Articles Posted in Personal Injury

By Rhonda Kay, Partner, Gair Gair Conason Steigman Mackauf Bloom & Rubinowitz

In New York personal injury cases it has become routine for defendants to serve a notice for discovery and inspection of a plaintiff’s facebook page.

Who doesn’t have a Facebook page these days? It’s the most popular way to connect and stay connected. Fortunately, there are numerous settings available so you can control the privacy level of your content and therefore, who you share your information with.  So if you wanted to post a comment to your Facebook “friends” informing them that despite that devastating car accident you were recently in, and the pending million dollar lawsuit against the other driver, you feel great, have gone back to work, and participate in all of your daily activities; no problem right? Your secrets are safe?

In the context of personal injury cases, the New York courts seem to agree that legally, to the extent that a plaintiff’s Facebook postings are relevant, in that it contradicts or conflicts with plaintiff’s alleged restrictions, disabilities, and losses, and other claim, it is discoverable (see, Patterson v. Turner Constr. Co. (88 A.D.3d 617, 931 N.Y.S.2d 311 [1^st Dept. 2011]; McCann v. Harleysville Ins. Co. of NY (78 A.D.3d 1524, 910 N.Y.S.2d 614 [4^th Dept. 2010]).  In fact, disclosure is not necessarily limited to the “publicly available” portions of one’s facebook account but may also include the portions which were deemed by the user to be “private” or even those postings that had been deleted (see, Patterson v. Turner Constr. Co., supra [the postings on plaintiff’s online Facebook account, if relevant, are not shielded from discovery merely because plaintiff used the service’s privacy settings to restrict access]; Loporcaro v. City of New York, 2012 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1726, 2012 NY Slip Op 30977U (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Apr. 9, 2012][allowing access to certain deleted materials]).

After all, “to permit a party claiming very substantial damages for loss of enjoyment of life to hide behind self-set privacy controls on a website, the primary purpose of which is to enable people to share information about how they lead their social lives, risks depriving the opposite party of access to material that may be relevant to ensuring a fair trial” (Romano v. Steelcase Inc., 30 Misc. 3d 426, 907 N.Y.S.2d 650 [Sup. Ct. Suffolk Co. 2010]). What is not clearly defined, nor apparently uniform, is the way the courts treat Facebook disclosure requests.  For instance, in Loporcaro v. City of New York, (supra), the plaintiff alleged in his bill of particulars that he was incapacitated, confined to bed or home during the first two months following the accident, and suffered permanent effects on his daily life.   Granting defendant access to  portions of plaintiff’s Facebook account, including access to certain deleted materials, it was the court’s opinion that since it appeared that plaintiff had voluntarily posted at least some information about himself on Facebook which may contradict the claims made by him in the present action, the moving defendant had sufficiently shown that information contained within plaintiff’s Facebook account may contain information that may well prove relevant and necessary to the defense.

Similarly, in Romano v. Steelcase Inc (supra) defendant filed a CPLR 3101 motion for access to plaintiff’s current and historical social networking pages and accounts claiming that the plaintiff had placed certain information on the sites that it believed were relevant to the extent and nature of her injuries, especially her claims for loss of enjoyment of life.  The court found, inter alia, that in light of the fact that the public portions of the plaintiff’s social networking sites contained material that was contrary to her claims and deposition testimony, there was a reasonable likelihood that the private portions of her sites might contain further evidence such as information with regard to her activities and enjoyment of life, all of which were material and relevant to the defense of her personal injury action. Consequently, pursuant to CPLR 3101, the defendant was entitled to the information.
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Our partner, Jeffrey Bloom, settled the personal injury case of a 16 year old boy, who suffered burns in an explosion. Jeffrey obtained Summary Judgment on liability which was affirmed by The Appellate Division, Second Department. The case settled following opening statements in Nassau County Supreme Court. The explosion occurred at his school when a fellow student was performing a science experiment with ethyl alcohol. It was alleged he was performing his experiment unsupervised and improperly used ethyl alcohol to clean up and then used a flint sparker. His actions caused an explosion as a result of which the plaintiff was burned. The chemistry teacher had left the classroom to get food at a bagel store despite knowing the experiment was on going. The defendants argued that the fellow student’s actions were a superseding intervening cause relieving the school district of liability.

