One of the most common questions I get in my office is “How much is my case worth?”
Every case has a different value depending upon the type of injuries suffered, the length and extent of your disability and whether or not you have any permanent injury. The reality is that we, as attorneys, cannot turn back the hands of time and put you back together again as if your injury or accident had never happened.
Even poor Humpty Dumpty could not be put back together again by all the kings horses and all the kings men.
Our clients come to us with injuries and disabilities seeking our help and guidance. The best that we can do to help them is to obtain full and fair compensation for the injuries that they suffered because of someone else's wrongdoing or carelessness. Our sense of justice and our law requires that injured victims be compensated for the harm they have suffered through no fault of their own.
As you explore the information contained on my website you will find many articles, free reports and videos that explain the different elements of compensation that you can obtain in an accident case, a medical malpractice case and a wrongful death case here in New York.
The success stories that you see here on this page represent a sizable portion of successes I've been able to achieve for my clients over the years. Some success stories are not included here since we are restricted from disclosing information about those cases.
You must read this disclaimer
By law, we are required to tell you that past results do not guarantee future results. It seems like common sense, right? However, there are injured victims who will read the success stories on this page and believe they have a similar type of case and for one reason or another believe that their case is worth the same or more in value. Let me dispel any such thought. As I mentioned above, every case is different. Your case may be worth more than your neighbor who had a similar injury. Then again, your case may be worth considerably less than someone you know with a similar injury. There many different factors that go into evaluating and ultimately obtaining a successful result.
An attorney's experience in handling your type of case is only one factor. Although it would be wonderful for an attorney to guarantee a particular outcome or result, the reality is that such a feat is impossible and unrealistic. For a true evaluation of the value of your particular matter, you need to speak with an experienced attorney who handles the type of case that you have. A thorough, detailed and full investigation must be done to analyze all the factors necessary to determine whether you have a valid and meritorious case. The full extent of your injuries and disability may not be known until much later in time. Or, you may still be under the care of physicians and require ongoing medical care.
If you suffered lost wages and expect to continue into the future losing income, that will also play a significant part in the value of your case, among many others. Read the results and success stories on this page with an understanding that for these injured victims, this the compensation I have been able to obtain for them.
As always, if you have questions about your potential legal matter, I encourage you to pick up the phone and call me at 516-487-8207 to schedule a free consultation. I welcome your call
Below are representative settlements and verdicts pursued and won by the Law Office of Gerald M. Oginski, LLC. After failing to reach satisfactory financial settlements with insurance companies, these New York residents came to Gerry seeking justice and fair compensation for the injuries they incurred as a result of a doctor’s, surgeon’s or hospital’s negligence, or from the negligence of a person or business entity. Gerry got them justice. Since 1988 Gerry has been helping injured people restore their dignity. Right now, you have a lot of choices to make and Gerry can help you make the choices that will get you what you need quickly, honorably, and with your dignity intact. Gerry will make every effort to help you maximize your benefits, while protecting you and your family.
Medical Malpractice
$6,000,000- Misread stress test leads to permanent heart damage - A young man had chest pain and was evaluated in an emergency room and admitted to the hospital. He was given a stress test and cardiac workup. Unfortunately, the stress test was misread, leading to devastating heart damage that could have been prevented.
(As much as we'd like to discuss more details of this tragic cardiac case, we cannot because of a confidentiality agreement between the parties.)
Awarded: $6,000,000- Misread stress test leads to permanent heart damage
$5,100.000 - A delayed obstetrical delivery resulted in significant brain damage to a beautiful little child. This case was settled through trial counsel shortly before jury selection was scheduled to begin. The failure to timely deliver the infant, we alleged, was a significant cause for this child's permanent brain injury.
Awarded: $5,100.000
$4,750,000 - A young woman presented to her doctor with complaints of a lump in her breast. The mammogram images were misread leading to a failure to timely diagnose breast cancer. The cancer spread throughout her body and ultimately killed her, leaving a young husband and three young children without their mother.
