PA Personal Injury Blog | Schmidt Kramer, P.C. Legal News

Why Deadlines for Filing Injury Claims May Vary from Case to Case

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on February 18, 2020 in Personal Injury

There is limited time to file a personal injury lawsuit after an injury occurs. That is because of Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations. However, while this deadline applies to many claims, there are other times when the deadline is sooner or later than the standard deadline. Schmidt Kramer’s Harrisburg personal injury attorneys explain the possible exceptions […]

Will My Case Go to Trial or Be Settled Before Going to Court?

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on January 03, 2020 in Personal Injury

This is a common question that injury victims have when they meet with an attorney. They often feel a lot of anxiety about the thought of going through a trial. Below, learn more about when cases may need to go to trial for the victim to have a chance of obtaining fair compensation. If you […]

Hundreds of Patients Secretly Recorded at UPMC Carlisle Hospital

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on December 23, 2019 in Personal Injury

A 39-year old man in Franklin County has been charged with multiple counts of indecent assault, child pornography and other criminal activity after an investigation uncovered he was secretly videotaping hundreds of patients, including minors, while working as a nurse at UPMC Carlisle hospital. The charges were issued following his initial arrest in April of […]

How Long Can It Take to Obtain a Settlement from a Lawsuit?

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on December 17, 2019 in Personal Injury

This is one of many questions personal injury victims often have about the legal process. They see medical bills piling up and may be missing work because of their health issues, so they may feel anxious about getting that settlement check. Below, learn more about how long personal injury lawsuit settlements may take and the […]

How Are Pain and Suffering Damages Calculated in a Personal Injury Case?

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on October 09, 2019 in Personal Injury

After an accident, a victim may experience physical pain, emotional distress or psychological trauma due to his or her injury. While a personal injury insurance claim can help compensate you for any medical expenses and lost wages, you can only obtain compensation for pain and suffering by filing a lawsuit against the at-fault party. However, […]

Factors that May Extend a Personal Injury Claim

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on August 12, 2019 in Personal Injury

Each personal injury claim is unique, and the amount of time it takes from beginning to end depends on many factors. However, there are certain issues that can cause claims to take longer to resolve. In a free consultation, an experienced Harrisburg personal injury lawyer at Schmidt Kramer can explain common reasons why insurance claims […]

The Legal Intelligencer Names Schmidt Kramer’s Scott Cooper 2019 Power Player of the Year

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on June 19, 2019 in Personal Injury

We are excited to announce partner Scott Cooper has been named 2019 Power Player of the Year by The Legal Intelligencer. Cooper’s selection was noted in the June 2019 edition of The Legal Intelligencer, which reveals the winners of the 2019 Professional Excellence Awards. The goal of giving out these awards is to highlight attorneys […]

Social Media Mistakes to Avoid When Filing a Personal Injury Claim

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on June 14, 2019 in Personal Injury

Today, too many people share the personal details of their daily lives with the world through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. While you may use social media to keep up with friends and family, after being injured in an accident, you must be extremely careful regarding the information you share. This […]

Homeowner Says Insurance Refuses to Replace Hail-Damaged Roof

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on May 09, 2019 in Personal Injury

A homeowner in Manchester Township, York County has been battling with his insurance company for about a year to replace his hail-damaged roof. He recently received a letter from the company stating that his current roof was improperly installed and needs to be replaced. Not only does it have to be fixed by the end […]

January’s Insurance Stacking Supreme Court Decision is Retroactive, Federal Judge Rules

Posted on behalf of Schmidt Kramer on April 25, 2019 in Personal Injury

Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled in Butta v. Geico that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in Gallagher v. Geico back in January should be applied retroactively. U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney said since the court was not announcing a new rule of state law – the court said, under the Motor Vehicle Financial […]

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$10,043,952.13 Personal Injury

Schmidt Kramer, P.C.partner Gerard C. Kramer won a personal injury action for $10,043,952.13 in Northumberland County on behalf of a volunteer firefighter who was the victim of Intentional Tort. The 50-year-old volunteer firefighter was seriously injured when a barn collapsed, causing a spinal injury which left him a paraplegic. The claim was brought against the arsonist who intentionally started the fire. It is believed that the verdict is the highest ever in Northumberland County.

