Green&Szymański - Law offices

Case closed. $650,000.00 pre-trial settlement for our client who was injured in his own rental apartment in Brooklyn. Our accident attorneys Andrew Green and Pawel Szymanski, negotiated this favorable settlement on the eve of trial.

From the inception of this matter, the insurance carrier refused to offer any compensation. For months prior to the accident, both our client and his mother, complained about the deteriorating condition of their rental apartment. The management company responsible for the repairs at first ignored them, and subsequently, after several Housing Court decisions, only patched up a leaky ceiling, without fixing the leak. This is a common scheme for some of the rent-controlled apartment owners, intentionally failing to make necessary repairs in the hope that their rent-controlled tenant moves out. Then the rental value, like in our case, would increase up to five times. Unfortunately, these unacceptable practices led to the accident.

When this accident took place, we were very concerned with the medical condition of our client. Two years before the accident, our client was involved in a motor vehicle accident where he injured the same parts of his body. In fact, the MRI images showed the same injury to his neck. Our client’s injuries from the prior accident were so severe he filed for disability one week before the ceiling collapse. Obviously, these issues created a huge challenge for us. We needed to prove in Court that despite no objective changes, the pain level was significantly increased. Additionally, form day one, the defendant questioned and disputed the fact that the accident even happened. So we faced a potential finding that there was no accident, that our client did not sustain any injury, and that any pain, if at all, comes from the car accident which occurred two years prior.

After numerous depositions, exchange of the medical expert reports and motion practice, we tilted the scale. Defendant started to worry that “a very weak case” in their opinion, suddenly looked pretty strong. We were able to prove that there can be no doubt that the accident happened in the manner described by our client. We submitted a liability expert report proving months of negligent activity by the landlord and the management company responsible for the apartment repairs. Finally, through the medical report of our expert spinal surgeon, we were able to establish that the subjective complaints of pain are not related to the prior accident, and appeared only recently. All that evidence swayed the defense attorney to seek a settlement.

Just as we were gearing up for trial, our client accepted a satisfactory settlement offer of $650,000.00.

If you or someone you know were injured in an accident, give us a call. Our accident attorneys are always available to listen to your story. Even if no one else believes in it. We are your personal injury lawyers.