The case settled at jury selection when special trial counsel was sent to pick a jury. Had the breast cancer been timely detected, this young woman had an excellent chance of a cure as the mass was small and would likely have responded to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Awarded: $4,750,000
$1,550,000 - On Friday, July 23, 2010, a Westchester County jury in the Supreme Court of the State of New York determined that my client, A.F. was entitled to be compensated $1.5 million as compensation for injuries caused by a podiatrist during bunion surgery. Her husband, D.F. was entitled to be compensated $50,000 for his lost services claim.
The case involved a claim of a failure to properly perform foot surgery involving my client's bunion on her right foot. It was our claim that the podiatrist removed too much bone during the procedure, and improperly positioned the first metatarsal. As result, this changed the dynamic forces of her foot and forced her to bear most of her weight underneath the second and third metatarsals in her foot. We also claimed that the patient should have had her second and third metatarsals surgically shortened during her first bunion surgery. This would have prevented the problem from arising.
Instead, the patient developed pain, pressure and discomfort on the bottom of her foot following surgery. The podiatrist recommended corrective surgery to shorten the second and third metatarsals eight months after her first surgery. The patient became quite frustrated and no longer had confidence in the ability of the podiatrist. She then went to an orthopedic surgeon with a specialty in foot and ankle surgery in Manhattan. He performed surgery to shorten the second and third metatarsals, but because of the damage already taken place, his surgery was unable to fix the primary problem.
Since conservative treatment failed she's been offered additional surgery to correct the problem to shorten bones in her foot, or as an alternative, to undergo destructive surgery that will fuse bones in her foot. There are no guarantees that these surgeries will help improve her condition. At the present time, she has elected to deal with the pain and discomfort on a daily basis and may need to have one or both of these surgeries in the future.
After two weeks of a hard-fought trial in Westchester, and after listening to testimony from the podiatrist, the podiatrist's expert, our expert, the treating physician and the plaintiffs, the jury determined that this podiatrist departed from good and accepted podiatric and surgical care; that this departure was a substantial factor in causing my client injury, and that she was entitled to be compensated.
The jury awarded her $375,000 for past pain and suffering, for the last five years. The jury awarded her $1,125,000 for future pain and suffering, representing future injury over the next 30 years. The jury awarded her husband $50,000 for his loss of services claim.
This verdict represents a remarkable statement by a unanimous jury.
Awarded: $1,550,000
$1,000,000 - A young man with a suspected dislocated shoulder had his shoulder "reduced." This is a fancy medical term meaning they put the shoulder back in the socket. Since they had to manipulate the man's shoulder many times to get it back in, the doctors failed to recognize that they damaged the nerve leading from the armpit to the hand.
Importantly, there was fluid that compressed the nerve in the arm, causing a decrease and ultimately a total lack of blood flow to the nerve. The doctors failed to timely recognize this nerve injury. When they finally recognized the problem and took the patient into surgery, the damage had already been done, leading to permanent nerve injury.
Awarded: $1,000,000
$1,000,000 - A woman lost eyesight in one eye because a hospital failed to tell her about her brain tumor. This woman was involved in a car accident and suffered head trauma. She was taken to an emergency room where a CAT scan was done for her head. The doctor who evaluated the CAT scan correctly recognized an abnormal mass was growing in her brain-totally unrelated to her car accident and her recent trauma. The problem was that nobody told the patient about her growing brain tumor. This caused the tumor to grow and put pressure on the optic nerve, leading to blindness in one eye.
Awarded: $1,000,000
$850,000 -
The case involved the improper insertion of stents into my client's penis causing total destruction of the tube that carries urine from the bladder down into and through the penis. This tube is called the urethra. We alleged that the doctor never should have inserted stents into this man’s urethra and doing so was a departure from good medical care. Putting the stents in, taking them out, and putting two new ones in, destroyed his entire urethra.
Awarded: $850,000
$775,000 - A man lost eyesight in one eye because an eye doctor failed to recognize that the optic nerve was cut during surgery.