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$4,034,000.00 Personal Injury

Yesterday a Judge in Union County (Lewisburg, PA) awarded a couple from New Berlin, Pennsylvania, over $4,000,000 because the husband was shot while turkey hunting. You might ask yourself, how does a turkey hunting accident end up with that type of verdict? In order to understand the verdict you would have to know our clients. They are good people who had their life wrecked. Plus, you would have to know the defendant, who should not have been hunting with a gun because he was prohibited after a previous criminal conviction. It is a good verdict, because the Judge was able to do two things with his decision. First, he communicated to two very good people that their losses were something that those of us on the outside could appreciate and value. Mike Hobbins (our client) is a 51 year old guy who lost his sight because a convicted felon --who should not have even possessed a gun-- went hunting illegally, and broke with impunity the most fundamental rule in hunting: identify your target before you pull the trigger. The Judge accepted the financial loss Mr. Hobbins' suffered, but listened closely to the evidence of less tangible losses. When Mike broke down on the stand, because his daughter would end up walking him down the aisle at her wedding, as opposed to how it was supposed to go, the Judge was listening. When Mike could not keep it together, because of how emasculating it was for him not to be able to provide financially for his family, the Judge was listening. It was facts like these that the Judge cited to support the $2,000,000 award for non-economic damages. Second, the Judge wanted to send a message. Union County is a hunting county. Many of the residents hunt there, and people from outside the area come to Union County to hunt. It was my impression, from the Judge's statements as he rendered his decision, that he wanted to send a message to the people in Union County to protect them in their sport. The rules in place to restrict people convicted of crimes not to have a gun are not to be broken. Hunting is serious and you have to identify your target before you shoot. When you turn your back on the rules that are set to provide safety in a sport, you risk being an example. Here, the $1,000,000 punitive damage award sends that message loud and clear. When it really comes down to brass tacks, the right action was taken against a Defendant who may never truly appreciate what kind of impact his reckless choices caused. At Schmidt Kramer, we are injury lawyers. That means we work with people who were hurt in car accidents, who were hurt by the neglect of nursing homes, or those that were seriously injured because of the reckless, thoughtless acts of others. If you or a loved one have been injured in Pennsylvania, we may be able to help. While the verdict yesterday is not one that is representative of every case we do, it does show that serious and dedicated representation can bring good results. Joe Chapman January 18, 2013

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$2,200,000.00 Auto Accidents

On Monday, January 6, 2014, Schmidt Kramer accident lawyer Scott Cooper obtained a verdict on behalf of his client who is the widow of a man who died in a fiery crash on Interstate 78 in Lebanon County. The awarded verdict of $2.2 million was in a nonjury proceeding before a federal judge in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. That verdict includes $100,000 in punitive damages assessed against the owner of the trucking company. Kamilah Claxton won summary judgment in November after the defendants, Sukhwinder Singh and the trucking company for which he worked, failed to file a brief in opposition to Claxton's motion, which was made in September. The verdict in Claxton v. Singh was issued after the court held a non-jury assessment of damages earlier this month. "Mr. Sukhchan Singh, the employer, is liable on the basis of respondent superior, but was also grossly negligent in failing to maintain his vehicle in compliance with state and federal law, particularly with regard to having required safety inspections and correcting defects in its braking equipment," said U.S. District Judge William W. Caldwell of the Middle District of Pennsylvania in his opinion accompanying the verdict. "He was also grossly negligent in entrusting his vehicle to Sukhwinder Singh, an inexperienced truck driver who had failed the written test and driving test multiple times before finally earning his commercial driving license," Caldwell said.

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$1,200,000.00 Personal Injury

