Posted on October 12, 2016 in Car Accidents

Previous posts here have discussed the aspects of negligence, as it is generally the most widely used cause of action in civil lawsuits in Connecticut when a person has been injured in a motor vehicle accident caused by someone else. Understanding the basics of such a claim and the elements is important, but so too is knowing the possible defenses a negligent driver might use to attempt to avoid liability.

One of these defenses is called "sudden emergency," and it is an attempt by a person who took an action that would have otherwise been negligent, and attempt to rationalize it by showing reasonable people would have acted in the same manner due to some particular circumstances. In normal circumstances, as we have seen, a plaintiff must show that the defendant had a legal duty, that duty was breached and that the breach was both a direct and proximate cause of a plaintiff’s injuries.

However, a fact finder, usually a jury, may consider evidence that some emergency situation occurred which excuses the otherwise negligent conduct, even if the above elements are present. In such situations, the person accused of negligence must have acted as a reasonable person would have given the same circumstances faced by the supposedly negligent party. It should be noted that this, like most considerations, is an "objective" standard, and is predicated on the behavior of a hypothetical "reasonable person" rather than the specific individual involved or the individuals making the determination.

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 Posted on September 16, 2016 in Personal Injury

In this post, we’ll look a little more closely at what duty an owner may have to someone on the property without permission, i.e., a "trespasser."

The first thing to note is that trespassing in this instance may or may not be the same as the criminal definition of trespassing. A person may be a "trespasser" for the purposes of premises liability even if the person is not chargeable with the crime of trespassing. In general, a property owner owes very few duties to someone who is on the property without permission. For example, if the owner does not expect a trespasser to be there, the owner does not need to keep the premises in any certain condition with regard to the trespasser. The owner also does not have any duty to warn the trespasser, in general, of dangerous hidden conditions that may exist.

However, this does not mean that a property owner can never be liable for damages to a trespasser in Connecticut. For instance, an owner cannot affirmatively set a trap to injure a trespasser. Setting up a "spring gun" attached to a door mechanism, for example, may trigger liability if someone is injured by it, even while trespassing. Also, once the possessor of the land is actually aware of the trespasser’s presence, the owner owes a duty of due care to the individual. Finally, if an owner should know that children might be on the property, the owner owes a duty to keep them away or repair a condition that may result in an unreasonable risk of death or serious bodily harm. Under Connecticut premises liability law, a property owner may not have many duties to people trespassing upon the land, but the owner is also not completely immune to liability, depending on the particular circumstances.

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 Posted on September 07, 2016 in Car Accidents

Previous posts here have discussed the concept of negligence. Our readers may remember that in many car accidents a person suffering property damage or injury may be able to recover monetary damages from another person who was behaving in a negligent manner. The basic elements of negligence include that the individual alleged to be at fault must have had a legal duty, that the duty was breached and that the breach of the duty caused the damages to the victim.

In Connecticut, as in many other states, there are some situations in which the law does not require the showing of all these elements by specific evidence. One of these situations is termed "statutory negligence." The idea behind statutory negligence is that certain actions by a driver, in the case of car accidents, may be considered to be automatically negligent if the individual broke another state law, usually a criminal or traffic law.

For example, a person who has violated Connecticut’s reckless driving statute may be considered to have been negligent. Basically, if the jury concludes that the defendant’s behavior meets the definition of recklessness, as defined in the statute, they should consider the driver to have been negligent. The state reckless driving statute includes specific examples of reckless driving, which are travelling at a speed that creates a danger to the life of those who are not driving the motor vehicle in question and driving any vehicle on a public road at more than 85 miles per hour.

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 Posted on August 04, 2016 in Car Accidents

This blog has discussed various aspects of negligence, both when it comes to car accidents, and other personal injury lawsuits. The basic concepts in these cases are the same, though the facts are likely to differ widely. One concept that may be valuable to Connecticut residents who suffer damages in a motor vehicle accident is that of "comparative negligence."

Some readers may have heard another term — "contributory negligence" — before. This concept pertains to a person bringing a suit against another for damages when he or she was also partially at fault. With the traditional contributory negligence rule, if the person bringing the suit was at all at fault for the accident, even just a little, then he or she could not recover damages. This idea has been replaced in most modern jurisdictions, including Connecticut, by comparative negligence, which reduces the amount of damages a plaintiff may recover, but doesn’t necessarily bar them entirely.

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 Posted on July 07, 2016 in Firm News

This blog has been discussing the various elements of a negligence claim in Connecticut as they apply to premises liability cases over the past couple months. To review, to recover in negligence cases, a plaintiff generally must show that the defendant had a duty to the plaintiff, that the duty was breached, that there was an injury and that the breach was both the cause-in-fact and proximate cause of the injury. In this installment we will touch on the next, and probably most complex element of such cases: proximate cause.