A man was mugged and suffered broken bones in his face. The muscle that controlled movement of his eye from side to side got trapped in a broken bone and needed to be removed. The doctor who did the surgery claimed to be proficient in this surgery and chose to do the procedure rather than let a more experienced surgeon do it. After the surgery, the patient had no vision. Even after immediate corrective surgery, the nerve that controlled eyesight was totally destroyed, leaving the patient with permanent blindness in one eye.
Awarded: $775,000
$750,000 - A woman died because her doctor failed to recognize massive infection following gynecologic surgery.
Awarded: $750,000
$700,000 - Baby suffered brain damage from botched delivery.
Awarded: $700,000
$580,000 - 67 year old woman aspirated while having a colonoscopy. The doctors failed to intubate, failed to give her sufficient oxygen, and failed to timely call an ambulance. She died two days later.
Awarded: $580,000
$500,000 - Failure to timely diagnose lung cancer resulting in death
Awarded: $500,000
$500,000 - Woman had to be emergently re-operated when knee surgery was botched.
Awarded: $500,000
$490,000 - This patient was told she needed a hysterectomy because of an abnormal pap test that strongly suggested the patient had invasive cervical cancer, according to the doctor. The hysterectomy was done and pathology revealed the patient did not have invasive cancer.
Awarded: $490,000
$415,000 - Woman died from failure to diagnose bladder cancer. She had been going to her local clinic for regular check-ups and for various complaints throughout the years. Urine tests revealed blood in her urine that was never followed up. Her complaints of spotting also were never properly followed up. In hindsight, these were significant warning signs that should have alerted the physician to get additional testing that would have revealed bladder cancer at an early stage.
Awarded: $415,000
$395,000 - A woman had laparoscopic gynecologic surgery to remove cysts on her ovaries. The surgeon failed to recognize that during the procedure he perforated her intestine. Despite continued complaints of abdominal pain the next day, the physician advised her it was 'normal' post-operative pain, and this woman died the following day.
An autopsy revealed a through and through perforation of the intestines causing bowel contents, to leak into her abdomen. She became acutely ill and died from a massive infection throughout her body.
Awarded: $395,000
$350,000 - 4-year-old girl was misdiagnosed leading to double pneumonia, surgery and loss of part of her lung.
Awarded: $350,000
$350,000 - Woman lost her uterus after doctors failed to recognize an infection following a tubal pregnancy.
Awarded: $350,000
$350,000 - A man asked for 6 dental implants, and was talked into getting 20 implants; 10 for his upper jaw, and 10 for his lower jaw. A dental implant is a titanium screw that is literally screwed into the bone that acts as a foundation for either a bridge, or porcelain teeth. Once the bone has healed, a post is placed on top of the implant, and then a cap or crown is put on the post. Or, a fixed bridge is made and then attached to the posts.
In this man's case, the implants were not properly put in his jaw, they were too close together and angled incorrectly. This dentist put an implant into the patient's sinus and failed to recognize it. He also created a fistula into the sinus and despite two attempts to fix it, could not, and never sent the patient to a specialist to fix it.
The patient also suffered nerve injury since the dentist never obtained a pre-operative CT scan to evaluate the patient's bone and nerve structure. One final point: The dentist inexplicably threw out 20-40 intra-operative x-rays, claiming he did not need them.
On the day of jury selection, I was able to successfully obtain a settlement of $350,000.
Awarded: $350,000
$325,000 - A family man died when a blood clot to his lungs was not properly treated, resulting in pain, suffering and an untimely death.
Awarded: $325,000
$322,500 - A young man put his arm through a window and cut his arm badly. In the emergency room, the doctor stitching him up tied off the ulnar nerve in two separate places. If that wasn't bad enough, he failed to recognize the difference between a bleeding artery and a nerve, and never realized the injury he created. The young man required 2 corrective surgeries and now has limited sensation in his hand.
Awarded: $322,500
$312,500 - A 25 year old woman had eyelid surgery performed that was botched and required corrective surgeries.
