Depositions set

Almost four years later,
doctor, nurse to testify

By David Baker
Posted Sept. 12, 2007

On Aug. 30 I was deposed by lawyers for Samaritan Hospital and the nurses named in the lawsuit. The questioning lasted about five hours. I am awaiting a copy of the transcript for my review and signature.

Later this month I am scheduled to depose a doctor and one of the nurses. These depositions should produce details of what happened on the night of November 10/11 2003 when Lisa was found in her hospital bed with no pulse and a near-zero blood sugar level.

She was left in a coma and died three weeks later.

Meanwhile, the motion to dismiss that Steve Coffey's lawyer stated in writing would be served on me the week ending August 25 still has not arrived, nor has any other communication been received from O'Connell & Aronowitz.

A conference in the judge's chambers is scheduled for Sept. 20.


UPDATE, Sept. 6: More than two weeks after the defendants stated in writing that a motion to dismiss my lawsuit would be filed, no motion has been served. This law firm's conduct has gone from allegedly malicious to downright bizarre. And now, at my request, the judge has scheduled a hearing for later this month. Attendance is mandatory.

Motion detector

Posted August 27, 2007

Six days after canceling my deposition for the second time in a week, the lawyer representing Steve Coffey has still not filed the motion she said would be "served on you this week."

As of Monday, no papers had been received. And a call to the clerk of the Supreme Court in Albany at noon revealed that nothing had been entered into the computer system and no motion was awaiting entry.

In a letter to me dictated on Tuesday of last week, attorney Pamela Nichols said the motion would seek a summary judgment dismissing my claim against Coffey, Brendan Tully and the law firm itself, O'Connell & Aronowitz.

The suit, filed in February of this year, alleges that the defendants conspired to get my claim against Samaritan Hospital thrown out while they said they deciding whether to take over the case.

The claim against the Troy hospital is over Lisa's death in 2003. The first deposition in that case is scheduled to take place this Thursday.

Coffey lawyer wants
lawsuit thrown out

By David Baker
Posted August 22, 2007

The first deposition in my lawsuit against Steve Coffey has been delayed for the second time in a week. On Tuesday, less that 24 hours before I was scheduled to be deposed, Coffey’s lawyer, Pamela Nichols, decided instead to announce that she intends to file a motion to dismiss my claim.

A motion to for summary judgement to dismiss can be served at any time during a lawsuit but they are usually filed after most discovery has been completed. In this case, discovery has barely started.

The motion has not yet been served on me so I don’t know the details. It is interesting though that up until this week, Coffey had apparently found no legal basis to have my claim thrown out. It’s also interesting that back in May, during a conference with the judge, Nichols – who was visibly angry at the way the conference was going – stated that she planned to file a motion to dismiss.

If she knew that back then, why wait until now, and then do it at the last minute, after twice scheduling a deposition?

It doesn’t make sense. Unless, as an attorney with a very weak defense, you do it in an act of desperation to at least delay the moment when the truth will come out.

The TU: What did they know

and when did they know it?

By David Baker
Posted August 19, 2007

Almost three years ago, in a posting on this page, I revealed how I had found that the Albany Times Union had for years ignored lawsuits filed against Capital Regions medical providers, which had run thousands of dollars of advertising in the TU. A letter sent at the time to the paper’s editor, Rex Smith asking for comment, never received a response.

Later I wrote on this page that Smith seemed to be divorced from reality, after he had written a column about a TU story that suggested Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno had acted improperly when he gave his son a loan.

Now it seems everyone is taking a hard look at the TU and asking about its ethics. The charge has been led by the New York Post and its state editor, Fred Dicker, who found serious problems with a TU story that claimed Bruno had improperly used state helicopters.That has led to questions about the TU’s involvement in the creation of state records to support its accusation, and about just how much Gov. Elliot Spitzer knew about the plot to destroy Bruno.

I was at Spitzer’s first public appearance after the Post’s story and I watched as the governor ducked questions about it, most of them from Dicker. And as Spitzer continues to duck, the questions keep coming. Albany County DA David Soares has started an investigation.

On Aug. 17, the state Ethics Commission served one of the TU’s reporters with a subpoena.And now the TU’s lawyer, Eve Barton, says the paper will fight to quash the subpoena. Which is just what she told me after I informed Smith that I might need to depose him in my case against Steve Coffey.

Deposition postponed
My deposition in my claim against Steve Coffey scheduled for Aug. 18 was postponed last week at the request of Coffey’s attorney. It is now set to take place on Wednesday, Aug. 22, which is one year to the day after Coffey called me at home and offered to take a look at a case that another attorney in his office had declined earlier in the year because of the firm’s workload.

As is alleged in detail in my lawsuit, Coffey’s real intention was to destroy my case, which he and co-defendant Brendan Tully then tried unsuccessfully to do.

The defendants’ lawyer will be asking all the questions this week but no one can do that without revealing something of their strategy. Just how Coffey and Tully plan to defend their well documented conduct will likely become apparent on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, my deposition by the defendants in my case against Samaritan Hospital is scheduled for Aug. 30. Maybe by then the hospital’s lawyer will tell me the legal last name of the nurse accused of causing the horrific injuries that led to Lisa’s death, something that she has so far refused to do.
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Three years on
It was on Aug. 19, 2004 that this page first went up. It started as a way to document a simple question: Why did Lisa die? Since then it has grown and spread to present a small glimpse of how business is done in New York’s Capital Region. Incompetent, unethical lawyers, greedy, hypocritical politicians and a newspaper that has completely lost its integrity.

And the scary part is that most of the people involved seem to think it’s all normal.
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