One Sec Tech

Source: Associated Press

In this city known for producing laws both path-breaking and contentious, legislators have forcefully stepped into another debate — this time over the potential danger of cell phone use.

With the Board of Supervisors‘ 10-1 vote in favor of an ordinance Mayor Gavin Newsom has indicated he will sign, San Francisco has waded into the as-yet unresolved debate over the relationship between long-term use of cell phones and health problems such as brain tumors.

It would be the country’s first law requiring cell phone retailers to disclose the phones’ specific absorption rate, or SAR, to customers.

SAR measures the maximum amount of radiation absorbed by a person using a handset. The Federal Communications Commission limits SAR to an average of 1.6 watts per kilogram of body tissue, but information about radiation levels is not usually readily available when people purchase phones at stores.

“From our perspective, this is a very reasonable and quite modest measure that will provide greater transparency and information to consumers for whom this is an area of interest or concern,” said Newsom spokesman Tony Winnicker, who noted that the mayor is an iPhone user. “We’re playing a role that we’ve often played, which is to be at the forefront of a debate.”

The city has produced reams of novel legislation and other regulations, banning plastic grocery bags, ending municipal use of bottled water, making composting mandatory, and requiring the posting of nutrition information in restaurants.

Still after a number of scientific inquiries into this issue, no conclusions have been reached.

A major U.N. study released last month, for instance, found no clear link between cell phones and the risk of developing brain cancer.

Industry representatives see that as a reason to oppose a law like this.

“They’re just responding to unfounded concern,” said John Walls, a spokesman for industry trade group CTIA-The Wireless Association. He said the law “could very likely confuse and mislead consumers.”

But advocates said they see the ordinance primarily as an effort to inform consumers.

Renee Sharp, the California director of the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, also said she hoped the law would dissuade consumers from buying relatively high radiation phones until their effect on the human body is fully understood. The advocacy group provided reports and other counsel to the city’s Department of the Environment as they developed the policy.

“We’re also hoping it will spur greater debate about whether the current federal standards are adequate or not,” Sharp said. “We certainly don’t think that people are not going to buy cell phones because of radiation.”

Industry officials would not speculate on the impact to their business, but many of the nation’s most popular cell phones have relatively high SAR levels.

This is because many of those popular phones are smart phones, which have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth receivers, as well as basic cellular capability, that add to their total SAR rating, according to Walls.

Under the law, larger chains will have to place SAR notices starting in February, while other stores will have until 2012.

While the supervisors were largely unanimous, reaction outside of City Hall and across the country was mixed.

“This is a response to public fear, not actual evidence of a risk,” said David Ropeik, a Harvard University instructor who studies risk perception. “That’s all precaution based on suggestions of risk that come as much from our innate alarm bells as from conclusive evidence. And precaution argues, ‘Don’t wait until the evidence is conclusive,’ which is a fine idea except sometimes there’s no smoke underneath the fire.”

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My Take:  Let’s face it: California is a pretty crazy state when it comes to laws.  This is the home of Los Angeles court reporting on every star’s every move; Laser skin treatment California residents love to showoff and of course home to the would-be next biggest thing in Hollywood.  Why not a cell phone emissions law?  Can you see the LA CA court reporting service going crazy on these cases in court?  I wonder if the Oakland CA Botox doctor I’ve been seeing can transmit SAR phone levels to me if he uses his phone on a regular basis?

 

Speaking of cell phones, if you live in the Big Apple you can hire a New York business transcription company to handle a lot of your telecommunications issues, including digital transcription of audio, video webcasts and tape cassettes for corporate transcription and other uses. New York transcription services can take a big load off of your business.

Other Resources: 

 

Corporate Crimes

A good Boston white collar defense lawyer can help you if you’ve been accused of embezzlement or some other white collar crime.  You can even hire a Massachusetts federal lawyer to help represent you if you have been accused of Internet fraud or computer data theft. 

 

Splitting the Costs
No Austin divorce attorney can make you settle on a custody or alimony price.  If you have hired an Austin family law attorney and neither he or she can settle upon an agreement with your spouse’s attorney, try mediation as an option.  Nothing is set in stone until a judge says so.

 

Source:  Manhattan News

Two robbery suspects recently struck and killed An 83-year-old nun crossing the street with their getaway car while fleeing police.

Sister Mary Celine Graham and her aide, 58-year-old Patricia Cruz, were among six people injured when the fleeing blue Chrysler Pacifica collided with a silver Honda Odyssey and went into a tailspin at the corner of West 122nd Street.

