Online Legal ResourcesWe intend this page to aid those looking for general online information in relation to the area of law we practice — personal injury. None of the sites to which we link is intended to give legal advice; they won’t do it, and for good reason. Actually attempting to represent yourself in any matter of greater difficulty that those handled in small claims court is the legal equivalent of attempting to remove your own appendix. In addition, while many of these sites indeed will provide useful information to the lay person, the industrial-strength resources which lawyers need – such as WestLaw – are far from free. The New York State Unified Court System’s CourtHelp page provides information about New York Courts. Cornell Law School maintains an excellent general (and, better yet, free) resource, which it calls the Legal Information Institute (LII). Some other sites of general interest contain the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New York , a searchable version of the United States Code, and the New York State Consolidated Laws. Below are informative links for some of our areas of practice: Car accidents — In the typical car accident – one caused by a driver’s or multiple drivers’ negligence – there are a few resources available. The report which New York State requires the owner or driver of a vehicle to file after an accident, the so-called MV-104, is available from the Department of Motor Vehicles. We make the application for no-fault benefits and the application for disability benefits available from our site. All of these forms are in .pdf format, and require the free Adobe Reader. If Irom Law represents you, we will prepare these submissions as part of our representation. If an automobile accident involves a defective product – vehicles, tires, child safety seats and many others – the web site of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), contains a wealth of information, including recalls, technical service bulletins (TSB) and much else. Trip and falls & construction accidents — As we discuss on our pages concerning these subjects, defective conditions on property frequently cause falls in buildings or on sidewalks and accidents on construction sites. The New York State Building and Fire Codes are copyrighted and not available free online. However, New York State maintains a site which answers many common questions about its Code. New York City does place its Building Code online. You may find that it is not the easiest document to navigate. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a non-profit organization which administers nationwide, voluntary sets of standards for a host of products and services. Its web site contains such standards available for download, but at a price. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the United States Department of Labor (OSHA) maintains a huge web site with a wealth of useful (and free) information about workplace safety. Medical malpractice — While many private organizations maintain web sites on specific medical topics, those sites are usually designed to sell their own products and services. On the other hand, the National Institute of Health has a huge web site, with links to nearly every conceivable medical topic. Medline is another huge site, containing somewhat more technical information, maintained in part by NIH. PubMed is a front-end page for the National Library of Medicine, indexing some 12 million medical articles, most quite technical. PubMed abstracts (and some full texts) are free, but most full-text articles are not, and require an account through a participating medical school library. Irom Law has such an account with the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. As for specific practitioners, New York State Department of Health maintains a site with records of New York State physician discipline, which also contains discipline records of physician’s assistants. New York maintains a site for license verifications for many professions. Finally, New York has a site which contains basic information about every physician licensed to practice here, and the American Medical Association attempts to do the same for every doctor nationwide. Toxic torts — Proving that something in the environment caused a particular injury can be costly and difficult, and sufficiently technical that there is little information publicly available of use to the lay person. The Integrated Risk Information System of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is by far the most useful site relating human health to toxic substances in the environment. Some of the information it contains is quite technical, but much is not. A search of common substances in any search engine will yield a wealth of hits – but beware of propaganda from various industry groups. Additional ResourcesLegalFindLaw Business and FinanceBetter Business Bureau GovernmentFirstGov GeneralNational Weather Service NewsNew York Times Search EnginesFor a free consultation with Irom, Wittels, Freund, Berne & Serra, call 1.866.603.1731, or contact us online. Don’t worry about our fee. We represent our clients on a contingency basis. This means we receive a percentage of what we recover for you. If there is no recovery, you pay us no fee for our services. |
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