Friday, March 28, 2014

New Malaysia plane search area turns up objects

A New Zealand military plane, one of nine aircraft hunting for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, found the objects Friday, though the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said on Twitter that it would likely be Saturday before one of the six ships on the way could and determine whether the objects were plane wreckage.
Australian officials said they turned away from the old search area, which they had combed for a week, because said a new analysis of radar data suggests the plane had flown faster and therefore ran out of fuel more quickly than previously estimated. The new area is closer to land and has calmer weather than the old one, which will make searching easier.
"We have moved on" from the old search area, said John Young, manager of AMSA's emergency response division. The radar data that was re-analyzed was received soon after Flight 370 lost communications and veered from its scheduled path March 8. The Beijing-bound flight carrying 239 people turned around soon after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, flew west toward the Malacca Strait and disappeared from radar.
The search area has changed several times since the plane vanished as experts analyzed a frustratingly small amount of data from the aircraft, including the radar signals and "pings" that a satellite picked up for several hours after radar contact was lost.
The latest analysis indicated the aircraft was traveling faster than previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel use and reducing the possible distance the aircraft could have flown before going down in the Indian Ocean. Just as a car loses gas efficiency when driving at high speeds, a plane will get less out of a tank of fuel when it flies faster.
Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that analysts at Boeing Co. in Seattle had helped with the analysis of the flight.
Planes and ships had spent a week searching about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth, Australia, the base for the search. Now they are searching about 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles) west of the city.
"This is our best estimate of the area in which the aircraft is likely to have crashed into the ocean," Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, said at a news conference in Canberra.
He said a wide range of scenarios went into the calculation. "We're looking at the data from the so-called pinging of the satellite, the polling of the satellites, and that gives a distance from a satellite to the aircraft to within a reasonable approximation," he said. He said that information was coupled with various projections of aircraft performance and the plane's distance from the satellites at given times.
Dolan said the search now is for surface debris to give an indication of "where the main aircraft wreckage is likely to be. This has a long way to go."
Objects in the new search area were seen from a New Zealand air force plane, AMSA tweeted, adding that the find needed to be confirmed by ship.
Young indicated that the hundreds of floating objects detected over the last week by satellites, previously considered possible wreckage, weren't from the plane after all.
"In regards to the old areas, we have not seen any debris and I would not wish to classify any of the satellite imagery as debris, nor would I want to classify any of the few visual sightings that we made as debris. That's just not justifiable from what we have seen," he said.
In Malaysia, Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference that because of ocean drifts, "this new search area could still be consistent with the potential objects identified by various satellite images over the past week."
The new search area is about 80 percent smaller than the old one, but it remains large: about 319,000 square kilometers (123,000 square miles), about the size of Poland.
Sea depths in the new area range from 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) to 4,000 meters (13,120 feet), Young said. There are trenches in the area that go even deeper, Australia's national science agency said in a statement. That includes the Diamantina Trench, which is up to 7,300 meters deep, but it was unclear whether the deepest parts of the trench are in the search area.
If the wreckage is especially deep, that will complicate search efforts. The U.S. Navy is sending equipment that can hear black box pings up to about 6,100 meters deep, and an unmanned underwater vehicle that operates at depths up to 4,500 meters.
Young said a change in search area is not unusual.
"This is the normal business of search and rescue operations — that new information comes to light, refined analyses take you to a different place," Young told reporters. "I don't count the original work as a waste of time."
He said the new search zone, being about 700 kilometers (434 miles) closer to mainland Australia, will be easier to reach. Planes used so much fuel getting to and from the old search area that had only about two hours of spotting time per sortie.
The new area also has better weather conditions than the old one, where searches were regularly scrapped because of storms, high winds and low visibility.
"The search area has moved out of the 'roaring 40s,' which creates very adverse weather," Young said, referring to the latitude of the previous search area. "I'm not sure that we'll get perfect weather out there, but it's likely to be better than we saw in the past."
Australia's HMAS Success was expected to arrive in the area Saturday, Young said. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration patrol boat Haixun 01 was also on site, and several more Chinese ships were on their way.
Malaysian officials said earlier this week that satellite data confirmed the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.
Authorities are rushing to find any piece of the plane to help them locate the so-called black boxes, or flight data and voice recorders, that will help solve the mystery of why the jet, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, flew so far off-course. The battery in the black box normally lasts for at least a month.
Officials are already preparing for the hunt for the black box. A special U.S. Navy towed pinger locator and Bluefin-21 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle are to be fitted onto an Australian vessel, the Ocean Shield, when it reaches Albany, a port near Perth, in a day or two, said a government the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
He did not say how long it would take to reach the search area.
An Australian government statement said investigators with technical expertise in maritime operations, flight data recorders, and materials and aerospace engineering were aboard the Ocean Shield.
The official said the Chinese ships are also expected to have acoustic sensors that can listen for black box pingers.
For relatives of those missing, the various clues and failed searches so far have just added to their agonizing waits.
The lack of results from the search gave one Malaysian family a little hope that the authorities were wrong in their calculations.
Eliz Wong Yun Yi, 24, whose father was on the plane, said her family stopped watching the daily Malaysian news conference because they felt the government was not upfront with information. All the new satellite data added to the confusion, she said.
"After so many days, still no plane. We will not believe what they say until the plane wreckage is found. I want to stay positive and believe that my father will come back," she said. Her father, Wong Sai Sang, a 53-year-old Malaysian property sales manager, had been on his way to Beijing for work.
If and when any bit of wreckage from Flight 370 is recovered and identified, searchers will be able to narrow their hunt for the rest of the Boeing 777 and its flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
Wong reported from Kuala Lumpur. Associated Press writers Scott McDonald and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, and Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report.

