r/Ask_Lawyers

What is the going % law firms take if they win a denial on an LTD extension case?

Any recommendations for an attorney for persons with low budget to read through an already prepared appeal.

I received a $600,000 settlement offer from a personal injury case. My lawyer takes 33%, he says the medical bills related to my surgery in 2024 are around $270,000

They told me the medical bills are so high because interest has accrued since 2024

I’m trying to verify whether this $270,000 amount is legitimate before I agree to the settlement.

What exactly should I ask my lawyer or the medical provider for to verify this?

Is there anything else I should request?

Also, is it normal for a medical bill from 2024 to grow this substantially because of interest, or should I be concerned that I’m being given an inflated number?

I’m in New York, if that matters.

There’s a marital asset (house), spouse has much higher earnings than individual. Spouse has locked individual out of the marital home (changed locks—despite police advising of applicable law). Individual is homeless and currently living in a shelter. Individual has video evidence of spouse attempting to attack individual with a machete and there were several police reports filed by individual for DV duration of marriage. Individual would agree to an uncontested divorce if there is a reasonably fair settlement agreement out of court. Any local legal aid resources that are likely to assist this individual? Thanks again.

My question: is a corporate hospital allowed to reclassify HIPPA/PHI type information into "Business Operations" information and thereby prevent access to it? This feels illegal, but given how little I know about the law, im sure there's lots of loopholes or something.

Background: At the hospital i work at, we use EPIC Systems program EPIC, and it logs literally everything that is done. Specific to this question is that it keeps a log of who, when, what changes are made if any, and how long they viewed a patient's profile. I recently did my yearly remedial HIPPA/PHI PowerPoint course and that information i listed was called out as something the patient can request.

While discussing this, I was informed that a different, corporate, hospital system has removed easy access to who, when, what changes are made if any, and how long they viewed a patient's profile by reclassifying that information into "Business Operations" and removing it from being something a patient is allowed to request access to.

Like i said, this feels illegal and an intentional roadblock to protect the corporation, but I know nothing regarding this and so have no clue.

Cheers

Edit: I reread this and i should make clear that the discussion was with a coworker that previously worked at the corporate hospital. We agreed it was fucked up but it kept bouncing around my brain, so I asked here.

Let me give some context before I ask my question.

I'm working on a pretty big YouTube project that I am just about to be finished with. "The ENTIRE history of motorsport." Going in, I knew almost nothing about copyright laws. Normally on my previous videos, I gather a big deal of my footage from other YouTube channels who've uploaded archival footage of whatever it is I'm talking about in the video. I've never ran into any issues at all from previous videos. While making this video though, I noticed a pretty big chunk of the footage was coming from British Pathé. I knew nothing about who they are, but at some point after using a couple of their videos, I saw this in their description:

"For Archive Licensing Enquiries Visit: -"

Seeing that sent me down a rabbit hole that I've been stuck in for weeks now. Half of the video I'm working on is based in the 1800s to early 1900s, and a lot of the history I cover is based in Europe. Turns out a very large amount of archival footage from this time period is just completely owned by British Pathé. It's very VERY hard to find the footage I need without using them as a source, so it's almost unavoidable. To license their content, it's probably on average $500 for something as small as a 7 minute video. If I were to license their footage, I'd be spending WAY more than I could afford. This sent me down another rabbit hole of YouTube's Fair Use laws. I found out that under certain criteria, a video is safer from copyright.

Things I've researched that make a video safer is:

Commentary and criticism

Transformative use

Documentary or historical context

Educational presentations

and PLENTY more which my video fully falls under. My video is an educational documentary that transforms the archival footage into very short clips (literally ALL less than 5 seconds) and also adds my own licenced music and commentary. I know Fair Use isn't a black and white thing, and every situation is different depending on context, but I'd say I'm pretty certain this video would be classified as Fair Use.

But then I did more digging. I went into ANOTHER rabbit hole of YouTube Content ID. I'm not so worried about Content ID copyrighting my video because I can just upload the video as private to run checks and if it comes back positive, I can just edit and reupload until the Content ID isn't an issue... but then I figured out British Pathé could still MANUALLY find my video and monitize it as their own without Content ID. Then that would lead to all the revanue going to British Pathé until I appeal and hopefully win a case claiming that my video is Fair Use. It's all really messy stuff that I really don't know for sure the risk of.

I have been very heavily anticipating this project and it means a lot, and this issue has been my nightmare for the past month. I have no idea if I'm just completely overthinking this and maybe British Pathé wouldn't even notice at all, or if this is a real concern to be thinking about.

Either way, I would love to hear some advice on the risk of my situation. I know there are plenty of other factors that play into this and without seeing the content for yourself it's going to be harder to form an opinion, but I need some peace of mind or some advice on if I should just upload and bank on the video being Fair Use, or if I should consider something else.

Sorry for the yap, and thank you for the help.

Location: Texas. Looking for a Texas attorney’s perspective. My former partner filed a civil action, and his former attorneys repeatedly included collateral allegations about me in multiple motions to compel my deposition. The motions were seeking specific discovery-related relief, but the allegations had nothing to do with whether that relief should be granted or with the issues the motions were actually asking the court to decide. The repeated inclusion of those allegations in motions seeking court-ordered deposition relief is what concerns me. That civil action was ultimately dismissed.

I understand there is a high bar for an abuse-of-process or related claim, but I'm wondering about the underlying issue: can attorneys repeatedly put unrelated allegations with potential reputational consequences into court motions when those allegations aren't relevant to the specific relief being sought? We are now litigating a separate divorce proceeding, where my former partner has agreed to potentially publicly acknowledge that those allegations were false. I’m looking for an independent Texas attorney’s perspective on whether the conduct in the civil action is potentially actionable.