Articles Posted in Nassau

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Depression is a disease that affects many Americans. In recent years as the unemployment rate has skyrocketed, depression has increased as well. Workers who find themselves in vastly different life circumstances than they had planned for, are likely to begin to suffer from depression even if they never have experienced problems in the past. A person who is injured while on the job and finds themselves disabled is more likely than any other unemployed person to suffer from depression related illnesses. A disabled Nassau worker has gone virtually overnight from being a strong active employed person to being bedridden for several days or weeks and unemployed. The new wording to the Family Medical Leave Act states that if a person is catastrophically injured on the job, their company is only required to keep their job open for them for twelve weeks. At the end of the twelve week period, that injured employee may be fired and a new person hired to fill their job. The days of companies and even government entities standing behind an employee who has been injured on the job are over.

That was the situation that one New York highway department worker found himself in when he was struck by a car while at work. He sustained serious personal injury from this accident in December of 1995. His spinal injury left him disabled and unable to return to work. He began to suffer from depression and in January of 1998, his wife found him dead by his own hand. She filed a request for workers compensation death benefits. Her contention was that her husband committed suicide because of his depression which was directly related to the accident at work. A Workers’ Compensation Law Judge agreed that the wife should be granted death benefits. The Workers’ Compensation Board determined that she should not be awarded death benefits because they found that there was no causal relationship associated to the accident and the husband’s suicide. The wife filed an appeal of their decision.

She based her appeal on the fact that death benefits are deemed appropriate if the work injury results in insanity, brain injury, brain deterioration or a pattern of mental deterioration which may culminate in suicide. She also contends that there was no lawyer on the board to evaluate the application of law in this case. According to the Laws of New York State, in order for this woman to be awarded compensation, she must show that there was a causal link between the accident and her husband’s suicide. In order to demonstrate a causal link, she must present competent medical proof that her husband suffered from a mental deterioration brought on by the accident that ended in him taking his own life. The board is required to give more credence to an opinion based on medical evidence, than they are their own opinions that are not based on medical knowledge.

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A Pensacola, Florida, man is accused of violently pushing his 4-month-old son which caused the child to suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Bond was set for the man at $150,000.

The 20-year-old father, of the 200 block of Marigold Drive was arrested and charged with three separate counts of aggravated child abuse.

As of late last week, he was still in the Escambia County Jail.

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A personal injury action arises out of a motor vehicle accident that occurred at the intersection of Oceanside Road and Erwin Place in Oceanside, New York. Among other injuries, the woman suffered a traumatic brain injury.

On June 30, 2010, the Court denied the opponents’ motions for summary judgment to dismiss the woman’s complaint. The Nassau Court determined that, as the woman had yet to testify at her sworn examination before trial, the accused men’s motion for summary judgment must be denied as premature. The Court also determined that because both accused men have failed to demonstrate that the Town of Hempstead Building Zone Ordinances do not apply to them, the motion and cross motion must be denied. Finally, the Court also held that, because the driver’s operation of his motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol arguably may be deemed by the trier of fact to be a superseding cause of the woman’s injuries, the accused men’s motions for summary judgment to dismiss the woman’s action based in negligence must be denied.

The core of the woman’s allegations against the accused men relates to certain bushes located between the residences, which bushes are alleged to block the view of traffic. The woman alleges that the overgrown nature of the bushes, which she claim are in contravention of height requirements provided in local ordinances, contributed in some measure to the occurrence of the serious traffic accident.

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Personal Injury accidents can have life altering effects on the person who is injured. Sometimes, the problems that the person suffers exceed the physical injuries that have occurred. When a person goes from being active and unimpaired one day to infirmed the next, it is impossible for the person to not have some depression about the change in life circumstances. In some of these cases, the injured person becomes so depressed by the changes in his or her life circumstances that they lose the will to live. In these cases, New York law has stipulated that if the person filing a wrongful death suit must be able to show that there is a causal link between the person’s suicide and the injury that they received at work.

