Parker Waichman Alonso LLP’s is a New York personal injury law firm with a team of successful personal injury and malpractice lawyers that offer free lawsuit case evaluations for victims. Most personal injury claims are subject to statutes of limitations that vary by state and by the type of injury claim. For this reason, we urge victims to contact a personal injury lawyer as quickly as possible. For a free, confidential, no obligation lawsuit case evaluation, please click here to fill out our short form. Our lawyers are ready to fight for you and help you get the compensation for your injuries that you deserve.

Jury Reaches Verdict In Collapsing Fire Ladder Case, Says Law firm of Parker Waichman Alonso LLP
Following the collapse of an aerial fire ladder during an attempted fire rescue in 1994, a loving husband and father plunged to his death while his family and a New York City firefighter were severely injured. 
read article…

$ 10 Million Accord In Van-Truck Mishap
A structured settlement with a cash cost of $ 10 million was reported this week on behalf of a Canadian family injured when their minivan crashed into an overturned tractor-trailer nearly two years ago on Interstate 87 in upstate New York. read article…

Homeowners Sue Firms for Fouled Water Wells
A Superfund cleanup site in Sag Harbor is the source of a $200 million lawsuit brought by 33 homeowners against Nabisco Inc., which once manufactured motorized plastic toy cars at a plant on the property.
read article…

Click here for Article Archive

Have your or a loved one suffered as a result of hospital negligence?
Hospitals can be liable for the medical malpractice and negligence of their employees, doctors, staff nurses, administrative personnel, and medical technicians. Standards of care and rules must be followed by all hospital employees to ensure that patients are given the best health care. If physicians or other hospital employees were careless, lacked proper skills or disregarded established rules and procedures, the hospital can be held responsible.
Hospital negligence includes:

• Illegible writing in medical records, causing doctor’s orders to be incorrectly carried out
• Failure of physicians to remain educated and competent after receiving their license
• Surgical mistakes
• Poor post-operative care
• Incorrect drug and anesthesia administration

If you or a loved one suffered as a result of hospital negligence, please click here for a free, confidential, no-obligation case evaluation by a qualified medical malpractice attorney. The New York medical malpractice lawyers at Parker Waichman Alonso LLP can help you get the compensation you deserve.

Have your or a loved one suffered from a surgical mistake that resulted from medical malpractice?
Surgical mistakes occur at an astonishing rate in hospitals across the country. While emphasis is placed on egregious errors such as amputation of the wrong limb, widespread medical malpractice causes surgical mistakes on a daily basis. Nerves can be hit during surgery causing long term disability, organs can be damaged, vital signs can be monitored improperly, equipment can fail, and incisions and sutures can be made improperly.
Medical malpractice that causes surgical mistakes can include:

Surgical mistakes can include:

• Leaving tools or other objects inside the patient
• Operating on the wrong body part
• Procedural mistakes
• Incorrectly administering anesthesia

If you or a loved one suffered an injury from a surgical mistake that was the result of medical malpractice or negligence, click here for a free, confidential, no-obligation case evaluation. The New York birth injury malpractice lawyers at Parker Waichman Alonso LLP are ready to help you get the compensation your family deserves.

When you go in to surgery, it is the anesthesiologist who will regulate your consciousness during the operation. That anesthesiologist is responsible for maintaining you in an unconscious or semi-conscious state throughout the length of the procedure. Too little anesthesia can cause you to wake to great pain and panic, and too much anesthesia could cause coma or even death.

One common example of this type of medical malpractice is a condition known as “awareness during general anesthesia,” where the patient is not completely out. Awareness may occur because of inadequate anesthetic product labeling which leads to dosage errors. In addition, doctors, anesthesiologists, and other medical staff may administer too little anesthetic. Vaporizer leaks, intravenous infusion errors, and problems during a syringe swap can impede anesthetic delivery. Many patients who have experienced awareness during surgery report a feeling of paralysis and helplessness that can often lead to panic and future emotional problems such as anxiety disorders, sleep interruption, flashbacks or recollection of the intra-operative event, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and preoccupation with death.

If you or a loved one suffered an anesthesia error a result of medical malpractice or negligence, click here for a free, confidential, no-obligation case evaluation. The medical malpractice lawyers at Parker Waichman Alonso LLP are ready to help you get the compensation you deserve.

Breast cancer is one of the most commonly misdiagnosed cancers. Early diagnosis of breast cancer is critical to start treatment and increase chances for survival before the cancer spreads. Some tests for diagnosis of breast cancer include self-examination or physical breast examination by a doctor, mammography, ultrasound, computerized tomography, fine needle aspiration and biopsy. Misread mammograms are often the cause for cancer misdiagnosis.

Other types of cancer that are commonly misdiagnosed are ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, prostate cancer, colon/rectal cancer, hemopoietic (primarily lymphomas), lung/thoracic cancer, and melanoma/skin cancer. The emotional and physiological impact on a patient who finds out too late they have terminal cancer can be catastrophic.