Awarded: $312,500
$300,000 - A man bled to death from a ruptured gastric ulcer from orthopedic pain medication.
Awarded: $300,000
$300,000 - Woman died from a misplaced feeding tube. This woman required a feeding tube after she suffered injuries from a house fire. While recuperating her feeding tube somehow became dislodged. When the doctors reinserted the feeding tube, they put in in the wrong place, causing all nutrition to flow into her abdomen, causing massive infection, leading to her untimely death.
Awarded: $300,000
$300,000 - Man died from misdiagnosis of mesothelioma.
Awarded: $300,000
$300,000 - A 79 year old man being treated for small cell lung cancer in one lung was admitted to the hospital to drain fluid from his lung. He had just started receiving chemotherapy. Fluid was building up in the lining of his lung, known as the pleura, and he was also becoming disoriented. In order to prevent him from falling out of bed, he was put into a vest restraint. Unfortunately, when the patient was moved from the ICU to the oncology floor, the nurse and the aide neglected to tie the restraints to the bed. The patient got up, fell out of bed, hitting his head and suffering severe facial fractures.
Since he had just started chemotherapy, there was no way to stop the bleed in his brain. He remained conscious for five days before lapsing into a coma and dying two weeks later.
Cause of death: Blunt trauma to the head.
Awarded: $300,000
$250,000 - Woman suffered coma and short term memory loss from improper administration of anesthesia.
Awarded: $250,000
$250,000 - A woman had spine surgery which went well. Three days later, she was unable to move her legs, leading her to believe there was a neurological problem. Ineffective communication with the doctor's office was a significant problem leading to a delay in admitting the patient to the hospital.
Once admitted, the "gold standard" test used to evaluate the patient's fluid collection in her spine was not done. Instead, other tests were done, without definitive results. This caused further delay in obtaining the necessary imaging tests to find out why the patient was having neurological symptoms.
Surgery to remove the fluid build-up was successful and after weeks of rehabilitation, the patient return to most of her routine and regular daily function.
The bottom line was that had the patient been immediately admitted and had surgery to remove the fluid build-up in the spine, the injuries and rehabilitation would have been much less than they turned out to be.
Awarded: $250,000
$240,000 - Woman had bowel perforated during laparoscopic surgery
Awarded: $240,000
$229,000 - A man broke his arm and was put into a cast. When the cast was removed, his arm looked like a roller coaster. He required surgery to re-break his arm and had hardware inserted to hold the bone together.
Awarded: $229,000
$220,000 - A woman suffered permanent bone loss because her dentist failed to recognize the extent of her dental decay.
Awarded: $220,000
$210,000 - A man had his gallbladder removed using laparoscopy. This is known as a Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy. The physician failed to recognize that he clamped off the common bile duct during the surgery. Shortly after, the patient returned with pain, vomiting and abdominal distension. Still, the surgeon failed to recognize the problem.
The patient ultimately was correctly diagnosed and required extensive open laparotomy to correct the problem.
Awarded: $210,000
$210,000 - A man had his gallbladder removed laparoscopically. Shortly afterward, he began having abdominal symptoms that required further work-up. Despite a worsening condition, the man was not seen back in the office until it was too late. By this time, he was in severe pain and could barely walk.
Emergency surgery revealed that the common bile duct had been clipped, causing terrible pain and suffering and temporary kidney damage. The common bile duct should never be clipped off during laparoscopic gallbladder surgery. Once the corrective surgery was completed, the patient required a few months of recuperation and was given a clean bill of health shortly afterward.
Awarded: $210,000
$200,000 - A woman who had a single compartment knee replacement, known as a "uni-compartment" knee replacement, had it inserted incorrectly. The hardware was never properly secured and the physician failed to take an intra-operative x-ray to confirm the correct placement. As a result, the patient was closed up, and told to have physical therapy. Almost immediately, the patient experienced pain in an area of her knee that she never had before.