Witnesses said the Pacifica was being chased by two police cruisers, an NYPD van and a police scooter in the moments before the 9:40 a.m. crash.

Sister Graham, who became a nun with the Franciscan Handmaids of Mary at age 22, spent her life taking care of preschool students including those at the St. Benedict’s Day Nursery in Harlem and the Camp St. Edward in Staten Island, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York said. She’d  recently begun suffering Parkinsons disease,

The scene at 122nd Street and Lenox Avenue after a deadly crash that killed one and injured at least four others. (DNAinfo/Jill Colvin)

She was declared dead on arrival at Harlem Hospital. Her bent cane was discovered lying on the ground next to her, a witness said.

“It was terrible — all you saw was bodies lying all over the place,” a witness, Julie Wells, 58, said after the crash.

Police arrested William Robbins, 18 after the crash. He was not immediately charged. Police were still searching for two other suspects who escaped on Tuesday afternoon.

The drama began on Lenox Avenue, between 122nd Street and 123rd streets, earlier that morning when a 21-year-old Columbia University student called police from his cell phone to say that he’d been robbed at gunpoint by three men who took off in a blue car, according to police.

Minutes later, police spotted the car on Lenox Avenue, near 141st Street, a detective at the scene said. They pulled the car over and arrested the driver on the street.

The scene of a car crash on Lenox Avenue Tuesday morning. (DNAinfo/Jill Colvin)

But before officers could detain the two men sitting in the back, one of the suspects jumped into the front seat and spun the car around with the third suspect still in the backseat, police said.

As the robbery suspects sped down Lenox Avenue toward the scene of the original robbery, they drove into the Honda Odyssey, which was turning right from West 122nd Street. A street sweeping vehicle was also in the middle of the intersection.

The driver of the Honda, a 55-year-old mom, had to be cut out of her car. The mom and her 15-year-old son were taken to St. Luke’s Hospital, where they were listed in a stable condition.

Sr. Graham was remembered as a “selfless” nun whose entire life was devoted to others.

“She was a Franciscan Handmaid to her toes, in her selfless dedication to serving ‘her children’,” Sister Loretta Theresa Richards, the order’s superior, said in a statement. “She was always trying to make things better for somebody else.”

Sr. Graham’s nursing aide, Patricia Cruz, of Brooklyn, was recovering at Harlem Hospital with bruised kidneys and internal bleeding, her family said.

Cruz asked her family “to pray for her,” and does not yet know that her companion of a decade was killed during the crash, because the family fears it would upset her too much, Cruz’ relatives said.

Cruz’ husband blamed police for setting off the chain of events that injured his wife.

“If they weren’t chasing him, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Candelario Cruz, 58.

New rules for speeding in neighborhoods garner serious fines.  As do those for truckers and some of these have learned to drive big trucks from the best Truck driving school New York.

Another pedestrian injured in the crash, a 26-year old electrician named Steven Phan, was also recovering at Harlem Hospital. Phan’s brother said he was stable and had a broken leg.

One pedestrian refused treatment at the scene.

Ava Arrington, 53, was home in her apartment on Lenox Avenue when she said she heard sirens. Less than five seconds later, she heard the crash.

“It was metal and glass crunching,” she said.

Arrington looked out her window and saw the two smashed cars, along with two people motionless on the ground in the street. She also saw a black cane with a straight handle on the pavement beside them.

“Oh my goodness, it was horrific. I heard people screaming, ‘Oh my God, Oh my God!’” she said. “It looked very, very bad. Nobody was moving.”

“It’s so sad.”

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My Take:  No point in saying anything about learn to drive lessons here.   South Carolina family attorneys aside, this poor woman would not have stood a chance going as fast as these guys were.  I suspect that she’d have a team of North Carolina personal injury attorneys and others from across the state clamoring for her case if she’d survived.

 

New York accounting services firms and every other small business out there needs to be prepared by the way for higher fees for speeding.  Not only New York (NY) income tax accountants and drivers of all ages, but even elderly drivers will be subject to very stiff fines for speeding and other infractions that used to be handled with a warning.

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Bankruptcy Options

Portland OR bankruptcy attorneys are available to help you if you are facing debt problems and have no way out.  But, even the best Portland OR bankruptcy lawyer  will tell you that bankruptcy is not always the final option.  Choose carefully before you decide to go this route.  Contact a debt services provider in your area and see if you qualify for a debt reduction program.