Original Source

Contact Neil O'Toole and John Sbarbaro
Phone: 303-595-4777
Located in the Denver Metro area.
226 West 12th Avenue Denver, Colorado 80204

Disclaimer 

Any content of this blog is intended for informational purposes only.It is not intended to solicit business, provide legal advice from The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. and does not serve as a medium for an attorney-client relationship. Therefore, The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. is not responsible for the information on this blog which may not apply to every reader. Always seek professional counsel if you have any legal matters. Contents within the blog of The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C., logos and other related media are protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions.


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Thursday, March 20, 2014

MYTH #3: Workers’ Compensation Claims Improve With Age

Too frequently, I see adjusters treat complex claims like fine wine. They put the file in the back of their cellar (filing cabinet) and hope that, over time, it will become more palatable. They expect that the medical treatment will diminish, the demand will become more reasonable, and the situation will somehow improve to make resolution of the case easier. 
Working for an excess carrier we see nothing but complex claims. I can tell you with great certainty that these cases do not improve over time.
The longer a person is out of work, the greater the chance they will NEVER return to work. According to Bureau of Labor statistics, if an employee is off work for an occupational illness for more than one year, there is only a 25% chance they will return to work. If they are off work for two years, there is almost no chance of a successful return to work. 
In addition, medical costs ALWAYS increase over time. Over the last 10 years, medical inflation has been over 48%. Thus, even if the treatment regime stays consistent, your medical costs will go up. Unfortunately, the medical regime usually does not stay consistent. There are always new drugs available to treat a condition, or new treatment options being introduced. These new treatments and drugs usually cost significantly more than the established treatment and drugs they are replacing.
Since the situation will continue to worsen, the best time to try and settle the claim or take steps to mitigate the loss is NOW! The additional resources and funds you spend today in resolving complex claims can result in significant savings in the future when those claims are no longer sitting in the filing cabinet.
Original Source

Contact Neil O'Toole and John Sbarbaro
Phone: 303-595-4777
Located in the Denver Metro area.
226 West 12th Avenue Denver, Colorado 80204

Disclaimer 

Any content of this blog is intended for informational purposes only.It is not intended to solicit business, provide legal advice from The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. and does not serve as a medium for an attorney-client relationship. Therefore, The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. is not responsible for the information on this blog which may not apply to every reader. Always seek professional counsel if you have any legal matters. Contents within the blog of The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C., logos and other related media are protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions.