Months later, another orthopedic surgeon took x-rays and confirmed that the hardware was not inserted correctly. Another surgery was required to remove the single compartment knee, and in its' place, this woman had to have a total knee inserted.
Awarded: $200,000
$200,000 - A woman needed emergency surgery when her first surgeon failed to remove a tumor.
Awarded: $200,000
$200,000 - Woman suffered bowel perforation during surgery.
Awarded: $200,000
$175,000 - A boy suffered the loss of a testicle because a hospital did not timely recognize that the testicle was twisted and needed immediate treatment.
Awarded: $175,000
$175,000 - Young man died after hernia surgery because he was given too much anesthesia that went unmonitored
Awarded: $175,000
$130,000 - Man had spinal fracture that radiologist misread.
Awarded: $130,000
$125,000 - A little boy suffered burns from removal of a cast on his foot from improper use of a cast cutter.
Awarded: $125,000
$90,000 - A dental patient was under the care of his dentist for over ten years. The dentist failed to recognize extensive decay, gum disease and bone loss during that time. The patient required dental reconstruction to restore his mouth to working condition.
Awarded: $90,000
$50,000. - Dental Malpractice with corrective treatment
Awarded: $50,000.
Eye Doctor Errors
$725,000 - Cataract surgery is supposed to make you see better. Unfortunately, when a doctor recommends having surgery when you don’t need it, the outcome can be life-altering.
A woman with "near-perfect" vision was told she needed cataract surgery. The reality was, surgery never should've been recommended for her. In addition, surgery never should have been performed for this woman with a very mild cataract. Following this “routine” procedure, she couldn't see. After two weeks of total frustration and being unable to see clearly, her ophthalmologist thought he may have made a mistake in calculating the strength of the intra-ocular lens that was implanted during cataract surgery.
The second surgery was performed much too quickly and failed to give the patient sufficient time to heal in order to allow swelling around the cornea to go down. To complicate matters, the eye surgeon had a very difficult time removing the first lens and then switching it out with a different strength lens. The second procedure was also a failure.
Currently, she has no usable vision in her damaged eye.
Awarded: $725,000
$500,000 -
That's what the patient said to the eye doctor. "I was told I only had a scratch on my cornea."
“You need surgery immediately. Go right to the hospital. I will call ahead and let them know you're coming.”
“But I just ate breakfast, how can I have surgery?”
“You need surgery immediately. If you wait, there's a chance you'll lose your entire eye. Don't worry about your eating, the doctors at the hospital will take care of it.”
The patient then rushed to the hospital and was immediately brought to the operating room. Since he had eaten earlier that morning, he was unable to be put to sleep under general anesthesia. Instead, the doctors had to sew up his eye while he was awake. They gave him numbing medicine in his eye, but he could see, hear the doctors and feel tugging and pulling while they were stitching up his eye.
Come back with me in time and find out what happened to this man that brought him to the emergency room.
This gentleman was a handyman who fixed houses for a living. One morning he stopped off to buy lumber and as he was pulling some lumber from the shelf, something hit him in his eye. He didn't know what it was. He went to wash his eye out but felt pain, irritation and began to tear. He went back to the area where the incident happened and could not find or identify exactly what it was that hit him in the eye. There was nothing sharp such as a nail, metal or splinter that might have caused this incident.
An ambulance was called and he was taken to a local emergency room. He specifically asked to see an eye doctor, and someone wearing a white coat proclaiming that she was a doctor did an eye exam on him. She came to the conclusion that he only had a scratch on his cornea and that he should follow up with an eye doctor, whose name she had given to him, in two days, if he is not better.
Believing this to be nothing more than a simple scratch that would eventually heal, this man went home despite the fact that he was experiencing significant tearing from his eye. What he did not know at that point was that the excessive tearing was not tears at all. Instead, it was fluid from within his eyeball that was leaking out. He had difficulty sleeping that night and this pillow was wet in the morning.
