jet-ski collision. Two 14 year-old boys operating jet-skis. Collision between the two jet-skis crushed boy’s leg between the water crafts, resulting in a fractured femur (thigh bone), requiring surgical implantation of 15" rod and screws and subsequent surgery for removal of some surgical hardware. Liability hotly disputed. $160,500 arbitration award.

• 73 year-old retiree suffering from senile dementia, was struck by a municipal vehicle, while riding his bicycle in an urban area. Disputed liability. $150,000 settlement reached through facilitation.

• College student at family friend’s home to pick his sister up following her piano lesson. He bent down to pet small mix-breed dog which lunged at him and bit his nose. Small faint scarring on side of nose. Settled $28,500.

• 28 year-old wife and mother driving in a funeral procession struck broadside by an inattentive motorist. Multiple injuries. Settled bodily injury claim for $100,000 (defendants’ insurance policy limits). Also litigated dispute between victim and her No-Fault Auto Insurer for an additional $100,500 in wrongfully denied benefits.

• 49 year-old wife and mother suffered a scleral abrasion (scratch to the white of the eye) when hair stylist negligently poked her eye with a rat-tail comb. No permanent injury. $22,500 settlement.

• 38 year-old husband, off-duty police officer driving on freeway with wife, when struck by a truck which lost control on icy pavement, suffered two herniated cervical disks requiring diskectomy and fusion, shoulder injury, requiring surgery, thoracic outlet syndrome, carpal-tunnel syndrome and depression. $960,000 arbitration award including $25,000 award for wife’s loss of consortium.

• 16 year-old boy passenger in a pick-up truck driven by another 16 year-old who lost control on a gravel road, due to excess speed, left roadway and struck a tree. Multiple craniofacial fractures requiring reconstructive surgery, closed head injury and permanent facial scarring. $120,000 settlement ($100,000 paid by insurer and $20,000 paid by owner of vehicle).

• 55 year-old man walked onto next-door neighbor’s property to alert him to the presence of drainage tiles between the two homes, so neighbor’s moving truck did not drive over the area and break the tiles. As he spoke with his new neighbor, the man’s German Shepherd ran out of the house and charged the visitor. In an effort to protect himself, visitor turned his back on the dog. The dog bit him on the back resulting in deep bruising and puncture marks to the skin at the beltline. There was no permanent residual scarring. $10,000 settlement.

• 51 year-old married auto-worker with a history of herniated lumbar disk and prior laminectomy and fusion surgery decades before being involved in chain-reaction rear-end collision, suffered a cervical disk herniation, requiring diskectomy with fusion. He was unable to return to work and accepted an early retirement. $600,000 settlement.