Statutes of Limitations-Part 1

Comments: Statutes of limitation on their surface may seem simple to apply and there are many locations on the web where those who consider that they have legal rights may look to find the state statute of limitations which applies to their claim. Half of those who are likely to look up this information want to find out if the statute of limitations has expired on their case.
The other half may want to assure themselves that they have plenty of time left on their statute of limitations so they can attend to matters more pressing matters than the lawsuit, such as seeking out the right medical care and concentrating on their rehabilitation.

This is not an article intended to advise you about the statute of limitations which might be applicable to your case. To the contrary, and much more important for you to learn right now, the purpose of this article is to urge that you not to look up the statute of limitations yourself. Instead you should seek the advice of a competent and knowledgeable lawyer in your state to advise you with regard to the statute of limitations, as well as other statutes providing time sensitive rules that may deprive you of your right to sue long before last day to file suit provided by the statute of limitations. If you want correct information, you will require counsel fully knowledgeable about your state statute of limitations including how it has been interpreted by your state courts of appeals in the volumes of pertinent case law, knowledgeable also about the exceptions to the statutes of limitation, and the other legal theories which can undercut the statute of limitations defense.

We will try to highlight the dangers of your simply looking up the statute of limitations applicable to your type of case and then making decisions on your own that your case is barred and your rights lost, or that you can safely delay filing your complaint to attend to more pressing matters.

As examples, we will explore the two most common statute of limitations questions we receive, the first inquiring about the California Statutes of Limitations in auto accident cases, a common question just because there is more accident litigation than any other type of litigation. It is a good question to select also because people might think it so straightforward that anyone should be able to correctly
interpret the statute of limitations. The second example is the inquiry about the California Statutes of Limitations in medical malpractice litigation, common because in many states the medical and insurance industries have obtained special interest “tort reform” legislation commonly including more restrictive statutes of limitation with “outside limitations,” also permitting us to discuss a “discovery rule.”

There are both federal and state statutes of limitation with most cases arising in the state court systems and so we will pick the 2 year statute of limitation for injuries sustained in auto accidents, and the 1 year discovery rule and 4 year outside rule applicable to medical malpractice cases under California law. Again this is not to provide information for you to rely upon in deciding whether your claim is barred, or conversely to lull you to feel you can safely delay filing suit while you attend to more pressing matters. Rather, it is to demonstrate why you should not attempt to interpret even what might seem to be the most straightforward of statutes of limitation. Leave the interpretation of statutes of limitations to the lawyers. Attorneys will be pleased to speak with you about you case. Just ask for a free case consultation.

So, let’s imagine that through your research you discover that California has a 2 year statute of limitations applicable to auto accidents. What I would hope to demonstrate here is that this is very dangerous information for the injured auto accident victim to rely upon, one who might have been paralyzed, or brained damaged or who might have suffered debilitating internal injuries, catastrophic orthopedic injuries or a limb amputation. He or she may read about the 2 year statute of limitations and be lulled into waiting to file suit, for example to deal with the medical decisions and rehabilitation, or in smaller cases perhaps to see if his injury might resolve.

Author Bio: Raymond L. Henke, Principle trial attorney Medical Malpractice Lawyer with the California California Statutes of Limitations & California Accident Lawyers .

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If he delays even just a few months, the injured auto accident victim can suffer the loss of his case or may lose the right to sue his primary defendant and all or most of what he might have recovered in his case if he had only acted promptly. This may occur, for example, where there are other provisions of law providing much shorter periods than the statute of limitations within which the accident victim must act to preserve his right to sue. One example of such laws existing in many states, including California, is the “government claims provisions.” These requirements apply in a wide variety of auto accident cases, for example where a contributing cause of the accident is a road design defect or failure to properly maintain a roadway. The government claims provisions would also apply if the driver who hit you was a city or county or state employee at the time of the accident, operating his car in the course and scope of his employment.

In each of these cases the injured auto accident victim must file a government claim with the city or county or state within 6 months, a time period obviously much shorter than the 2 year California statute of limitations applicable in auto accident cases.

