Cortland County

Cortland County is located in the Appalachian Plateau area of New York between Syracuse and Binghamton. It’s mostly rural. With a total area of 502 square miles, Cortland County had a population of 49,336 as of 2010. Major routes across Cortland County include CR 100, CR 101, CR 101A, CR 102, CR 103, CR 104, CR 105, CR 106, CR 106A, and others. Cortland County is home to various health care practices. Whether you’ve been injured in a motor vehicle accident or faced harm at the hands of health care providers, the experienced Cortland County personal injury attorneys of DeFrancisco & Falgiatano can help you evaluate your potential legal claims.

Most personal injury lawsuits arise out of negligent or careless conduct on the part of the person or entity that harmed you. To establish negligence you’ll need to show: (1) the defendant owed you a duty of reasonable care, (2) breach of the duty of reasonable care, (3) causation, and (4) damages. The standard of reasonable care that will apply in your case depends on the particular circumstances. For instance, what must be proven in a premises liability case is distinct from what needs to be shown in a motor vehicle accident case.

In the premises liability context, property owners owe a legal duty to keep their property free of dangerous conditions, or to repair dangerous conditions. In order to establish your right to recover damages for injuries sustained in a slip and fall accident on someone else’s property, you’ll need to show that the property owner had actual or prior notice of the dangerous condition that caused your injuries.

Special rules also apply to construction accidents. When you fall from heights as a worker at a construction site, New York Labor Law section 240, also known as the Scaffold Law, should apply. It imposes absolute liability on those who own worksites or who are contractors on them, and who fail to provide sufficient safety devices or to implement safety regulations that would protect workers from falls and falling objects. Absolute liability exists even when a defendant may not have actually employed the injured worker. A knowledgeable personal injury attorney serving Cortland County can help you assert your rights if you have been harmed in a construction accident.

If you are seeking damages through a lawsuit following a car accident, any police reports taken at the scene of the collision can be useful evidence of a defendant’s negligent conduct. The New York DMV maintains accident reports for just 4 years from the accident date. The police report related to car accidents in Cortland County should be able to be obtained from the Records Division, except under rare circumstances set forth under New York Vehicle and Traffic Law Section 201(i). The Records Division is located at 25 Court Street, 3rd Floor, Cortland, NY, 13045.

Guthrie Cortland Medical Center is a health care facility in Cortland County where local residents might seek care. It hosts a 144-bed acute care capacity, and an 80-bed residential capacity. Available services include cancer care, emergency care, labor and delivery care, imaging and radiology, outpatient therapy, and surgical care. Patients can sometimes suffer debilitating harm at the hands of health care providers offering services such as these, and may be entitled to compensation for their harm. However, not every mistake made by a doctor or other health care provider constitutes medical negligence. A dedicated Cortland County personal injury lawyer can review your case to determine whether you may have a legal claim of this nature.

To establish medical malpractice, you’ll need to show: (1) a doctor-patient relationship giving rise to a professional duty of care, (2) breach of the professional duty of care, (3) causation, and (4) damages. A breach of the professional duty of care can consist of a wide range of conduct including failure to diagnose, delayed diagnosis, improper treatment, surgical errors, and more. In most cases it is necessary to establish what the professional standard of care was, whether it was breached, and causation by retaining a credible expert. Usually, a plaintiff needs to retain an expert even before bringing a lawsuit, both to meet certain presuit requirements, and also to conduct a review of the case to make sure you have a viable claim. The expert is often board-certified in the same area of medicine as the defendant. Where, for example, there has been a failure to adequately treat cancer, you might retain a board-certified oncologist to provide expert opinions.

If you were injured or a loved one died as a result of an accident or medical malpractice in Cortland County, you can talk to a skillful trial lawyer. DeFrancisco & Falgiatano represents accident victims and patients who have been harmed by negligence. Call our firm at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.