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Tuesday, March 18, 2014

The Mystery of the Disappearing Malaysian Plane Deepens Even Further

| Tue Mar. 11, 2014 3:14 PM GMT
Here's the latest strangeness surrounding the disappearance of that Malaysian airliner:
As a search continued Tuesday for a Malaysian airliner that mysteriously disappeared,Malaysian military officials said radar data showed it inexplicably turned around and headed toward the Malacca Strait, hundreds of miles off its scheduled flight path, news agencies and Malaysian media reported.
....Search teams from 10 nations had initially focused their efforts mainly east of the peninsula....A high-ranking military official involved in the investigation confirmed that the plane changed course and said it was believed to be flying low, the Associated Press reported.
It is, of course, mysterious that the plane veered off course and turned west an hour after takeoff. But that's not the real puzzle. The plane disappeared on Saturday. If the Malaysian military tracked it turning west into the Malacca Strait in real time, how is it that it took them three days to bother telling anyone about this? That seems damn peculiar even if things were just generally fubared at the time. Here's another account:
The [Malaysian] air force chief did not say what kind of signals the military had tracked. But his remarks raised questions about whether the military had noticed the plane as it flew across the country and about when it informed civilian authorities.
According to the general’s account, the last sign of the plane was recorded at 2:40 a.m., and the aircraft was then near Pulau Perak, an island more than 100 miles off the western shore of the Malaysian peninsula. That assertion stunned aviation experts as well as officials in China, who had been told again and again that the authorities lost contact with the plane more than an hour earlier, when it was on course over the Gulf of Thailand, east of the peninsula. But the new account seemed to fit with the decision on Monday, previously unexplained, to expand the search area to include waters west of the peninsula.
It is unclear why the west coast contact, if correct, was not made public until now. Asked on Monday why crews were searching the strait, the country's civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told reporters: "There are some things that I can tell you and some things that I can't."
Mysteriouser and mysteriouser.

Original Source
Contact Neil O'Toole and John Sbarbaro
Phone: 303-595-4777
Located in the Denver Metro area.
226 West 12th Avenue Denver, Colorado 80204

Disclaimer 

Any content of this blog is intended for informational purposes only.It is not intended to solicit business, provide legal advice from The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. and does not serve as a medium for an attorney-client relationship. Therefore, The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. is not responsible for the information on this blog which may not apply to every reader. Always seek professional counsel if you have any legal matters. Contents within the blog of The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C., logos and other related media are protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions.


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Monday, March 17, 2014

Happy St. Patrick's Day from the Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C.


Contact Neil O'Toole and John Sbarbaro
Phone: 303-595-4777
Located in the Denver Metro area.
226 West 12th Avenue Denver, Colorado 80204

Disclaimer 

Any content of this blog is intended for informational purposes only.It is not intended to solicit business, provide legal advice from The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. and does not serve as a medium for an attorney-client relationship. Therefore, The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. is not responsible for the information on this blog which may not apply to every reader. Always seek professional counsel if you have any legal matters. Contents within the blog of The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C., logos and other related media are protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions.


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Thursday, March 13, 2014

Can These College Football Players Actually Unionize?