Speeders

Got a speeding ticket Ottawa style? If you did and you hit someone,  you will most likely want to find and hire a Toronto criminal lawyer as soon as possible.  Hitting someone while driving takes a moving violation into criminal offense territory, especially if you are under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Cited: Fortune Small Business

Many businesses do not have the time or manpower to wade through security-camera footage on a daily basis. Because of this inventory losses are on the rise and the culprits are usually the cashiers giving themselves and friends and old-fashioned five-finger discount. It is estimated that $15 billion was stolen by employees from realtors in the last year, at least according to University of Fort criminologist Richard Hollinger. He conducts annual surveys of the top stores in the country. This figure indicates that 25% more in inventory was lost than what is lost to shoplifters. However, there is hope on the horizon to retailers across the country.

In almost all of these cases, closed-circuit-TV monitoring systems failed to spot the crime. “The problem is, you have hours and hours of video to go through,” says Hollinger. In recessionary times few companies have the staff to review all that footage.

So Agilence, a small firm in Camden, N.J., is stepping in with a solution: patented software that scans for likely theft moments and a team of “loss prevention” experts to review the results for you. By synchronizing raw security-camera footage with point-of-sale data, the software takes a still image associated with every item scanned at a checkout stand.

The market is crowded: Plenty of companies, including Vfinity and StopLift, sell advanced video surveillance technology. But few offer point-of-sale synchronization, and fewer still include human video analysts in the price of a subscription, which starts at $300 per month.

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Rather than having to scan hours of video, Agilence’s investigators can quickly review thousands of still images on a computer screen, click on any that appear suspect and call up the full video of the transactions.

The Agilence analysts report likely cases of fraud — which employers can then see for themselves — and note areas in which intervention or improved training might help. “A retailer would have to hire 10 employees to do what we do for them,” says Pedro Ramos, vice president of operations at Agilence.

In particular, Ramos says, Agilence is seeing an increase in conspiracies between cashiers and customers, known as “sweet-hearting.” The employee may bag an item after voiding a transaction, or simply press the price check button on the register and allow his friend to walk past the checkout station as if a sale had been made.

Hollinger and other experts say Agilence is onto something big. The next step is to automate the process and identify common scam patterns. “We’re starting to see the computers getting smarter,” Hollinger says. “They soon may be smart enough to send a text message to alert a manager who’s actually in the store and can do something about it.”

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My Take: Well, I guess the employees that have sticky fingers better start watching what they are doing not to mention the shoplifters. My concern would be employee harassment. Some employees just might be contacting in NY Long Island harassment lawyer. When you measure jobs because of theft, you usually do not get any severance pay. And if you are accused and there is no evidence, you should get an NYC severance pay lawyer to get what is coming to you.

The ones I worry about are the kids. There are so many kids that use the five finger discount to get things at their parents cannot afford or will not buy for them. That means that parents are going to have to get a Pittsburgh family lawyer that can handle a theft case. Then again, the way kids are big on technology today they just might take your way around it. However, these are usually caught eventually and they will still need an Allegheny PA family attorney.

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Related Resources

Cited: New Jersey Law Journal

New Jersey’s leading litigators and teachers in the field of personal injury law, Kenneth Javerbaum and Gerald Baker, are joining forces to practice together in four counties in a firm that will have 22-lawyers working in various offices. Baker and his two partners will be joining the 19-lawyer Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins that will give the Springfield firm its first substantial presence in Houston County.

Baker says the takeover of his Hoboken firm, Baker, Pedersen & Robbins, gives him and partners Jorden “Nick” Pedersen, Jr. and Bennett Robbins an opportunity to expand their practices throughout the state and frees him of responsibility for management and marketing.

Baker says personal injury firms of one, two or three lawyers often are hard pressed to find time for law, the business of law and coping with best practices. Joining a larger operation is the right solution for his firm, he says.

“I didn’t want to market or manage a firm anymore,” says Baker, 66. He is already getting used to the luxury. He joked on November 6 that when he and his new colleagues started to discuss the timing of their announcement, his contribution was, “You decide.”

Baker says he approached Javerbaum informally at a State Bar Association meeting earlier this year and spent the past few months working out the details with Javerbaum Wurgaft’s managing partner, Eric Kahn.

