For 38 Year Old Construction Worker & His Wife
We are pleased to announce that effective January 1, 2003; Ken Halperin has become a partner and is in charge of the firm's complex litigation department.
Ken began with the firm as a trial lawyer in the summer of 1996 and has tried and litigated cases involving lead poisoning, highway design, construction accidents, products liability, automobile and premises liability in courts throughout the state, in addition to successfully writing and arguing numerous appeals.
Ken graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1992 and has exclusively represented plaintiffs in personal injury cases since he began practicing. Ken's affable, easy going personality makes him a natural with juries but belies his intense preparation and thorough knowledge of all the facts and legal issues to be litigated. He is a skilled trial attorney and we are proud he is a member of the firm.
As a testament to his ability, Ken recently obtained a total verdict of $2.95 million dollars which included $2.7 million for a construction worker who was 38 years old at the time of the accident and $250,000 for his wife for loss of services, in a trial vigorously contested by one of Manhattan's leading defense firms. Our client was a brick layer who was carrying a 50-lb. piece of cement to his work area, when he fell through an improperly secured hole in the floor of the building. The trial was on the issue of damages after Ken obtained summary judgment on the issue of liability pursuant to New York State Labor Law.
As a result of the accident, which occurred on August 8, 1995, the client sustained herniated lumbar discs, lumbosacral radiculopathy, and a bulging cervical disc with cervical radiculopathy. However, it was not until an MRI was performed five years later in December 2000 when the herniated discs in plaintiff's lumbar spine were first diagnosed. The delay in diagnosis was the cornerstone of the defense that the injuries were unrelated to the accident. However, Ken proved to the jury through the use of earlier negative MRI's taken shortly after the accident that the initial trauma of the accident destabilized the plaintiff's spine, setting up the process which over time caused the plaintiff's herniations. The defendant also produced a surveillance video of plaintiff walking around his neighborhood, in an attempt to demonstrate that plaintiff's appearance in the video was inconsistent with his injuries. Ken countered by having all of plaintiff's doctors show the video to the jury and described how his actions on the tape were entirely consistent with his injuries.