If your cancer was not diagnosed early enough, click here for a free, confidential, no-obligation case evaluation. Our medical malpractice lawyers can help you get the compensation you deserve.

Thousands of Americans have opted for gastric bypass surgery in recent years, and the high risk surgery may even riskier due to inexperienced surgeons rushing into the field without adequate training. Surgeons promote laparoscopic surgery to patients as safer than traditional more invasive surgery. However, the gastric bypass is so difficult that patients of surgeons who have done fewer than 70 to 100 operations are more likely to complications and death from medical malpractice s than patients of more experienced doctors. Some hospitals allow surgeons to operate after one weekend gastric bypass seminar, during which they do a handful of cases under the guidance of a more experienced surgeon.
When surgeons began removing gallbladders laparoscopically in the early 1990s, hundreds of patients who had suffered complications from an operation long considered routine filed malpractice claims against their surgeons. Many of these doctors had not undergone much training. The surge in claims occurred three years after the first laparoscopic gallbladder removal, and malpractice specialists expect a similar spike in claims from bariatric surgery patients and their families.
Gastric bypass operations require the cutting and reconnecting of tissue, which can result in serious problems with the suture (stitches) or staple line connections. Leaking of gastrointestinal juices from the surgical connections can lead to serious infection, abscess, peritonitis and death. Any evidence of symptoms that might be caused by a leak should be immediately investigated. The failure to take the gastric bypass patient’s complaints seriously, and quickly act, is a prime example of this type of medical malpractice.

Death is becoming more frequent with gastric bypass surgery. In addition to gastric bypass surgery leaks, the most common cause of death is pulmonary emboli (clot), respiratory (breathing) failure, and gastric dilatation (abnormal enlargement). Common gastric bypass postoperative problems include infection and opening of the skin suture line, small bowel obstruction, kidney problems, gallstones, nausea and vomiting, hernia, and electrolyte and vitamin imbalances. When a leak is occurring, time is of the essence so that irreversible infection leading to organ failure and death does not occur. Exploratory surgery must be done when there is high suspicion of a leak.
Even the busiest and longest-running programs in the country see one patient die every 200 to 300 surgeries, and a 10 percent complication rate. At Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines, seven patients died after gastric bypass surgery in the past two years. One surgeon’s medical malpractice caused these deaths, and that doctor, voluntarily stopped performing gastric bypass surgery.
If your experienced serious problems following gastric bypass surgery including leaking that resulted in infection, excessive pain after surgery, clotting, difficult breathing, or kidney problems, and your doctor did not take your concerns seriously or you were not monitored during your recovery, you may be a victim of gastric bypass surgery medical malpractice.

If you or a loved one suffered from gastric bypass surgery complications as a result of medical malpractice, you should contact one of the gastric bypass medical malpractice attorneys at Parker Waichman Alonso LLP immediately. Our New York medical malpractice lawyers can help you get the compensation you deserve. Please click here for a free, confidential, no-obligation case evaluation. Our medical malpractice lawyers can help you get the compensation you deserve.

Does your child suffer form Cerebral Palsy that may have been caused by medical malpractice?

Cerebral Palsy describes a group of disorders that affect movement control. There is not one specific cause of cerebral palsy, but it can be caused by injury to the brain before, during, or after birth. Very often, such injuries are caused by medical malpractice. The Cerebral Palsy medical malpractice lawyers at Parker Waichman Alonso LLP will help determine the cause of your child’s condition. The medical providers caring for the expectant mother and the fetus are responsible to assure that they provide adequate care during the pregnancy, during labor and delivery, and immediately after the delivery of the infant. If a doctor or other medical staff fails to interpret and respond accordingly to the changing conditions of the fetus during labor or fails to act on changes in the mother’s condition during pregnancy, they may be found negligent and be held responsible for the child’s injuries.
Failure to perform a Cesarean section in the presence of fetal distress, failure to deliver the infant when the membranes have been ruptured for too long, and excessive use of vacuum extraction can all lead to serious medical malpractice birth injuries. Often, lack of oxygen to the brain or trauma to the head during labor and delivery can cause Cerebral Palsy. Some indications of lack of oxygen to the baby’s brain include: poor sucking after birth, seizures shortly after birth, floppiness of the baby, blue skin, poor breathing resulting in resuscitation, problems maintaining normal body temperature, meconium staining on the baby. Also, if your baby suffers from Cerebral Palsy and your water was broken for more than 24 hours before delivery or if you experienced bleeding or high blood pressure, there is a chance that medical malpractice caused your baby’s condition.

If you are unsure whether your baby has Cerebral Palsy, some signs include:

• Lethargy, or lack of alertness
• Irritability or fussiness
• Abnormal, high-pitched cry
• Trembling of the arms and legs
• Poor feeding abilities
• Low muscle tone
• Abnormal posture, such as the child favoring one side of their body
• Seizures, staring spells, eye fluttering, body twitching
• Abnormal reflexes
• Muscle tone may change gradually from low tone to high tone; a baby may go from floppy to very stiff
• The child may hold his or her hand in tight fists
• There may be asymmetries of movement, that is, one side of the body may move more easily and freely than the other side
• Developmental delay, with skills such as rolling over, sitting up, crawling, walking and talking

The New York medical malpractice attorneys at Parker Waichman Alonso LLP have won many Cerebral Palsy cases and helped hundreds of families deal with the burden of their child’s condition. The victims of medical malpractice and their families often face a lifetime of financial and emotional turmoil, and our medical malpractice lawyers can help you get the compensation you and your child deserve. Please click here for a free, confidential, no-obligation case evaluation.

