Most people hire the first firm that answers the phone. That is understandable after a serious injury, and it is also how good claims end up undervalued. Consultations in San Diego are free and firms expect to be interviewed, so treat the meeting as one. These nine questions separate a firm that genuinely handles pedestrian claims from one that treats yours like a rear-end collision with a bigger hospital bill.

Question 1: How many pedestrian cases have you handled, specifically?

Car crash volume does not translate. Pedestrian claims turn on sight lines, lighting, crossing behavior, and vehicle speed rather than skid marks and property damage. Listen for: real examples and named corridors. Firms with a dedicated pedestrian accident attorney in San Diego practice, such as HHJ Trial Attorneys, cite specific county data, including the eight corridors where roughly 30 percent of these crashes happen. Long-established firms such as CaseyGerry can point to decades of similar files.

Question 2: Will you retain a reconstruction expert, and when?

Vehicle damage is repaired, video is overwritten, and signal timing records get purged. Listen for: a firm that talks about preservation letters and scene inspection in the first weeks, not after the demand is rejected.

Question 3: Who will actually work on my file?

You may meet a partner and never speak to one again. Listen for: a named attorney and a named case manager, plus a straight answer on response times.

Question 4: How will you handle the claim that I crossed outside a crosswalk?

Since the Freedom to Walk Act took effect in 2023, crossing outside a crosswalk is no longer routinely ticketed in California, but insurers still raise it to argue comparative fault and cut the payout. Listen for: a concrete plan, usually driver speed analysis, visibility distance, and whether the driver was distracted.

Question 5: Could a government entity share responsibility?

Faded markings, a burned-out streetlight, an obstructed sign, or a badly timed signal can put the city or county in the case. Listen for: awareness that claims against public entities generally require a government claim within six months, not the usual two years.

Question 6: Have you looked at my own auto policy?

Many pedestrians never think of this. In California, uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on your own auto policy applies when you are struck as a pedestrian, and it often covers household family members too. Listen for: a firm that asks for your declarations page at the first meeting.

Question 7: What exactly are your fees and costs?

Under Business and Professions Code 6147, a contingency agreement must be in writing, must state the rate, must explain how costs affect your net recovery, and must state that the fee is not set by law and is negotiable. An agreement missing those elements is voidable by the client. Listen for: a clear percentage, whether it rises if suit is filed, and who advances expert costs.

Question 8: How do my medical bills get handled meanwhile?

Unpaid bills going to collections while a case is pending is one of the most common complaints injured people have. Listen for: a firm that coordinates health insurance, hospital liens, and treatment on a lien basis where needed, and that explains how those liens get negotiated down before you see your share.

Before you sign anything

Take the fee agreement home and read it. Ask for the answers to questions 5, 6, and 7 in writing. Interview two firms rather than one, since the difference in approach usually becomes obvious side by side.

Pedestrian injuries are among the most severe on San Diego roads, and the first offer rarely reflects future surgeries, lost earning capacity, or long-term care. HHJ Trial Attorneys and the other established firms in the county all offer free consultations, so asking these nine questions costs you nothing but an hour. Ask them before the insurer’s deadline pressure starts, not after.

Only in New York would it make perfect sense to take Monet, Klimt, Redon and Cross out of the museum and put them in your makeup bag.

Two decidedly New York institutions have come together for the limited-edition Bobbi Brown x The Met Collection, pairing the beauty brand born in New York City with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and transforming details from some of its celebrated works into objects considerably more portable than a masterpiece. The result is part makeup collection, part miniature art exhibition—and considerably easier to take home from The Met.

The collaboration draws upon works by Henri-Edmond Cross, Gustav Klimt, Odilon Redon and Claude Monet, translating their colors and imagery into packaging that makes opening an eyeshadow palette feel just a little more decadent. It is an inspired pairing because cosmetics and painting have always shared a language: color, shadow, light, texture and the occasional illusion.

At the center of the collection is an eight-well eye shadow palette filled with golds, bronzes and browns in matte and shimmering finishes—the sort of shades that can move easily from an understated New York afternoon to an evening when understated has left the building. A three-in-one Brightening Blush offers that elusive lit-from-within flush, while the Luxe Eye Shadow provides multidimensional shimmer for anyone who believes eyelids deserve their own little work of art.

The lips haven’t been neglected. Bobbi Brown’s Luxe Lipstick gets the museum treatment with skincare-infused color and a pressed, canvas-inspired bullet, while the Extra Lip Tinted Balm delivers a sheer, pH-reactive wash of color with plumping hydration. In other words, one can now contemplate great art while simultaneously wondering whether one needs another lipstick. We know how that usually ends.

The cleverness of the collaboration lies in the packaging. Rather than simply stamping The Met’s name onto a cosmetics case and calling it culture, the collection brings actual works from the museum’s holdings onto the pieces themselves. The compacts become tiny canvases, turning something normally destined for the bathroom counter into something you may be reluctant to throw away once you’ve hit pan.