In the example of the driver who turned out to be a government employee, yes, of course, you might still sue the driver of the car, but if he has a 15/30,000 dollar auto insurance liability policy, that will be of little consolation to the brain damaged or paraplegic plaintiff. On the other hand, if the same man or woman had consulted an appropriately qualified lawyer, the lawyer would have recognized the need to timely file the government claim within 6 months of the date of the accident, and he would have followed the other claims procedures essential to file suit against a public entity. The client could then have obtained full recovery for his injury, his general damages, his pain and suffering, his damages for loss of enjoyment of life, his past and future medical expenses, and full recompense for his past and future earnings losses.

Turning now to the statute of limitations for medical malpractice, and why we urge that you should not attempt to interpret it, apply it, act upon it or fail to act upon it without first obtaining competent legal advice, lets consider California’s 1 year “discovery rule,” and 3 year “outside limitation.” The California medical malpractice statute of limitations provides that actions against health care providers must be filed within 1 year of the date that the malpractice victim discovers or reasonably should have “discovered his cause of action; but even if the cause of action is not discovered, and even where it could not have been discovered, the action is barred after the passing of three years from the date of the malpractice.

Let’s take a couple of real cases, prosecuted by the author of this article. In the first, an expectant mother sought the care of a physician who dispensed to her a sedative as recommended by a well known drug manufacturer. The drug caused the mother no side effects, but her child was born with serious limb defects. The drug was later identified in the press world wide as a potent teratogen, although by its European name, not by the brand name under which it was dispensed in the United States, and so the mother had no idea that it was the drug that caused her daughter’s limb defects. The child was born in 1962, and she showed up at our law offices an adult, 29 years later. In the meantime, the first special California medical malpractice statute of limitations was enacted in 1970, providing a 1 year discovery rule and most significant here, a 4 year outside limitation. The mother hadn’t filed suit during the girl’s minority, and the girl, now a young woman, didn’t file her case within the four years. In 1975 a second version of the malpractice statute was enacted, providing for a three year outside rule statute of limitations. Because the young woman was still unaware of the cause of her birth defects again this three year time passed without her filing suit.

When the woman described her injuries to this author, they seemed to coincide with the injuries caused by the potent teratogen, and so we obtained the list of physicians to whom the drug company supplied the drug. Her mother’s physician, it turned out, was one of them.

Author Bio: Raymond L. Henke, Principle trial attorney Medical Malpractice Lawyer with the California California Statutes of Limitations & California Accident Lawyers .
Url: http://www.serious-injury-attorneys.com/

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Health and Safety-It Makes Good Cents

Data shows that small businesses that have health and safety procedures in place reduce their injury and illness costs by 20 percent and even up to 40 percent. Nearly 95 percent of business owners report that health and safety programs have a positive impact on the company’s bottom-line according to a recent survey. Of this group, 61 percent say their return-on-investment is 3 dollars for every 1 dollar they invest in improving workplace safety. In addition, companies that have working health and safety programs in place have seen employee absenteeism drop in half.

A well planned health and safety program is obtainable even for small businesses. For example in this worst to first situation, a small manufacturing company was forced into putting a health and safety program in place or be shut down. They started by doing an audit, identified and controlled hazards, showed working procedures, and had to keep their injury rates below the national average for their sector. After they had implemented their health and safety program, they had many years with not one injury and saved more than $45,000 on insurance premiums. The company was even recognized with an award for their safety record. The owner, Rick, said “Our health and safety program has helped us protect our employees, maintain compliance, keep our vital employees working for us, and has saved us real money to put back into our company.”

Health and safety is no longer just viewed as a good idea, but a crucial investment in the business’ long term success. Mounting costs of unhealthy employees and the expense and disruption of staff turnover is turning many small business owners to health and safety. The payback in health and safety programs comes in the form of: improved productivity, fewer insurance and worker’s comp claims, less absenteeism, decrease in accidents, reduced staff turnover, higher employee morale, and leads to a better business reputation and customer loyalty.