One case that involved this type of wrongful death action involved a man who was injured twice at work. He was injured 14 years before his death and then again five years before his death. In 1945, the decedent was an usher at a movie theatre when a fight broke out in the men’s room. He attempted to break up the fight and was pushed into a marble wall, and suffered a brain injury. He was diagnosed with a cerebral concussion as a result of the accident and eleven days later a workers’ compensation doctor announced that he was fully recovered. His wife claims that although he went back to work. Her husband suffered from headaches blackouts, and fainting spells following this accident.

The second accident occurred in 1959 in Nassau, when he suffered a debilitating back injury while at work. The back injury changed his lifestyle and caused him to plummet into a state of deep depression. His wife stated that it was this deep depression that led him to take his own life. The workers compensation board disagreed. They contend that this man was suffering from many issues that affected his mental stability long before he took his own life. They contend that he was suffering from mental illness before he had his first work place injury in 1945.

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40-year-old U.S. Representative Gabrielle “Gabby” Gifford’s announced plans to travel to Cape Canaveral to watch her NASA astronaut-husband Mark Kelly launch into space on the next Space Shuttle flight.

The Congresswoman is improving, but she is still recovering from a bullet wound to her left-cerebral hemisphere. She was shot in the head at point-blank range by 22-year-old community college student. The young man also killed six other people in the incident.

Her Suffolk doctor said, “Medically, there is no reason she could not travel safely to Florida to participate in this incredible event with her husband.”

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In 1960, a Nassau man was found dead by his own hand. He left behind a suicide note that stated that he could not stand the pain of his injuries any longer. This man had suffered from a back injury on his job that left him in constant pain and unable to function as he had before he was injured. His wife filed a wrongful death suit against the Workmen’s Compensation Board. Her contention is that her husband suffered from two debilitating industrial accidents. One of the work related accidents that he suffered occurred in 1945. He was working for a theatre as an usher when he attempted to break up a fight in the men’s room. His head was slammed against the marble wall of the men’s room and he suffered from a brain injuryas a result. Following this injury, the man was plagued by headaches, blackouts, and incidents of blindness. His wife stated that he would have moments of blindness that would last a few seconds at least once or twice each day. These incidents were followed by excruciating headaches. She stated that following the second injury, it was too much for him to handle. She proposes that there was a direct causal link between her husband’s industrial accidents and his suicide.

New York law states that where the symptoms of an injury that occurs on the job continue until the suicide of that person, a direct causal relationship may be inferred. That means that death benefits are awarded if the injury results naturally in disease and the disease is the cause of death. The courts have ruled that if the injury causes insanity and the insanity cause the suicide, it is the proximate cause of the death. However, if the insanity is not a result of the injury, but rather from some other cause such as melancholy or discouragement, then the injury is not considered to be the proximate cause of death.

The Worker’s Compensation Board contends that the brain injury was not the proximate cause of the decedent committing suicide. They contend that the decedent had a long history of mental illness dating back to early childhood. They produced evidence that he had committed himself to a mental institution before his first injury. His complaint at that time was severe anxiety and headaches accompanied with bouts of blindness. They stated that following this incident and only one year before his death, he checked himself into the hospital for renal colic and was in treatment for one month. They brought forth evidence of the decedent’s many medical issues and even ventured into his relationship with his mother. His mother was crippled at an early age. She was raped and the result of the rape was the decedent. He grew up in foster care. The Worker’s Compensation Board contends that the decedent had numerous health and psychiatric problems his entire life and that it was these problems and not his back injury that caused him to take his own life.

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The 38-year-olf father of a 9-week-old Grand Island girl was charged with two felony counts of child abuse last Thursday morning after the infant suffered a “severe brain injury.”

The county attorney asked for a “substantial bond” of 10% of $100,000 citing the infant’s injuries. She has retinal hemorrhaging, fluid on her brain and blood on her brain.

