Justia Lawyer Rating for David M. Barish

by

Recently, this blog touched upon a serious risk for riders using rideshare services like Lyft and Uber. That danger is being sexually assaulted by a driver who should have been removed from the app or never should have been contracted in the first place.

The danger for riders is real, but, as a recent report details, riders are not the only ones at risk. According to the report, many drivers (mostly women) have been the victims of assault. The report calls into question the adequacy of the services’ actions to protect drivers, with some drivers indicating that the rideshare services are even less responsive to the dangers riders may pose to drivers as opposed to driver-on-rider assaults. If you’ve been hurt by your rideshare rider and you can show your injuries were due, in part, to the service’s inadequate safety measures, then you may be entitled to significant compensation. To find out more about what you can do, contact a knowledgeable Chicago injury attorney right away.

Back in 2017, the issue of rideshare drivers victimized by sexual assault was in the news. An Uber driver accused a famous professional football quarterback of having sexually assaulted her. According to the driver, the star NFL player reached between her legs and groped her genitals over her yoga pants. The player later apologized for “the position I put you in” and the NFL suspended him for part of the 2018 football season.

Continue reading

by

Recently, USA Today reported on a major airline that received a great deal of criticism for a tweet it published, which discussed the safest place on a plane when it comes to surviving a crash. The social media post stated that passengers in seats near the back have the lowest risk of dying in a crash. While much of the criticism of the airline’s tweet related to the breezy and seemingly insensitive tone of the post, one might still wonder… was it factually correct? Some data appears to indicate that it was.

While commercial airline crashes are thankfully rare, they do sometimes happen still. If you are injured – or a loved one is fatally hurt – in a commercial air flight crash, you may be entitled to damages if the evidence shows that airline negligence contributed to accident. Be sure to reach out without delay to an experienced Chicago aviation accident attorney to learn more about your options.

The tweet that caused the furor was actually the second of a connected pair. The first one cheerfully queried “Do you know which are the safest seats on an #aircraft? Comment the correct answer below and stand a chance to win exciting … goodies!” The second stated that, “According to data studies by Time, the fatality rate for the seats in the middle of the plane is the highest. However, the fatality rate for the seats in the front is marginally lesser and is least for seats at the rear third of a plane.”

Continue reading

by

Head injuries suffered aboard commercial air flights can be serious matters. Whether it is a turbulence-related accident or an impact with a piece of luggage that falls from an overhead compartment, the effects can be significant and long-lasting. If you’ve suffered a head injury aboard a flight, it’s possible that accident was the result of the airline’s negligence and you may be entitled to financial compensation. Be sure to contact an experienced Chicago aviation accident attorney to discuss your situation and your legal options.

An international flight experienced an unplanned detour recently due a passenger who possibly suffered a head injury during the flight. Shortly after 5:00 a.m., a passenger aboard the American Airlines Philadelphia-to-Prague flight fell and experienced at least one seizure. After she visited the plane’s restroom, the passenger, a woman in her 50s, fell again, Irish Examiner reported.

After the second incident, the plane’s flight crew chose to divert and landed at Shannon Airport. The passenger was transported to a hospital in Limerick, as the plane’s crew had become concerned that the woman had suffered a head injury during the first incident and the effects of that head injury were the cause of her second incident, according to the report.

Continue reading

by

Recently, this blog discussed a lawsuit where more than one dozen women sought damages based on the rapes or sexual assaults they allegedly suffered at the hands of their Lyft drivers. Certainly, it is entirely possibly for a rideshare company to contract with, and continue using, a driver who’s dangerous without knowing the risk. That lack of knowledge doesn’t insulate the rideshare service from liability; it simply means that the service is only potentially liable based on the legal concept of negligence.

However, what happens, you may wonder, if the service’s culpability goes further? What if the service did know and continued using a driver anyway? If that were true, then the service might be liable both for negligence and for its intentional misconduct which, in turn, could possibly open up additional damages, such as punitive damages. To find out what kind of damages your case might allow you to recover, be sure to reach out swiftly to an experienced Chicago injury attorney to discuss the facts of your specific situation.

This question of negligence versus intentionally wrongful conduct could be of particular interest to some Uber riders. The Washington Post recently reported that Uber has some practices with regard to drivers who pose a risk of sexual misconduct that some may view as troubling. According to the report, the rideshare service uses a “three strikes” system, in which drivers are allowed to stay on the road even after exhibiting inappropriate conduct.

Continue reading

by

When you decide to pursue a personal injury lawsuit, you know there are certain forces that will work against you. Deciding whether or not to pursue your case may come down, at least in part, to making a determination about whether the potential benefits outweigh the possible risks. To best position yourself, then, it is important to eliminate as many risks as the law will allow you to knock out. Doing that, in many situations, requires an in-depth knowledge of the law. In other words, to give yourself the best possible chance of success, be sure you have knowledgeable Chicago injury counsel on your side.

As an example of knocking out certain risks, look at the case of D.R. and M.A. Both men were workers for the same railway employer. One December day in 2014, M.A. was the locomotive conductor and D.R. was the locomotive engineer on a train that collided with another train while at the railway’s yard in Joliet. The crash caused both the engineer and the conductor to suffer substantial injuries.

The men filed personal injury lawsuits against the railway, alleging that the employer failed to provide them with a safe workplace, which was a violation of the Federal Employers’ Liability’ Act (FELA.) One might expect that the cases would go forward as normal injury lawsuits, but the railway took a different a different approach. It filed multiple different counterclaims against both men. The counterclaims accused the employees of things like property damage (for failing to prevent the crash,) driving too fast, failing to observe a signal, and failing to remain alert and attentive, among other things.