Unhealthy and absent employees are costly. Businesses incur direct costs such as worker’s comp payments, disability costs, replacement employees, equipment damage, and even lost productivity.

By having a health and safety program in place, employers also protect themselves from liability in employee’s injury in being exposed to unidentified hazards in the workplace. Employers can be charged in injuries caused to untrained employees. An unhealthy employee may also threaten the safety of others such as fellow employees, the business owner, and even a customer of the business.

In starting a program, there needs to be commitment. Employers must get a feeling of the seriousness of this new procedure. The planning should be a partnership between the business owner and employees. To be able to actively engage all aspects of the on-going process in the business, the program should consider all of the major health risks in all of the areas of the workplace to meet the needs of all employees.

Deciding on whether to have a health and safety program should be clear. Health and safety issues in the workplace cost the business owner directly and even in lost opportunity. A change to making the business safer will lead to a more positive bottom-line.

For any questions or even help in getting started, drop us an e-mail at abbsafetynet[at-symbol]gmail.com

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SEO Tips for Internet Marketing Agencies

Do as you offer
As an internet marketing agency, it’s crucial to have prime organic search positioning. After all, if you offer SEO services, why not show your clients and prospects that you’ve mastered it yourself. Find innovative ways to optimize your website beyond general link building tactics.

If you’re an internet marketing agency, one of the prime things your existing and potential clients will evaluate is how well your website ranks in the search engines. It makes perfect sense that as an agency offering search marketing services, your website’s online search rankings reflect your capabilities….right?

Wrong.

In reality there are thousands of agencies offering internet marketing services, each battling against you to be placed in Google’s top organic listings. These agencies distribute just as many optimized releases and articles as you (and shame on you if you are not!), continually refresh their website copy, acquiring quality links, and the list goes on.

But don’t fret, there are a few strategies that a large percentage of agencies still haven’t grasped, mastered, or initiated – strategies that can help you achieve quality organic results, such as:

Blog Marketing

Yes, we know, you probably already have a blog. But is it integrated within your website’s domain so that every time you add a blog entry your entire website gets ‘credit’ for it? For instance, my company’s website is www.bluelinerny.com and its blog is located on www.bluelinerny.com/blog. Integrating a CMS like Wordpress within your website can do wonders for your ranking, especially if the blog content is displayed in real time on various pages of your website. For search engines, content is king, and blogs are a great way to provide quality-controlled content feeds while improving your rankings.

For feed content to get picked up by search engines, you generally have to be using any server-side script to grab feeds (php, .asp, or java). Standard Javascript can appear to accomplish the same thing as far as user experience goes, but unfortunately, there are no SEO benefits because Javascript is “client side”. By leveraging your blog’s content within your corporate domain, you save the hassle of having to constantly generate new content for your home and subpages.

There are also hundreds of blog directories that you can submit your blog domain to, which will inherently increase the overall link popularity of your main domain. If your blog is highly active and has good content, then you may also want to explore participating in a blog carnival.

Video Podcasting

If you haven’t already invested in online videos for your site, join the thousands who have. Developing quality videos for your website is a great way to connect the bridge between your core management team, prospects, and clients.

From an SEO perspective, you can utilize these videos and distribute them to hundreds of video sites and search engines. By tagging them with targeted keywords, users searching for internet marketing related videos have a better chance of finding and viewing your video while also garnering one-way links back to your site. A few of the main video sites are Google Video, digg and YouTube.

Create and Leverage Your Web Properties

It’s always favorable to have more than one method for promoting your services, so why settle for just one website? If you’re a full service agency, why not create a few different websites that highlight individual services or multiple services within one division – for instance, search marketing, web design and digital media.

By developing multiple web properties, you also get the opportunity to cross-link your websites to each other improving your chances of being found through targeted keywords, potentially tripling your business!

During this economic upheaval, when budgets are getting cut and advertisers are placing more emphasis on ROI, it’s crucial for agencies to find creative ways to identify, maintain, and leverage new business. By obtaining prime positioning in the search engines, and integrating social media features like online videos and blogs, agencies can generate new business while proving their capabilities through action and results.

