Legal Blog of Attorney Greg Curry

This is what I mean by it can be hard to enforce money judgments. Also, wow, that's a lot in hotel charges.  From a NY Daily News article . After a trial in July, 50 Cent was found liable for posting a sex tape between himself and Lastonia Leviston online, in order to embarrass her and another rapper.  Leviston got a $7 million verdict/judgment after the trial. And now has to try to enforce it. 50 filed for bankruptcy, so collecting on the judgment has now become difficult, and Ms. Leviston's lawyers have to fight things out in bankruptcy court.   According to the article, 50's lawyers charged him $123,455.92 for defending the case, including $57,241.76 for hotel-room expenses in rooms that cost $1,000/night(!): In a new court filing obtained by The News, Leviston asks the court to reject the $57,241.76 sought by Brewer for hotel fees because it includes charges for $1,000-per-night luxury rooms during a period stretching back into May. Surely, ...

Long-ish article from The Verge about a local politician in Illinois who spent 4 years and $35,000 in legal fees trying to find out who defamed him online.  In December, 2011, a local newspaper posted an article online about said politician (Bill Hadley) seeking election to the local county board. An anonymous commenter on the article, "Fuboy", (I guess he's suggesting there should be spaces between the "f" and the "u" and the "boy") posted the following: "Hadley is a Sandusky waiting to be exposed," a commenter called Fuboy had written. "Check out the view he has of Empire [elementary school] from his front door." The Verge article goes on: It was a rude but not unusual comment, in line with the ad hominem hostility often found in comments sections. But for Hadley, this comment crossed the line, and he set out to find the person behind it. His quest to unmask Fuboy set off a four-year legal saga that would send sh...

Let's say you represent yourself in a lawsuit. You sue someone in small claims court or District Court, or even Supreme Court. Or you're a small firm, representing a plaintiff, and maybe the technicalities of enforcing judgments are outside of your comfort zone. The facts and the law are on your side; there was a trial or a motion, and you win your case. You are entitled to money from the defendant. Maybe you've gotten so far as a getting piece of paper signed by a judge that says "Judgment". Hooray! So then what? Now you have to actually  get your money from the defendant. That can be difficult if the person or company does not want to pay. That means the judgment will have to be enforced . And if you don't know how to enforce a judgment, your piece of paper that says "Judgment" isn't worth a whole lot, even after all the trouble you went through to win your case. That's where this office comes in. Enforcing judgments can be trick...

TMZ had a recent article saying how employees of the hospital where Lamar Odom was taken after his overdose issue were trying to take pictures of him and access his medical records. When the people who ran the hospital got wind of it, they fired the employees on the spot: Lamar Odom was betrayed by several staffers at Sunrise Hospital in Vegas, and we've learned they've been summarily fired.   We're told the workers were all trying to sneak a photo of Lamar as he fought for his life inside the hospital. Our sources say some of them tried to access his medical records, in violation of HIPAA rules. Good. Would you go to a hospital or clinic or other medical provider whose employees disclose your medical information to others? The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) imposes severe monetary fines and even jail time for people accessing patients' medical records without their consent.  And people do go to jail for this. Just...

From the facts of the case , this is what sounds like happened:  The injured plaintiff was a passenger in an SUV. The SUV was behind a big tractor trailer that was carrying a load of gravel. The driver (I'm guessing) got annoyed about being behind a big, slow truck. So, the SUV passed the truck on the left. The problem is that the exit the SUV driver wanted to get off on was coming up quickly, so the SUV swerved back in front of the tractor trailer. The truck driver slammed on his brakes, but still hit the SUV, sending it over an embankment. The truck driver and the company that owned it moved for summary judgment to dismiss the case on the grounds that the truck driver had been confronted with a "sudden and unexpected circumstance, not of [his] own making", that he had no time to react otherwise than how he did, and that he acted reasonably under the circumstances. The court acknowledged that it is normally up to a jury to decide who was at fault in such a situatio...

On April 22, 2015, the Second Department appeals court issued a decision affirming a lower court decision that a landowner was entitled to (1) defense [i.e. payment of legal fees] and (2) indemnification [the insurance company has to cover a judgment] in a wrongful death case. I was the lead attorney on that case. The lawsuit was related the tragic case where a young man, Amir Zeqiri, was working at a Dunkin Donuts at a strip mall in Smithtown. Around 9:00 PM on February 28, 2010, he was taking out trash to dumpsters located behind the building when he fell into a cesspool (technically a leaching pool) and drowned a short time after that. The strip mall owner's insurance company was put on notice of the accident. But it turned out the insurance policy had an exclusion that the insurance company would not cover accidents occurring in the "parking lot" of the building. So, the insurance company sued the landowner in what is called a declaratory judgment action, trying ...

The parents of a child "who suffers from severe mental disabilities" sued the Beacon City School District, in Dutchess County, alleging that a bus monitor physically and mentally abused their child. The parents sued the School District for, among other things, assault, battery, and negligent supervision. The case went through the fact-finding phase (called "discovery"), and the School District made a motion to dismiss at least some of the claims. The motion was granted, but an appeals court reversed the lower court.  The appeals court first noted that  [s]chools have a duty to adequately supervise the students in their care, and may be held liable for foreseeable injuries proximately related to the absence of adequate supervision and  [t]he standard for determining whether the school has breached its duty is to compare the school's supervision and protection to that of a parent of ordinary prudence placed in the same situation and armed with the same...