Continue reading

by

Recently, news stories have highlighted many different potential safety issues with rideshare services like Uber or Lyft. These issues can include things like the service’s failure to weed out people who are unsafe drivers and failure to weed out people who are dangerous individuals (such as sexual predators.)

The potential safety issues don’t stop there, though. As a recently article in Wired.com pointed out, rideshare riders have to worry, not only about their drivers being safe, but about the safety of the vehicles carrying them. The Consumer Federation of America estimates that there are roughly 70 million vehicles on U.S. roads that have unrepaired safety recall issues, according to Wired. In other words, any time you ride with Lyft or Uber, you may be riding in a recalled car. If that’s true and you’re hurt in an accident, you may be entitled to compensation, so you should reach out to an experienced Chicago car accident attorney to learn more about your legal options.

The problem of unrepaired recalled vehicles is fairly widespread. Part of that is because the volume of recalls is quite large. General Motors recently issued a sweeping recall due to defective ignition switches and another large one recently for vehicle with airbags made by a certain manufacturer. Given that NHTSA statistics show that fewer than 60 percent of recalled vehicles were fixed, it is easy to see how tens of millions of unrepaired recalled cars could be on U.S. roads.

Continue reading

by

For most people, using a rideshare service to get around is an ordinary activity and no big deal. One night in October 2018, a woman named Gladis hailed a Lyft for a ride, but her ride was horrifically the opposite of ordinary. The driver allegedly locked the doors of his vehicle, drove around for many hours, and then forcibly took Gladis to a beach and raped her, according to her lawsuit.

Gladis was far from alone. In Gladis’ California lawsuit against Lyft, more than a dozen women additional women joined her, asserting that they were raped or sexually assaulted by Lyft drivers. ABC 7 in San Francisco reported that the women’s attorneys allegedly unearthed more than 100 instances where women suffered sexual assaults during Lyft rides, all in California and all in an 18-month period. What this tells you is that, for too many women, sexual assault or rape by rideshare drivers is a painful reality. If you suffer such harm while using a rideshare service like Lyft or Uber in Illinois, you should be sure to reach out to an experienced Chicago injury attorney to discuss your legal options.

The California survivors making up the group of plaintiffs in Gladis’ lawsuit asserted that Lyft’s efforts to weed out sexual predators from contracting as Lyft drivers were so insufficient as to amount to negligence in multiple different ways. For one thing, the service allegedly did not take proper steps after receiving a sexual assault complaint. According to the survivors, Lyft merely conducted internal investigations into the complaints and did not forward those complaints on to law enforcement authorities.

Continue reading

by

If you were hurt while aboard a commercial aircraft, would you know what to do? Would you know what your legal options were and what next steps you should take? For most people, even people who are very smart, educated, business-savvy or sophisticated, the answer reasonably would be “no.” An experienced Chicago injury attorney can help you navigate the ups and downs of the legal system and avoid the potential pitfalls that possibly could ground your case before ever making it to trial.

Injuries aboard airplanes can come in many varieties. Some of those include incidents that involve a food/beverage cart. That is what allegedly happened during one recent international flight on United Airlines, as reported by Pacific Daily News. According to the injured passenger, D.J., he was injured when a flight attendant moved the food/beverage cart very suddenly. The movement allegedly sent the previously-stopped cart careening at a “fast rate of speed” sideways into D.J. The complaint also asserted that D.J. suffered injuries in the ramming incident and required aid from a registered nurse who was also a passenger on the flight. The passenger allegedly received additional care from a medical clinic in the Manila airport.

The injured passenger filed his lawsuit in U.S. federal district court, seeking $113,000 in damages. D.J., however, decided to advance his case without a lawyer.

Continue reading

by

Workers in many industries face a variety of risks when it comes to workplace accidents and injuries. Airport workers are no exception. Sometimes, those risks of injury are inevitable but, as a recent Baltimore Sun report reminds everyone, some regrettably are not. Too many times, the risks airport workers face are the result of inadequate safety protections provided to them. That’s true whether you’re at BWI Airport in Maryland or O’Hare Airport here in Chicago. If you are hurt while on the job at an airport, you should seek skilled Chicago workers’ compensation legal counsel about your possible options in civil court or workers’ compensation.

According to the Sun report, the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health agency recommended that a logistics entity receive citations and several thousand dollars in fines as a result of several workplace safety issues at the BWI Marshall Airport. One of the most serious violations involved work that was being done at the top of jet bridges. The investigation found that the jet bridge work was as high as 25 feet off the ground, but was done by workers who lacked proper fall protection or adequate training, the Sun reported.

That violation was considered the most serious because of its likelihood to lead to serious injury or death. Injuries from falls are among the top causes, or the #1 top cause, of worker fatalities in many areas of work.

Continue reading

by

Many major national and international entities use complex corporate structures to attempt to minimize or avoid civil liability, especially in today’s more complicated “gig” economy. They may have layers of subordinates or franchisees which, they will argue, are independent and solely liable for negligence that injures you. These large entities can range from online retailers to pizza restaurants to rideshare companies. Many times, these franchisees or subordinates may be very small and/or very financially limited.

The law, however, recognizes some important exceptions when the larger entity is actually the one “pulling the strings” and maintaining control of the activities being performed, and therefore potentially liable. With the right proof, you may still be able to get the full recovery you deserve by pursuing the (often much larger) parent or principal entity. To accomplish these kinds of goals (and others) in your Illinois accident case, be sure you have placed a skilled Chicago injury attorney on your side.

A case from Florida gives some insight into how success might be achieved. In the Florida case, a former fire chief was traveling a state highway when a pizza delivery driver cut in front of him. The chief reportedly swerved to avoid contact but lost control of his truck and flipped. The accident left the chief with permanent spinal injuries that rendered him a quadriplegic. He died 15 months later as a result of complications of the accident, according to a Florida Today report.

Continue reading