The baby’s long-term prognosis is unclear.

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A man was injured when he fell off a ladder while performing painting work at a loading dock at the Hotel. The man struck his head on the concrete sidewalk, sustaining a traumatic brain injury. The building is divided into two units: a Hotel unit and an Entertainment/Retail unit. The loading docks are owned by the Entertainment/Retail unit. The man was an employee of the managing agent of the Hotel unit which is a former owner of the Hotel unit.

There was an easement that allowed the Hotel unit to use portions of the building owned by the Entertainment/Retail unit, including the loading docks. The City of New York and the managing agent entered into a Declaration of Easement and Operating Agreement (DEOA) for the subject premises. Article of the DEOA defines the term owners as a collective reference to the Hotel Property Owner and the Entertainment/Retail Property Owner or either of them. The DEOA states that the Owner hereby grants to and declares for the benefit of the Hotel Property Owner, a non-exclusive casement for the use of the loading docks located in Entertainment/Retail Building as shown on the Attached Plans. However, the section also provides that the Entertainment/Retail Owner shall be responsible for the Maintenance of the loading docks, provided, however, that the Nassau Hotel Owner shall bear a share of such Maintenance costs based on the Owner Building Area Ratio. DEOA states that the Owners shall have the right to retain a building manager and that the building manager is to maintain the sidewalks, building security, the Service Elevator, shared Easement areas located in the cellar of the Entertainment/Retail unit, the loading docks as the Owners shall desire. It further states that the parties agree that the managing agent shall serve as the initial building manager.

By purchase agreement, the managing agent sold the Hotel unit to a real estate investment trust company. Subsequently, the managing agent assigned all of its rights in and under the DEOA, including all such rights associated with the Hotel Property Owner designee, to the real estate investment trust company, as assignee.

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Sometimes the extent of moderate or severe damage caused by bTBI (explosive blast traumatic brain injury) is difficult to determine at first, doctors have told Lawyers. Severe facial trauma can prevent reliable neurological examination, especially when it comes to examining the pupils for reaction. Specialized tools are often necessary to even make triage decisions that could save lives.

The chaos of war only compounds the difficulty in making decisions when it comes to severe injury. When a doctor or other medical professional is used to medical centers in the United States, where there are adequate resources and help in the form of other professionals near at hand, it can be very difficult to work on a battlefield where everything is in short supply, but the number of patients is much greater.

Difficult decisions have to be made in such environments, doctors in Nassau and Suffolk have learned. It isn’t uncommon for a great number of severely injured patients to arrive at the same time. Efficient triage is essential for the best use of limited resources. There may be few health care providers, no operating rooms or CT scanners, and not many blood products to go around. It may even be impossible to evacuate patients to a better facility. The whole idea behind triage is take resources that may not be adequate and stretch them out to their best possible use to help the largest number of patients. They must be stabilized and their lives preserved until they can be evacuated into a better circumstance.

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The ongoing Global War on Terror has resulted in an increase of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, studies have noted. A number of them suffer from an explosive blast (bTBI). Physicians have decided this type of injury is distinct from other forms of brain trauma, such as penetrating TBI (pTBI) and closed head TBI (cTBI).

Explosive blast causes more than 60% of combat casualties in the two current major American campaigns, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to Lawyers. The main source of danger are the much talked-about IEDs – improvised explosive devices. The head is often injured in battle, accounting for 20% of all combat-related injuries in modern wars. When it comes to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the data is still coming in. So far, the data from hospitals in Nassau and Suffolk seems to closely match that of previous wars.

Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom are distinct from 20th century wars in the higher survival rate of those who are injured in combat, even those who suffer from TBI, according to doctors. An important factor to be considered is the use of body armor. Doctors used to believe that the severity of bTBI was due to pTBI from fragments of the explosive device or cTBI from the head striking an object after the victim was thrown.

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