He got dressed in that morning, got in his car and went to work with a piece of gauze over his eye and scotch tape holding it so that it would catch all the tears coming out of his eye. After a few hours at work, the pain in his eye and face became so bad he had to go home and rest. Still believing this was only a scratch, he did not understand why he was having such significant pain.
His wife convinced him to contact the doctor whose name he had been given and make an immediate appointment. His first available appointment was the next morning.
The next morning, while waiting to be seen in the doctor's office, he went to get something to eat. Shortly after meeting the doctor and having tests performed, the doctor exclaimed “You have a hole in your eye and you need immediate surgery!”
“What do you mean I have a hole in my eye? The doctor at the hospital told me I only had a scratched cornea!”
Our Claim:
As a result of the two-day delay in diagnosis and treatment, this unfortunate gentleman lost the opportunity to have improved vision in his eye. As a result of emergency surgery two days after his original injury, he was left with virtually no usable vision in his eye.
The main issue in this case involved “causation.” It was our argument that had this patient obtained timely diagnosis and immediate surgery on the initial day of his eye injury, he would have had usable vision and not suffered the significant vision loss that occurred by waiting two days.
The defense took the opposite position. They argued that he would have needed surgery anyway, and that the outcome was not affected by the two-day delay. Each side retained ophthalmology experts who were prepared to come in and testify. Our expert was prepared to testify that the two-day delay was significant and that it deprived him of the opportunity to obtain the best outcome with early diagnosis and treatment.
The defense claimed that his injury was already preordained as a result of his initial eye injury in the store. Their argument was simple. “We didn't cause his injury nor did we make it any worse. While it is unfortunate that the person who examined him in the emergency room did not timely recognize the hole in his eye, that was not what caused or contributed to his injury."
In medical malpractice cases in New York we must show not only that there was wrongdoing, but that the wrongdoing caused injury and that the injury is significant and/or permanent. All of those three elements must be confirmed by a doctor who has either treated the patient or reviewed all of his records.
In our case, not only did we have a medical expert who had confirmed each of those elements, but the same expert also happened to be a treating doctor for this patient.
Three weeks prior to trial we entered into settlement negotiations with the defense and I'm happy to report that we were able to successfully resolve this case.
Awarded: $500,000
Gynecology Errors and Mistakes
$450,000 - Your doctor tells you to "sign here" and everything will be okay. You don't ask questions and you don't read the consent form since the doctor is so reassuring. You are in surgery much longer than expected. Nevertheless, the doctor comes out and tells your family everything went great. Unfortunately for this woman, everything wasn't that great. She had symptoms over the next few days to suggest that there were problems that should have been looked into. There were delays in recognizing she had a bowel perforation, or a hole, that was never recognized at the time of surgery.
No one recognized that this patient's continued complaints of abdominal pain, fever and infection could possibly be related to a perforation caused during her original gynecologic surgery. Her condition continued to deteriorate to the point where MRIs were taken and even then, when it was clear that she had free air in her belly the surgeon still failed to take her to the operating room in a timely fashion.
Corrective surgery done five days after her initial surgery required her to have a colostomy which continually leaked over the next three months. She required surgery to close a colostomy opening and she had to have further surgery as a result of a hernia that resulted from this corrective surgery. In her particular case, corrective surgery would have been required whether this had been recognized two days after her first surgery or five days after the surgery.
Awarded: $450,000
Wrongful Death Cases
$450,000 - Who would ever think that 9 months after having a bunion removed by a podiatrist, they'd be dead from a failure to diagnose and treat a bone infection?
That's exactly what happened to this woman. She kept going back to her foot doctor complaining of pain, swelling, redness. The doctor kept removing dead tissue surrounding the wound which never healed. He never considered the possibility that this patient had osteomyelitis, which is an infection in the bone. The podiatrist had plenty of opportunity to send the patient to an infectious disease specialist or to another doctor for a second opinion. The problem was, he failed to recognize the significance of her postoperative wound infection and did not realize how bad it was until it was glaring and any layperson would have seen how severe it was.
This woman's death was entirely preventable had this doctor recognized his limitations and that this wound was not healing.