—By 

Kain Colter 
Last month, football players at Northwestern University took formal steps to organize a labor union and bargain for benefits like guaranteed multiyear scholarships and medical coverage for concussions and other long-term health issues. The first of what will likely be many battles for the unionization effort came this week, with an hearing before the Chicago regional National Labor Relations Board.
The proceeding, which will continue at least through the end of the week, has pitted the proposed College Athletes Players Association and former Northwestern quarterback (and NFL hopeful) Kain Colter against Northwestern. While the university reacted much less strongly than the NCAA when the unionization efforts were unveiled—the official university statementmade sure to say that Northwestern is "proud" of its students for being "leaders and independent thinkers"—it is still the theoretical employer of Colter and the other players and thus must face off against them before the labor board. (Head coach Pat Fitzgerald isexpected to testify Friday.) Here's what you need to know about the hearings and what they mean for college football:
What does the union need to prove to win? The College Athletes Players Association, with the help of star witness Colter, is arguing that football players are employees of the university. The group has some strong arguments in its favor, according to University of Illinois law professor and sports labor expert Michael LeRoy. For one, the players work long hours equivalent to a full-time job. Colter testified that football-related activities take up 40 to 50 hours a week during the season and 50 to 60 hours a week during training camp in the summer. The players' efforts also benefit the university—an economics professor who testified on the union's behalf said that Northwestern's football revenue totaled $235 million between 2003 and 2012, while its expenses added up to just $159 million during that time. "It's a financial benefit, and that's putting it mildly," LeRoy said.
An economics professor who testified on the union's behalf said that Northwestern's football revenuetotaled $235 million between 2003 and 2012.
What does Northwestern need to prove? The university's argument is that the players are student-athletes and nothing more. The players receive scholarships worth about $60,000 a year, a university athletics official testified, and a lawyer for the school noted that players also get "a world-class education, free tutoring services, core academic advice, and personal and career development opportunity." While some of Northwestern's other counterpoints lacked substance—school lawyers grilled Colter on whether leadership and other skills learned from the football team helped him get a prior internship at Goldman Sachs, a line of thinking LeRoy called "fairly irrelevant" to whether or not college football counts as labor—perhaps its strongest point is that players signed a scholarship contract, agreeing to their amateur status and therefore waiving their collective bargaining power.
What happens now? No matter which side the Chicago labor board takes, the loser will probably appeal that decision to the national board in Washington, DC. That ruling will likely head to a federal appeals court. The entire process could take years, LeRoy said, which presents a unique challenge for union organizers: There's a chance all the players who signed union cards will have graduated and moved on by the time a final decision comes down. One big question is how other schools and teams will react—while teams at private schools like Northwestern can try to unionize, teams at public schools must adhere to their states' collective bargaining laws. If players at some schools are able to negotiate benefits that players at other schools are not, LeRoy said, it could fundamentally change recruiting, realign conferences, and lead to swaths of state legislation addressing the matter. "It's a huge can of worms," he said. "It's a showstopper."
Original Source

Contact Neil O'Toole and John Sbarbaro
Phone: 303-595-4777
Located in the Denver Metro area.
226 West 12th Avenue Denver, Colorado 80204

Disclaimer 

Any content of this blog is intended for informational purposes only.It is not intended to solicit business, provide legal advice from The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. and does not serve as a medium for an attorney-client relationship. Therefore, The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. is not responsible for the information on this blog which may not apply to every reader. Always seek professional counsel if you have any legal matters. Contents within the blog of The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C., logos and other related media are protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions.


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Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Social Media - Do's and Don'ts




This information applies to all social networking sites, including My Space, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Buzz, Linked-In, etc.

We have seen an increase in electronic surveillance of these accounts and sites by the insurance companies, investigators, and defense attorneys for purposes of embarrassing and humiliating claimants, and claiming that your injury was exaggerated or even caused by anything other than the incident related to your claim.  Insurance companies have successfully used such information; even those considered innocent, harmless joking between private “Friends,” to convince a judge and juries that plaintiffs have been dishonest.  Please always be aware of what you say or post, including photographs, in any format on your computer or internet may be brought into or affect your claim.  Also, be aware that the insurance companies may be entitled to request all information contained within your home computers, laptop hard drives, external hard drives, and other storage devices including memory sticks and cell phones.  They may also be able to ask a judge to grant them access to your social media pages or sites, even if you have the highest privacy settings  established and they haven’t been able to access them to that point.