As a result of the explosion it was claimed the plaintiff suffered second and third degree burns and scarring to his face, chest, left ear and right arm as well as his bilateral thighs from a subsequent skin graft. It was claimed that only the scars to his chest were permanent. The defendants claimed he made an excellent recovery and that the majority of the burns healed without complication and did not result in significant disfigurement.

The New York Personal Injury Lawyers at Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf have years of experience representing people who have suffered injury in all types of accidents in New York.

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• Dr. Tammy Reynolds, an obstetrician who had her first child by C-section and her second vaginally, argues that doctors practice defensive medicine in part to protect themselves from liability.
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• Toyota Motor Corp. plans to recall about 700,000 vehicles because of a variety of safety issues. Chrysler Group also announced a big recall.
• The city of Park Ridge, Illinois has been ordered to pay $5.18 million to the estate of a 15-year-old Park Ridge boy following last week’s verdict in a wrongful-death lawsuit stretching back seven years.

By Rhonda Kay, Partner, Gair Gair Conason Steigman Mackauf Bloom & Rubinowitz;

In Edwards v. Erie Coach Lines Co. (17 N.Y.3d 306, 929 N.Y.S.2d 41 [2011]) The New York Court of Appeals clarified choice of law analysis in a multi-party case.

New York’s choice of law analysis, commonly referred to as an “interest analysis,” focuses on determining which jurisdiction, “because of its relationship or contact with the occurrence or the parties, has the greatest concern with the specific issue raised in the litigation” (Cooney v. Osgood Mach., 81 N.Y.2d 66, 595 N.Y.S.2d 919 [1993], quoting Babcock v. Jackson, 12 N.Y.2d 473, 240 N.Y.S.2d 743 [1963]). Assuming a conflict between the laws, a preliminary inquiry in the analysis is whether the substantive law at issue constitutes a “conduct-regulating” or a “loss-allocating” rule. Loss-allocating rules apply post-remedial, i.e., once there is admittedly tortious conduct, while conduct-regulating rules are those which people use as a guide to governing their primary conduct (see, Schultz v. Boy Scouts of America, Inc., 65 N.Y.2d 189, 491 N.Y.S.2d 90 [1985]).

The landmark case on this issue is Padula v. Lilarn Props. Corp. (84 N.Y.2d 519, 620 N.Y.S.2d 310 [1994]). The Court of Appeals there explained the distinction as follows:

“Conduct-regulating rules have the prophylactic effect of governing conduct to prevent injuries from occurring. ‘If conflicting conduct-regulating laws are at issue, the law of the jurisdiction where the tort occurred will generally apply because that jurisdiction has the greatest interest in regulating behavior within its borders'” (citation omitted).

Examples of conduct-regulating rules would be New York Labor Law sections 240 and 241, rules of the road, and statutes dictating a standard of care.

Loss allocating rules, on the other hand, are those which prohibit, assign, or limit liability after the tort occurs, such as charitable immunity statutes, guest statutes, no-fault statutes, wrongful death statutes, wrongful birth statutes, vicarious liability statutes, workers’ compensation statutes and contribution rules (see, Padula v. Lilarn Props. Corp. supra). Where the conflicting rules at issue are loss allocating, the outcome depends on the application of the rules set forth in Neumeier v. Kuehner (31 N.Y.2d 121, 335 N.Y.S.2d 64 [1972]).

The three Neumeier rules are as follows:

1. When the passenger [plaintiff] and the driver [defendant] are domiciled in the same state, and the vehicle is registered there, the law of that state controls;

2. This rule addresses the situation where the driver and the passenger are domiciled in different states, and the law of the place where the accident occurs favors its domiciliary. When the driver’s [defendant’s] conduct occurred in the state of his domicile and that state does not cast him in liability for that conduct, he should not be held liable by reason of the fact that liability would be imposed upon him under the tort law of the state of the victim’s domicile, and therefore driver’s state law applies. Conversely, if the law of the place where the accident occurred permits the injured passenger to recover, then the driver, “in the absence of special circumstances,” may not interpose a conflicting law of his state as a defense;

3. In other situations, when the passenger [plaintiff] and the driver [defendant] are domiciled in different states, the rule is necessarily less categorical. Normally, the applicable rule of decision will be that of the state where the accident occurred but not if it can be shown that displacing that normally applicable rule will advance the relevant substantive law purposes without impairing the smooth working of the multi-state system or producing great uncertainty for litigants.
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• A California resident traveling board the Holland America Line’s Rotterdam cruise ship sues the company for negligence.
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