Blueliner Marketing is an internet marketing agency and web development firm specializing in search engine optimization, online advertising, web analytics and social media campaigns. Since its inception in 2003, Blueliner has become one of the fastest growing interactive marketing agencies, with offices in New York, India, Bangladesh and China. To learn more visit www.bluelinerNY.com or contact info[[at-symbol]]bluelinerny.com.

Author Bio: Dali Singh is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Blueliner, a full-service internet marketing agency based in New York. She is responsible for the implementation of Blueliner’s marketing initiatives including SEO, interactive PR, social media and web analytics. For details, visit www.bluelinerNY.com or email info[[at-symbol]]bluelinerny.com.

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Statutes of Limitations-Part-3
But relevant here, the solution to the medical malpractice statute of limitations was to file a complaint alleging that the physician “intentionally concealed” his malpractice from the mother and child, intentional concealment being the antidote to the medical malpractice statute of limitations defense. The author had to fight this out in court, first to defeat the physician’s and drug company’s demurrer to the complaint and then in overcoming their motions of both for summary judgment. But upon succeeding on those motions, the defendants settled the case for $1,500,000.00, which was compensation this young woman would not have received if she had just looked up the California statute of limitations and decided that her case was time-barred.

Now to take a medical malpractice case in which if the clients had considered the 1 year discovery rule they would surely have concluded that they had waited too long to sue. In this case, the author of this article represented 10 clients, all of whom discovered their causes of action against three physicians and a hospital much longer
than 1 year prior to the filing of their complaints. Indeed, all readily admitted at their depositions that they had known of their physicians malpractice and their physical harm from the malpractice more than a year prior to coming to this author for representation. This again led the attorneys for the defendant physicians and hospital to file motions for summary judgment on the grounds that the 1 year discovery rule set forth in the California medical malpractice statute of limitations had passed.

But your author had anticipated that the statute of limitations defense would be vigorously asserted, and so we alleged in the complaint that the physicians and hospital were “co-conspirators.” Conspiracy is a legal theory little used by most lawyers, but it has many advantages, including to avoid the bar of the statute of limitations. It is also a relatively easy theory to prove in many cases, simply that one or more people “concurred” to do something that was “wrongful,” and that one of them committed an act in furtherance of the conspiracy. And if the lawyer can establish just these few facts, then the rule is that the statute of limitations on the substantive causes of action, like medical malpractice, will not “commence to run,” meaning that the time period will not begin to run, until “the last overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”

As was also easily established, two of the three defendant doctors were still involved in providing their patients the same below standard medical care, continuing “overt acts” in furtherance of the conspiracy through the date when your author sued them, and so the Court rejected the defendants motions for summary judgment, permitting the cases to go to trial against all 3 doctors and the hospital. The author tried the cases of 5 of his 10 clients in a single consolidated 4 month medical and hospital malpractice trial, obtaining a 2.9
million dollar jury verdict, including a 1.9 million dollar punitive damage verdict against the hospital.

Again, if these clients had merely considered the text of the California medical malpractice statute of limitations, they likely would have come to the conclusion that the 1 year discovery rule barred them from filing suit. We discuss the subject more fully on our California statute of limitations, page, but the purpose there as it is here is not to make you wiser in interpreting statutes of limitations. There are literally volumes upon volumes of case law interpreting the nuances statutes of limitations, their exceptions and defenses.

No, the purpose is the opposite, to warn you not to decide for yourself that your claim is barred by the statute or limitation, or the contrary, that you can safely wait for a year or two before filing your legal action. Statute of limitations analyses, and the related analyses such as those described above, which might lead to a client losing his rights earlier than the date provided by the statute of limitations, or the opposite, providing the exception or otherwise delaying the commencement or extending the statute of limitations, permitting what might have appeared a dead claim to find its day in court, should wisely be deferred to competent, highly experienced and knowledgeable lawyers.

Author Bio: Raymond L. Henke, Principle trial attorney Medical Malpractice Lawyer with the California California Statutes of Limitations & California Accident Lawyers .
Url: http://www.serious-injury-attorneys.com/

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