We cannot emphasize strongly enough how much these things have the potential to affect your claim, so please follow our advice.

DO

1.         Discontinue Using:  Consider taking down your Facebook or other social media pages and profiles entirely.

2.         Highest Privacy Settings:  If you won’t take down your social media pages and profiles, make sure your privacy settings are at the highest levels.  This means making sure that only friends can see ANY of your information, and NOT friends of friends or the general public.

3.         Be Careful Who Your “Friends” Are:  Create Friend Lists which can help you further narrow what even your friends have access to.  You can create lists so that certain friends can see your photo albums and status updates.  ONLY ACCEPT FRIEND REQUESTS FROM PEOPLE YOU ACTUALLY KNOW.  Remove people you have as “friends” currently who are only acquaintances or people you don’t or barely know.

4.         Make Yourself “Invisible”:  Remove yourself from Facebook search results by selecting “only friends” under search visibility in your profile settings.  Remove yourself from Google by going to your Internet Privacy Settings and unchecking the box for Public Search Listing.

5.         Take Down Photos / Untag Yourself:  Consider removing all photos of yourself from social media pages.  If you are not prepared to do this, untag all photos of yourself, and choose “only me” for who can view photos you are tagged in.

6.         Be Cautious:  Assume anything you write on your social media pages including status updates, messages and wall postings will at some point be seen by the defense lawyer(s), a judge and maybe a jury of people who don’t know you.  Think about how things can be perceived differently than how they truly are, especially when taken out of context.

            Be aware that Facebook’s new settings publish your interests, even if they are private.

DON’T

1.         Assume You Are Safe:   Sometimes “friends” can unintentionally pass along information to strangers who may be working on behalf of the defense lawyer or an insurance company.  Sometimes “friends” can also have different interests, be mad at you and want to settle score or have a grudge and willingly disclose information to lawyers and insurance companies that will seriously hurt your claim.

2.         Send Emails or Information Regarding Your Case:  Do NOT send emails to anyone but your lawyers regarding your claim and its progress, your health and activities.

3.         Join Web-Chat Groups:  You do not own the information you post online, and it is highly searchable.  Do not enter insurance websites, post on message boards, participate in or comment on blogs, go into chat rooms about insurance and claims relates issues.  Do not create your own website or start your own blog about your experience.

** Once again, we strongly encourage you to stop participating in social media forums and take down all pages and profiles until after your claim has been resolved.













Medios de Comunicación Social – Hacer y No Hacer


Esta información se aplica a todos los sitios de redes sociales incluyendo My Space, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Buzz, Linkied-In, etc..

Hemos visto un aumento de la vigilancia electrónica de estas cuentas y los sitios de las compañías de seguros, investigadores y abogados de la defensa para los propósitos de avergonzar y humillar los reclamantes, y afirmar que su lesión fue exagerada o incluso causada por otra cosa que el incidente relacionado con su reclamación. Las compañías de seguros han utilizado con éxito dicha información, incluso han considerado lo que es broma inocente, inofensivo entre lo privados "Amigos", para convencer a un juez y los jurados que los demandantes han sido deshonesto. Por favor, siempre consciente de lo que usted dice o pone, incluyendo fotografías, en cualquier formato en su computadora o de Internet puede ser puesto y afectar a su reclamo. Además, tenga en cuenta que las compañías de seguros pueden tener derecho a solicitar toda la información contenida en las computadoras de su casa, discos duros portátiles, discos duros externos y otros dispositivos de almacenamiento de memoria, incluyendo palos de memoria y teléfonos celulares. También puede pedir a un juez que les dará acceso a las páginas de medios sociales o de los sitios, incluso si usted tiene la configuración más alta de privacidad establecidos y que no han podido acceder a ellos a ese punto.