A month ago we briefly talked about "direct cause" or "cause-in-fact." You may remember that this refers to whether the defendant’s act or failure to act actually caused the injury to the plaintiff. Proximate cause is similar but differs in one important way: proximate cause deals with what events are foreseeable. What this means is that the cause of an injury cannot be so remote from the defendant’s action or inaction that a reasonable person would not have foreseen the possibility.

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 Posted on July 05, 2016 in Firm News

Shelton, CT – A 53-year-old male massage therapist was arrested by Shelton police early Tuesday accused of sexually assaulting two female clients in May at the Coco Spa on Bridgeport Avenue in Shelton.

To read the full article, please click here

If this has happened to you or a loved one, we encourage you to contact our Bridgeport sexual abuse lawyers for a sensitive evaluation of your case. Please click here to read more about our attorneys and how we can help.

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 Posted on June 14, 2016 in Car Accidents

Once again, drivers in Connecticut rank among the most dangerous in the country. A study by NerdWallet shows that New Haven is the 8^th most dangerous city in the U.S. for driving and owning a car.

What does this mean for you? Read more to learn the risk factors and what you can do to protect yourself.

The study covers approximately 200 U.S. cities and considers the following factors:

• The number of car accidents
• The number of car accident deaths
• The average years a person has between car accidents
• The likelihood of having an accident relative to the U.S. average
• Auto insurance rates
• Auto theft

New Haven’s scores include an average of 6.3 years between car accidents, 8.4 fatalities per 100,000 people and an average insurance cost of $1,829. The city also ranks as "least safe" in the survey’s analysis of auto theft crimes.

As a driver in Connecticut, you may well be concerned about your safety. No one can control the behaviors of other drivers. You can, however, take precautions to protect yourself and your family in the car. In a dangerous driving environment, it is even more important that you ensure you are following the rules of the road. Consider these points:

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 Posted on June 10, 2016 in Firm News

This space has previously discussed what signs there may be that a loved one who is in a nursing home or assisted care facility is being abused or neglected. We have also touched on the fact that bedsores, which often are caused by failure of a patient to move, can become serious health problems. One possible cause of such effects is the use of physical or chemical restraints by a nursing facility.

The Connecticut Office of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman publishes an electronic brochure that summarizes some of the dangers of the use of restraints in nursing homes, and the reasons such facilities might use them. First, it defines both physical and chemical restraints. Physical restraints are relatively self-explanatory and include any physical contraption attached to a patient’s body to restrict his or her movement. Chemical restraints are defined as a drug that is used for the purposes of control or discipline and not to treat a patient’s medical symptoms.

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 Posted on March 18, 2016 in Firm News

A month or so ago on this blog we discussed the various types of status a person may have when he or she has been injured on the property of another. This status can affect the duty a premises owner has to the individual with regard to risks on the property. This week, we’ll take a brief look at one aspect of premises liability in cases involving invitees to a property. You may recall that an "invitee" is a person who is present on a property for the benefit of the owner or for their mutual benefit. This covers nearly all commercial transactions that occur in brick-and-mortar businesses. The aspect we will look at is called the "mode of operation rule."

At one time, the law in Connecticut required invitees to prove that their injuries were caused by a hazard that the property owner had notice of. That is, that the property owner knew that the specific hazard existed and took no steps to rectify it. This notice could be constructive; that is, the owner would be presumed to know of the hazard if one of his or her employees knew of it. This meant that plaintiffs had the burden of proof of showing someone knew about the specific danger that caused his or her injury.

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 Posted on February 11, 2016 in Firm News

Mistakes made by medical professionals can have devastating consequences. Despite their years of training, doctors and other people in the health care industry make errors that can harm their patients. In such situations, patients harmed by a medical professional’s error may want to take legal action. First of all, however, the state of Connecticut requires that anyone filing a medical malpractice claim based upon negligence submit a ‘good faith certificate’ along with the initial petition.

So what is a good faith certificate? Basically, under Connecticut law, the party or attorney filing the law suit alleging medical malpractice based upon negligence must certify that he or she has made a reasonable inquiry into the facts of the case and has a good faith belief that negligence has occurred. The next inquiry would logically be: "what constitutes a ‘good faith’ belief?" According to statute, the compliant should be accompanied by the written statement of a medical professional with similar practice area to that of the alleged negligent party saying that in his or her opinion there is reason to believe negligence occurred. This statement should contain a detailed explanation of how that conclusion was reached. The person given such a written statement must be qualified under the same rules used to qualify expert witnesses at malpractice trials.

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