When you are a plaintiff in a personal injury action, the defendant is entitled to have you undergo an Independent Medical Examination (“IME”).

While some IME doctors are highly professional, and actually seek to provide an objective evaluation, many doctors may be influenced by the volume of work and payment they receive from insurance companies, therefore their results may skew in favor of the defense.

Do not become frustrated if the IME doctor prepares a report that you believe to be unfair.  Concern yourself with what your treating health care providers tell you about your condition and what you need to do to improve it.  Let your lawyer concern himself with the content of the IME report, and what may potentially be done to counter it.

Under New York State law, if you are injured by a dog bite, and you can prove that the dog has a dangerous nature and the owner knew or should have known of the dog’s dangerous behavior or propensity, then the owner of the dog will be responsible for injuries you have sustained as a result of the attack.

Examples of dangerous propensity are:

• The dog has a tendency to growl or snap at people.
• The owner tells people that his dog is a guard or attack dog.
• The dog owner cautions others that his dog bites.
• The dog wears a muzzle.
• The dog is restrained in such a way as to indicate that he is a danger to others.

Once it is determined that the owner knew or should have known that his dog was vicious, the next step is to find out as much as you can about the dog and the owner, including whether or not the owner has insurance. Types of insurance policies that typically cover dog bites include:

-Homeowner’s insurance;
-Renter’s insurance;
-Landlord’s liability insurance;
-Commercial general liability insurance

In an 18 month study conducted by CNN, if you are injured in a low-impact car accident, there is a good chance that the insurance company will offer a “take-it-or-leave-it” approach to paying your medical expenses and damages for pain and suffering, even if you sustained a “serious injury” under your state’s no-fault law.
Since the mid-1990s, most of the major insurance companies –led by the two largest, Allstate and State Farm — have adopted a tough take-it-or-leave-it strategy when dealing with such cases.

The result has been billions in profits for insurance companies and little, if anything,for the public, according to University of Nevada insurance law professor Jeff Stempel. "We can see that policyholders individually are getting hurt by being dragged through the court on fender-bender claims, and yet we don’t see any collateral benefit in the form of reduced premiums even for the other policyholders," Stempel said. "So I think now we can say to continue this kind of program is in my view institutionalized bad faith.

Auto Insurers Play Hardball In Minor-Crash Claims, by Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston, CNN

There is no scientific proof that a low impact accident means less damage to the injured party.  However, by adopting this strategy, insurance companies are paying out less for claims while their profits increase.