No podemos insistir fuertemente lo suficiente cuánto estas cosas tienen el potencial de afectar a su reclamo, por favor siga nuestros consejos.

HACER

1.         Deje de Usar: considerar quitar su Facebook u otros medios de comunicación social páginas y perfiles totalmente.

2.         Mayor configuración de privacidad máxima: si usted no quita sus páginas de medios de comunicación social y perfiles, asegúrese de que su configuración de privacidad que se encuentran en los niveles más altos. Esto significa asegurarse de que los únicos amigos pueden ver cualquiera de su información y no a los amigos de amigos o al público en general.

3.         Tengas cuidado que quien son sus "amigos": crear listas de amigo que le puede ayudar aún más estrechos de lo que incluso sus amigos tienen acceso a. Puede crear listas para que ciertos amigos vean tus álbumes de fotos y actualizaciones de Estado. SOLO ACEPTA SOLICITUDES DE PERSONAS QUE ACTUALMENTE CONOSES. Quitar personas  que tienes como "amigos" que son sólo conocidos o que apenas conoces.

4.         Hacer se "Invisible": quitar usted mismo de resultados de la búsqueda de Facebook seleccionando "sólo amigos" en virtud de la visibilidad de la búsqueda en la configuración de perfil. Quitarse de Google yendo a su configuración de privacidad de Internet y desactivar la casilla de listado de búsqueda pública.

5.         Quite sus fotos / Desmarcar: Considere la posibilidad de la eliminación de todas las fotos de sí mismo desde las páginas de los medios de comunicación social. Si no están dispuestos hacer esto, eliminar etiquetas de todas las fotos de ti mismo, y elegir la opción "sólo yo" para que puedas ver las fotos que se marcan pulgadas.

6.         Tenga Cuidado: Piense que cualquier cosa que escribes en las páginas de medios de comunicación social, incluidas las actualizaciones de Estado, mensajes y mensajes de pared en algún momento se verá por el abogado de la defensa, un juez y tal vez un jurado de gente que no conoces. Piense en cómo las cosas pueden percibirse diferente cómo realmente son, especialmente tomados fuera de contexto.

Tenga en cuenta que la nueva configuración de Facebook publica a sus intereses, incluso si son privados.

NO HACER

1.               Suponga que usted es segura: A veces los "amigos" Sin intención pueden transmitir información a extraños que pueden trabajar en nombre del abogado de la defensa o una compañía de seguros. A veces "amigos" también pueden tienen intereses diferentes, estar enojado con usted y desea resolver puntuación o tienen un rencor y voluntariamente revelar información a abogados y compañías de seguros que perjudicará seriamente a su reclamo.

2.               Enviar mensajes de correo electrónico o información sobre su caso: No enviar correos electrónicos a nadie mas que sus abogados con respecto a su reclamo y su progreso, su salud y actividades.

3.               Únete a los Grupos Web-Chat: Usted no es propietario de la información que se registra en la línea, y es muy altamente explorable.  No entrar en sitios web seguros, puesto en tableros de mensajes, participar o comentarios en los blogs, entrar en salas de chat sobre los seguros y las reclamaciones se refiere cuestiones. No cree su propio sitio web o iniciar su propio blog sobre su experiencia.


** Una vez mas, nos fuertemente animo a dejar de participar en foros de medios de comunicación social y desmontar las paginas y perfiles hasta después de que su reclamo se ha resuelto.


Contact Neil O'Toole and John Sbarbaro
Phone: 303-595-4777
Located in the Denver Metro area.
226 West 12th Avenue Denver, Colorado 80204

Disclaimer 

Any content of this blog is intended for informational purposes only.It is not intended to solicit business, provide legal advice from The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. and does not serve as a medium for an attorney-client relationship. Therefore, The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C. is not responsible for the information on this blog which may not apply to every reader. Always seek professional counsel if you have any legal matters. Contents within the blog of The Law Office of O'Toole & Sbarbaro, P.C., logos and other related media are protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions.


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