Does your child suffer from Erb’s Palsy as the result of medical malpractice?

A brachial plexus injury, (or “BPI”, or “Erb’s palsy”) is an injury to the large network of nerves within the body called the brachial plexus which runs from the spinal column to the muscles in the shoulders and arms, causing the arm and hand to move. Parents often believe that their child’s brachial plexus injury was unavoidable or was a congenital birth defect. However, Erb’s Palsy is often the result of medical malpractice or medical negligence that occurs when a baby is too large and obstetricians neglect to deliver the baby via Caesarian section. Brachial Plexus Injury is often the result of shoulder dystocia in childbirth, or the lodging of a baby’s shoulder behind the mother’s pubic bone. In other cases where medical malpractice has occurred, doctors can use too much force to deliver the baby, which results in nerve damage. Many children with Erb’s Palsy may suffer partial or total paralysis of these parts of the body. Children with Erb’s Palsy often need a lifetime of therapy and/or multiple surgeries to help correct the problem and try for a normal life. Families are financially and emotionally burdened for many years when a child suffers from Erb’s Palsy.

The New York medical malpractice attorneys at Parker Waichman Alonso LLP lawyers have helped many families of Erb’s Palsy victims prove that their injuries where the result of medical practice on the part of the doctor responsible for the delivery. If you suspect that your child’s condition was caused by a brachial plexus injury that resulted from medical malpractice, please click here for a free, confidential, no-obligation case evaluation. A New York medical malpractice lawyer at Parker Waichman Alonso LLP should be consulted as soon as possible after your baby’s birth, to ensure that important medical records and information about the birth are not lost over time.

Did medical malpractice during labor or delivery cause a birth injury to your child?Birth injuries can result from complications in the process of labor and delivery and from medical malpractice on the doctors and hospitals. Birth injuries can cause a wide variety of problems for a newborn baby, ranging from mild to severe, and may mean a long road of medical care and emotional turmoil for a family. Parents may not know whether their child has an unpreventable birth defect, or whether the impairment was the result of medical malpractice or medical negligence. Our medical negligence attorneys can help families determine if a birth injury was not preventable, or if medical negligence or malpractice on the part of a doctor or hospital was responsible for the injury.

Each year, about 27 of 1,000 live births result in birth injuries, many of which are caused by medical malpractice or negligence. Delaying or failing to perform a needed C-section is a common cause of birth injuries, as is a physician’s use of excessive force during the delivery, or a miscalculation in the size of the baby. Another major cause of birth injuries is oxygen deprivation which occurs when the umbilical cord is compressed or twisted in the birth process. Mechanical trauma is another typical cause of birth injuries. Mechanical trauma may occur when the baby assumes an unusual position at the time of birth (buttocks rather than head first, for example) or when the baby is too large to easily pass through the birth canal easily. Birth injuries can also be the result of bleeding within the skull or brain, which can lead to long-term seizure disorders. All of these problems during labor and delivery can result in a variety of birth injuries, including:

• Erb’s Palsy, brachial plexus injury (BPI), Klumpke’s Palsy – injury to the large network of nerves within the body known called the brachial plexus. BPI can be caused by shoulder dystocia, where the baby’s shoulder is stuck behind the mother’s pubic bone during birth. The brachial plexus network causes the arm and hand to move. BPI children can have partial or total paralysis of the arms and hands.
• Cerebral Palsy – a condition where a person brain damage resulting in inadequate control over movement, lessened mental function, and impaired vision, speech, hearing and brain function. Cerebral Palsy can be caused by a baby being deprived of oxygen during pregnancy, labor or delivery.
• Brain Damage
• Temporary Paralysis
• Fractured Collar Bone

Birth injuries can be caused by a delay in performing a C-section or complication with a vaginal birth after a C-Section such as uterine rupture, use of excessive force during the delivery, or a miscalculation in the size of the baby. One major cause of birth injuries is oxygen deprivation which occurs when the umbilical cord is compressed or twisted in the birth process. The other main cause is mechanical trauma, which may occur when the baby assumes an unusual position at the time of birth (buttocks rather than head first, for example) or when the baby is too large to pass through the birth canal easily. Birth injuries can be the result of bleeding within the skull or brain, which can lead to long-term seizure disorders. Birth injuries have been reported to occur in 27 of 1,000 live births.

If your child has suffered a birth injury as a result of medical malpractice or negligence, please click here for a free, confidential, no-obligation case evaluation. The New York birth injury malpractice lawyers at Parker Waichman Alonso LLP are ready to help you get the compensation your family deserves.