Frank J. Dito, Jr. has written three books for people who never expected to need them. All three are free, all three download immediately, and none of them asks you for anything first.
They exist because the same questions come up in the first phone call every time, and an hour of reading beforehand tends to be worth more than an hour of explaining afterward.
The New York Workers’ Compensation Book
We wrote the book on workers’ comp. This is it.
Fifty-eight pages on what actually happens after you are hurt at work in New York, and on the places a claim quietly comes apart.
The Workers’ Compensation Board’s website makes it sound straightforward. Get treatment, tell your supervisor, file your claim, your benefits begin. That description is accurate and it is close to useless, because it does not describe the weeks you spend unable to get a doctor’s appointment because nobody has sent you a claim number, or the letter reducing your benefits after an examination that lasted eleven minutes.
The book follows a claim from the accident through to settlement, organized around the questions people actually ask. Why the thirty-day notice clock and the two-year filing clock both start on the same day. Why filing a claim matters even when the checks are already arriving. What happens when your own treating doctor stops filing reports and nobody tells you. What an independent medical examination is for. How permanency is decided, what the statute measures in weeks, and what a Section 32 settlement closes for good.
- Best read: as soon as you are hurt at work, or any time your claim stops behaving the way you expected.
- Covers: notice and filing deadlines, getting authorized treatment, controverted claims, hearings and testimony, the Medical Treatment Guidelines, independent medical examinations, how benefits are calculated, schedule loss of use and classification, Section 32 settlements, returning to work and being fired for claiming.
Download The New York Workers’ Compensation Book (PDF, 58 pages)
The New York Accident Book
Fifty-three pages on what actually happens after a New York accident, written for the person in the middle of one.
It opens with ten mistakes that can wreck a case — the ordinary, well-intentioned ones, like giving a recorded statement because someone asked politely, or letting a gap open in your medical treatment. It covers what a personal injury case actually is, and it takes on the question that stops most people before they start: New York has no-fault car insurance, so does that mean you cannot sue a driver whose negligence seriously injured you? The answer is more particular than most people assume, and the book explains where the line falls.
From there it walks through what happens after you retain a firm, what a lawsuit involves as a practical matter, and how personal injury cases are actually valued. There is a chapter on why your lawyer does not get paid unless you do.
- Best read: right after an accident, or when you are deciding whether you need a lawyer at all.
- Covers: the ten mistakes, no-fault and the serious injury threshold, medical documentation, insurance adjusters, what retaining a firm actually sets in motion, and what a lawsuit involves.
Download The New York Accident Book (PDF, 53 pages)
How to Protect Yourself and Your Family in Car Accidents
This is the one worth reading before anything happens, and it is the one almost nobody reads in time.
Most people discover what their car insurance policy does not cover at the precise moment they need it to. Twenty-eight pages on what is actually in that policy: what no-fault pays and what it does not, why your own coverage may leave you exposed, and what to do about the driver who hits you and turns out to have no insurance at all — including whether making that claim will raise your own premiums.
It also deals with the question nobody enjoys: what happens if the accident is your fault and the person you hit is seriously injured. That is where liability limits stop being an abstraction, and where the difference between the state minimum and a real policy shows up as a number you personally owe.
There is a section on comparing insurance quotes that is worth the download on its own, because two quotes that look alike on price are frequently not covering the same thing at all. And Frank makes a point of saying in the book that he does not sell insurance — he has no stake in what you buy, only in what happens to people who find out too late what they bought.
- Best read: before you renew, or any time you are comparing quotes.
- Covers: what is in a policy and how to read your declarations page, no-fault and PIP, uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, liability limits, umbrella policies, and how to compare quotes that only look the same.
Download How to Protect Yourself and Your Family in Car Accidents (PDF, 28 pages)
A note on what these are
Both books say so themselves, and it bears repeating here: they are general information about how New York accident claims and insurance policies work. They are not legal advice about your situation, and reading one does not make us your lawyers. No book can be, because the answer in a real case turns on facts a book cannot know.
What they can do is put you on level ground before the first conversation — with an adjuster, with an insurance agent, or with us.
If you would rather just ask
Nothing in either book replaces a conversation about your own accident. If you have been hurt in a car accident, injured at work and dealing with a workers’ compensation claim, or you are not sure which of those you are looking at, we will talk it through with you. Our personal injury practice covers the rest.
Consultations are free. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.