A Dauphin County jury has awarded a $1.2 million verdict to the parents of a 5-year-old who had an anoxic brain injury and stopped breathing after he had a tonsillectomy. 2012-06-26 10:00:00 AM Date of Verdict: June 19. 2012 Court and Case No.: C.P. Dauphin County No. 2009-CV-14003-MM Judge: Scott Evans Type of Action: Medical malpractice Injuries: Anoxic brain injury Plaintiffs Counsel: Terry S. Hyman, Schmidt Kramer, Harrisburg Plaintiffs Experts: Dr. Anna H. Messner, liability; Lucille Packer, Pediatric Otolaryngology, Palo Alto, Calif.; Terry P. Leslie, vocations and earning capacity, Lancaster; Dr. Hilary B. Berlin, pediatric psychiatry, Great Neck, N.Y. Defense Counsel: Andrew H. Foulkrod, Darlene K. King, Foulkrod Ellis, Camp Hill, PA Defense Experts: James C. Reilly, Pediatric Otolaryngology, Wilmington, DE Comment: A Dauphin County jury has awarded a $1.2 million verdict to the parents of a 5-year-old who had an anoxic brain injury and stopped breathing after he had a tonsillectomy. The entire verdict came against Dr. Andrew M. Shapiro, the doctor who plaintiffs Reginald Graham and Tykeisha Metz alleged chose to have the boy monitored at a pediatric ward. The plaintiffs argued Shapiro failed to tell nurses caring for the baby about, and how to care for, the boy's enhanced risk for respiratory failure. The jury came back on June 19 and awarded Reginald Graham and Tykeisha Mets $500,000 in non-economic damages and $686,170 in loss of future earning capacity, according to the plaintiffs counsel. According to the statement, the baby's mother brought him to Shapiro because she was "'afraid that he might stop breathing during his sleep,'" the plaintiffs' pretrial statement said. Shapiro performed a sleep study and observed the baby's Apnea Hypopnea Index to be 43 — four times higher than what's considered severe. A tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy were performed. According to the plaintiffs, the baby's sleep study results put him at an increased risk for post-operative respiratory complications. Despite this, they argued in the statement, Shapiro ordered the pediatric nurses at the Harrisburg Hospital general pediatric ward to observe the boy as they would any other patients — about once every four hours. The pretrial statement said that one in four children who have an AHI in the 40s and oxygen desaturation below 80 have some type of respiratory problem. The younger the child, the greater the risk of a respiratory problem, the statement said. According to the statement, Shapiro took off the child's pulse oximeter, the finger-mounted device used to measure blood oxygen, and ordered a heart and respiratory rate monitor. The child was 11 months old at the time. The plaintiffs pled that the baby was last seen at 4 a.m. There was no record of his oxygen saturation for the next hour and 45 minutes. He stopped breathing a 6:40 a.m., and his brain was without oxygen long enough to cause demonstrable injury on an MRI. "Immediately prior to his surgery, [the child] was a normal child, who could say mama, eat finger foods, and was just on the verge of walking," the statement said. "After his code, [he] was like a newborn. He could not lift his head or sit up. He could not talk. He could not move." In his pretrial statement, Shapiro argued that he recognized the child's pre-operative sleep study showed he was driven to breath by decreased blood oxygen saturation, which he said was typical in patients with obstructive sleep apnea. He argued the American Academy of Otolaryngology dictates that admission to the intensive care unit is not the standard of care. In the statement, he said nurses did not observe signs of respiratory distress. No alarms sounded until the child arrested, the statement said. He said the baby likely arrested as a result of hypoglycemia and/or an acute aspiration, which he argued would not have been identified by blood oxygen saturation. — Ben Present, of the Law Weekly

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$1,024,040.80 Auto Accidents

Scott Cooper settled a wrongful death case on behalf of the widow of a police office who was killed in a car accident in the line of duty for $1,024,040.80. The claim against the other driver was amicably resolved before suit was filed for the entire available policy limits for the other driver. The case took place in Adams County, PA.

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Testimonials

One of the best decisions I ever made was choosing Schmidt-Kramer as my personal injury representative. I was given Scott Cooper's name through a family member shortly after my accident in July of 2024. After contacting the Schmidt-Kramer office, Scott came out and visited me in the hospital the very next day. From the very beginning, he was compassionate, upfront, and honest. He ALWAYS responded to my calls, texts, and/or e-mails in a timely manner and kept me up to date on developments in my case. I am very pleased with the outcome and highly recommend this law firm.
Very caring and compassionate
Debra Zervanos
Gerry and his team were very caring and compassionate. Gerry was always very responsive to me whether it be phone calls or emails. He kept me updated every single step of the way. His team and himself worked tirelessly to get me the best possible outcome to my situation. He was able to wrap everything up within two years with a nice bow on it. I will forever be grateful and will recommend him to everyone.
Dakota Cravener
Solid, trustworthy and lucky to have on your side! Dennis Kergick represented me and I was very impressed. Finally a down to earth and easy to talk to attorney . When the time came he was a junk yard dog and I could see the opposing counsel was intimidated. All while maintaining a professional level of respect and courtesy. Would recommend to friends and family. Keep up the good work!!
It’s hard to believe it’s been four years already, but I’m still deeply thankful for my experience with Dennis. Now living in Illinois, I’ve had some similar encounters, and people here are often surprised — and even a bit shocked — when they hear my story. They always end up admitting just how good Dennis truly was. It’s something I didn’t fully realize at the time, but the more I share, the more it’s confirmed to me. God bless, and thank you I came back stronger than ever.