Awarded: $450,000
Bicycle Accidents
$95,000 - A driver had just come off a highway exit and was approaching a T intersection controlled by a stop sign. The driver actually came to a stop. He intended to turn left, but inexplicably only looked to his right, at the same time he pressed on the gas pedal to go into the intersection. Bad move. Had he bothered to look to his left, he would have seen the bike rider that he crashed into. The bicyclist suffered a fractured finger needing surgery with pins; a torn tendon in his knee, requiring surgery to fix, and injured his shoulder.
The driver had a limited insurance policy of $100,000, and of that amount, I was able to secure a successful settlement of $95,000.
Awarded: $95,000
Negligence Cases
$150,000 - An apartment building in Queens was having its roof replaced. The roofers, while working with hot tar, caused a fire which destroyed the upper level of this apartment building. During the repair and renovation of the apartments, it was learned that there was extensive asbestos within the damaged apartments which required removal. All of my clients property had to be disposed of because of extensive water damage and the presence of asbestos.
After a lengthy and hotly contested property damage litigation we were able to successfully resolve this case prior to going to trial.
Awarded: $150,000
Car Accidents
$350,000 - A woman was crossing 23rd street at 1st Ave. in Manhattan, on her way to work, when she was hit by a Mack truck making a left hand turn from 1st Ave. onto 23rd Street. At that intersection there are at least three large "yield to pedestrian traffic" signs that the truck should have seen, but failed to see.
As a result of being hit by the truck, she was knocked to the ground where she suffered a fracture to her left wrist; was knocked unconscious, and had cuts and lacerations to her forehead. Her fractured wrist required surgery with internal fixators and external fixators to hold the bones in place while they healed. She remained out of work for six weeks.
Awarded: $350,000
$117,500 - She went with her co-worker for a ride after work. They were coming back from a restaurant on the way home. The driver of the car she was in made a left hand turn. Unfortunately, she failed to fully stop before making that left turn and failed to see the oncoming car. In fact, the driver had only gotten her license two weeks earlier and was an inexperienced driver. The driver even admitted that she wasn't comfortable making left hand turns.
That impact caused fractures in my client's dominant hand. She required surgery to fix the broken bones and had to have physical therapy following surgery and insertion of hardware.Since the hardware was painful, she had to have the hardware surgically removed.
At the beginning of our investigation, we learned that her coworker had only the minimum insurance policy on her car. This was devastating, since my client's injuries were worth considerably more than the basic minimum $25,000 policy. That is why it is so crucial to have supplemental underinsured and supplemental uninsured motorist coverage also known as SUM and UM insurance coverage. That type of insurance kicks in when the primary insurance policy is insufficient to cover the extent of the injuries someone suffered in a car accident. Paragraph my investigation revealed that there were additional policies of insurance available through the supplemental underinsured coverage in addition to the driver that hit them.
There was no question that my client's co-worker, who was driving the car, should never have made that left turn. There was no question that she did so improperly, not realizing or recognizing that the oncoming car was too close to make a safe left turn.
If you have questions about how accident cases work, I encourage you to explore my website http://www.oginski-law.com. If you have legal questions pick up the phone and call me at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at lawmed10@yahoo.com; I can answer your questions since this is what I do every single day. I welcome your call.
Awarded: $117,500
Personal Injury
$197,500 - Man had hand cut when bouncer in a bar hit him with beer bottle.
Awarded: $197,500
$185,000 - Woman slipped and fell on black ice resulting in femur fracture
Awarded: $185,000
$105,000 - 82 year old man fell into a trench while crossing street resulting in fractured elbow, ambulatory surgery and physical therapy.
Awarded: $105,000
$100,000 - Man crossing street at entrance to a parking lot hit by a car suffered serious injuries.
Awarded: $100,000
$50,000 - A young man was riding his bicycle home from work when a car, making a left turn, ran into him, causing a fractured arm and torn meniscus requiring surgery. Unfortunately, the car had only a limited insurance policy.