Port Byron, New York

There are no Port Byron personal injury attorneys per se. Michaels Bersani Kalabanka, in nearby Auburn, New York, is closest personal injury law firm to Port Byron. That explains why Michaels Bersani Kalabanka has served hundreds of Port Byron residents. The lawyers at the firm consider themselves “Port Byron personal injury lawyers” because of their longtime presence there.

Port Byron is a small, quiet, village of about 1,300, is located within the Town of Mentz, Cayuga County, just north of Auburn, New York. It is located at the junction of NY State Routes 38 and 31. Although the New York thruway passes through Port Byron, there is no direct access point located within the village. Instead residents must access the throughway in nearby by Weedsport. Port Byron is located only 35 miles west of Syracuse making it a short commute. Port Byron is only a short 8-mile drive south on State Route 38 to the law offices of the Auburn personal injury lawyers of Michaels Bersani Kalabanka.

Port Byron has rich historical roots, having originally been settled in 1797. Brigham Young in the 1830’s, prior to being the leader of the Mormon faith, was a painter and builder there. Isaac Singer, developer of the Singer Sewing machine, made his home at one time in Port Byron and at one time Singer Sewing machine factory was a major employer in nearby Auburn. The Port Byron Central School District is the largest employer in the village and approximately 950 students attend school there.

As stated above, Michaels Bersani Kalabanka’s Auburn office has represented many Port Byron accident and medical malpractice victims over the years. For example, the firm recently won a significant and noteworthy case that originated in Port Byron. In that case, a worker was repairing lines on utility poles on a property owned by a telephone company. The telephone company had granted an easement to New York State Gas and Electric (NYSGE), the worker’s employer, to run utility lines. In order to perform the work, the worker was required to access the upper part of the utility pole with a bucket lift truck. The worker was operating a winch line mounted to the truck boom when suddenly it snapped. The upper boom recoiled upward and away from the pole, ejecting the worker from the bucket. To make matters worse, his safety line then failed, causing him to fall freely to the ground and sustain multiple serious injuries and fractures.

The worker reached out to the Port Byron personal injury attorneys at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka. The Michaels Bersani Kalabanka lawyers told him they could help him because he was performing an activity listed under the New York’s “Scaffold Law” (NY labor law Section 240[1]), which protects workers who fall from elevated heights by giving them the right to sue the owner of the worksite, which in this case was the telephone company, and others for failing to keep him from falling.

When M&S’s personal injury lawyers sued the Port Byron telephone company, their insurance company lawyers asked the court to throw the case out because the telephone company did not own the pole the worker had been working on when he fell, and thus, according to them, they could not be held liable under New York’s labor law. The attorneys at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka fought the insurance lawyers in court, and established that, even though the defendants did not own the pole, they had granted an easement to the worker’s employer, NYSEG, so that his employer could maintain the pole. Under New York’s Labor law, this made them liable.

The insurance company also tried to claim that the telephone company should be relieved of liability because the worker was the “sole cause” of his own accident inasmuch as he failed to properly use his harness and lanyard. Through careful investigation and discovery of this Port Byron area case, M&S personal injury lawyers were able to establish that, whether the harness and lanyard had failed on their own, or whether the worker had failed to use them incorrectly, did not really matter. The worker could not possibly been the “sole cause” of his own accident because part of the reason he fell was that his boss had ordered him to use the winch and lift bucket in a dangerous way that resulted in him being ejected from the bucket. This was enough to establish that the telephone company was legally responsible for the worker’s injuries.

The Court found that no trial was even necessary to establish “liability”. In other words, the Court found that Michaels Bersani Kalabanka had established so clearly that the telephone company was liable to the worker for his injuries that no jury trial was even necessary.

The success in the case was due to Michaels Bersani Kalabanka’s attorneys’ solid knowledge of New York’s labor law provisions, careful research and case development. M&S prevailed when other lawyers doubted that the case could, or would, be successful. Since that M&S victory, other lawyers from around New York State have been citing to that Port Byron case to win their own cases.

Many Cayuga and Onondaga county lawyers refer their personal injury cases to Michaels Bersani Kalabanka, the sole law firm in Cayuga County that handles almost exclusively this very specialized type of injury cases. Those lawyers refer their personal injury and medical malpractice cases to Michaels Bersani Kalabanka for a reason; they know that the firm consists only of top-tier injury lawyers whose narrow focus on this type of case makes them leading experts in the field.

Don’t hesitate to call Michaels Bersani Kalabanka for a free consultation. Directions to Michaels Bersani Kalabanka from Port Byron can be found here.