“A recent Fourth Department decision has righted a wrong which would have had potentially devastating implications to hundreds of not-for-profit agencies serving the needs of the developmentally disabled across New York State,” write Michael E. Appelbaum and Christina G. Holdsworth, attorneys in Goldberg Segalla’s General Liability Practice Group.

In this Buffalo Law Journal guest column, Michael and Christina examine the ruling of the New York Appellate Division, Fourth Department in Burkhart v. People Inc., 129 A.D.3d 1475 (4th Dept. 2015). Here, the court reversed a lower court’s decision that allowed a plaintiff to bring a cause of action under New York’s Public Health Law — which was intended to apply to nursing homes and other facilities in the “nursing home industry” — against a nonprofit that is actually governed by the Mental Hygiene Law and regulated by the Office of People with Developmental Disabilities.

Read the article here:

• “For the Defense: A Case for OPWDD,” Buffalo Law Journal, September 12, 2015