The melding of the two operations, though, will take about a year “as we make sure our practices and personalities blend with each other,” Baker says. That shouldn’t be hard, he says, because “we’re all personal injury lawyers.”

Besides having firms with a record of winning multi-million awards, Baker and Javerbaum, 67, are longtime leaders of the plaintiff’s personal injury bar. Since 1985, Javerbaum has been on the board of governors of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America-New Jersey. Baker is one of the state’s busiest legal lecturers — at the Institute of Continuing Legal Education and other forums — on trends in personal injury law, particularly automobile negligence.

For those who need a lawyer in Oregon . . . Other law firms manage large teams of lawyers that are too busy to work with you personally. This Beaverton OR personal injury attorney is a sole practitioner. That means that all aspects of your claim will be handled by him. When you call with a question, you will speak to him. He does his best to respond to your questions in a timely manner. He also believes communication is the key to serving a client’s needs. You will never be left in the dark about your case. You will receive copies of all important correspondence and this Portland OR personal injury attorneys will never miss a legal deadline.

Baker has also represented survivors and heirs of passengers in major airline disasters, and being part of a large firm will improve his chances of competing for such work with large New York firms that dominate the field, he says,

Pedersen has a specialty handling personal injury matters for employees protected by federal statutes, longshoreman, seamen, railroad workers and defense contract workers. Robbins is the Hudson County trustee of the state Bar Association.

“The strength of Nick Pedersen is that he does things that few people do — Longshore and Harborworkers Compensation Act claims, admiralty law cases — things like that,” Javerbaum says. “Ben Robbins is a very experienced trial lawyer. We can give him anything to try,”

Having lawyers with longtime presence in the county will be a special boon, Javerbaum and Kahn say. Baker’s father Nathan started the firm in 1926 and Pedersen’s father was a tax official in the county for many years.

“We have a lot of depth now,” Javerbaum says.

Baker and his colleagues will also work at the Newark office, which Javerbaum Wurgaft acquired in 2007 when three lawyers from 35-year-old Sinins & Bross joined the firm. The office in Springfield will remain the largest Javerbaum Wurgaft center and there will be two lawyers in Freehold, headed by another lateral hire, Paul Newell, a well-known personal injury practitioner in Monmouth County.

“Personal injury firms are unique,” Javerbaum says. “The business model in most firms is keeping time records by the hour, expecting associates to work a certain number of hours a year, having all of your costs paid up front and all that is totally at odds with the way a personal injury firm works. Ironically, in personal injury practice, the better business is the more money you are laying out.”

According to Javerbaum, there are no plans at this time for growth of the firm but they are willing to seize any opportunities to get new attorneys. A practice depends on referrals so it is important for a firm to be of good size and have lawyers that are interested in marketing and professional activities. Javerbaum also estimated that 50-60% of the firm’s revenue comes from referrals from other attorneys.

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My Take: Wow, 22 lawyers all under the same roof that sounds more like a convention. I suppose that’s great for New Jersey but what about the rest of the country. What if I need a personal injury attorney Denver CO? Or a NYC slip and fall accident attorney?

I suppose I could just pick up the Yellow Pages to find a Denver criminal lawyer or a Brooklyn nursing home abuse lawyer. I suppose is saying is true that you can find a lawyer anywhere. What does it say about our country? Why do we need so many lawyers? You would think there would be more doctors and lawyers.

No matter, one thing is definitely positive, all lawyers need litigation support services in LA, Denver, New York or wherever. That means that is a New York, Denver, Portland, LA California court reporting service available to each lawyer in every state.

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Related Resources

Personal Injury

These Albuquerque NM personal injury lawyers are experienced in all aspects of personal injury trial law. They have tried dozens of cases to verdict, some of which have resulted in judgments in excess of $1 million. If you have been injured in a car accident, slip and fall incident or by defective product, you need to contact an attorney. An attorney can get you the compensation you deserve for lost pay, medical expenses and for your time and suffering. A lawyer knows how to deal with insurance companies and can work his/her way through all the red tape for you.

Negligent Care

When we visit our doctor for a routine check-up or book an appointment with a specialist, we expect a degree of professionalism typically sought and achieved in the medical field. We expect to be treated with the standard of care generally required of doctors, nurses, dentists and other medical practitioners. However, sometimes the people we trust to make our health better and heal our medical conditions fail to provide quality care and negligently put us in harm’s way. If you think you have been the recipient of negligent care, to a Washington DC medical malpractice lawyer to find out for sure.