There is also something wonderfully New York about the entire enterprise. The Met has spent more than 150 years collecting objects of beauty from across civilizations. Bobbi Brown built its reputation on a distinctly modern idea of beauty. One hangs masterpieces on Fifth Avenue; the other gives us the tools to create our own faces before heading out the door.

High art and highlighter were probably destined to meet eventually. The limited-edition Bobbi Brown x The Met Collection is available now through Bobbi Brown Cosmetics.

You may not be able to hang a Monet in your apartment, but apparently you can now keep a little piece of The Met on your vanity.

During Climate Week NYC, New York is awash in conversations about saving the planet. There are panels and pledges, statistics and speeches, dire predictions and ambitious promises. But at the heart of The Footprint of Life Gala, held September 24 at CORE Club, was a considerably more personal question: What are you going to leave behind?

Hosted by Green Vision Foundation co-founders Amy Green and Gary Green, the annual black-tie evening brought together environmentalists, philanthropists, athletes, scientists, business leaders, artists and advocates around the idea that influence carries responsibility. We all leave a footprint. The question is whether that footprint simply records where we have been or actually improves what remains after us.

That distinction gave the evening its purpose. The Footprint of Life was created to harness the collective power of its guests to protect the planet, transform lives and create a lasting legacy for generations to come. This year, its focus expanded the conversation by bringing together sport, philanthropy and global leadership—not as separate worlds, but as forces capable of moving people in ways institutions alone often cannot.

Amy Green

Adam Mett, Amy Green

The evening honored Adam Met, founder and executive director of Planet Reimagined, whose rather unusual résumé makes perfect sense in this context. Musician, educator and climate advocate, Met has taken the reach afforded him by one world and applied it to another. Through Planet Reimagined, he has brought researchers, advocates, policymakers and partners together with the goal of moving climate ideas beyond conversation and into scalable, actionable solutions.

The second honoree came from an entirely different arena. Legendary big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara was recognized for using sport as a force for change, accepting the honor on behalf of Laureus Sport for Good. As a Laureus Ambassador, McNamara represents an organization built around the premise that sport can be far more consequential than competition. Laureus works with children and young people around the world, using sport to help overcome violence, discrimination and disadvantage.

That partnership also made an intriguing point about environmentalism. We tend to separate issues into convenient categories—climate over here, poverty over there, education somewhere else, human rights in another room entirely. Real life isn’t nearly so tidy. Environmental degradation affects communities. Poverty affects opportunity. The health of oceans affects livelihoods. The future of children cannot really be separated from the future of the world they will inherit. The Footprint of Life placed those connections at the center of the evening rather than treating conservation as an isolated cause.

“The Footprint of Life is about recognizing that every one of us leaves an impact—and deciding together what we want that impact to be,” Amy Green told guests. “By bringing extraordinary people into one room, we had an opportunity to turn conversation into collaboration and individual influence into collective action. This evening was ultimately about the world we leave behind and the lives we have the power to change now.”

And it was quite a room.

Among those gathering for the black-tie dinner was legendary oceanographer and Mission Blue founder Dr. Sylvia Earle, whose presence alone provided a living connection to decades of ocean conservation. She was joined by philanthropist and Giving Back Foundation founder Meera Gandhi, television personality Melissa Gorga, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Lava for Good founder and CEO Jason Flom, Bank of America Executive Vice Chair Julian Mylchreest, MLB All-Star Joey Votto, former NBA player and coach M.L. Carr, and human-rights advocate Ilwad Elman.

my Green

Amy Green

Fashion and design were represented by Alejandra Alonso Rojas, Andrew Kwon and Nicole Fuller, while actor and filmmaker Randall Batinkoff, environmental justice advocate Saad Amer, We The Planet founder Kunal Sood, real estate developer and entrepreneur Tony Cho, and Laureus U.S. Ambassador Kely Nascimento were among the evening’s other guests.

It made for the kind of eclectic guest list that could only really happen in New York: oceanographers beside athletes, fashion designers beside human-rights activists, financiers beside environmentalists. Yet that was precisely the point. Solving enormous problems requires people who don’t normally inhabit the same rooms to begin talking to one another.

There is always a danger with galas devoted to serious causes that the glamour overwhelms the reason everyone has gathered. Champagne is considerably easier than climate change. A beautiful dinner is easier than conservation. A photograph beside a step-and-repeat is certainly easier than changing the way we live.

But glamour and purpose don’t have to be enemies. A room filled with people who possess money, visibility, expertise, access or influence is also a room filled with resources. The real measure comes afterward: what happens when everyone goes home?

The Footprint of Life is built around that question. Not whether we leave a footprint—we have no choice about that—but what kind of footprint it will be.

Because legacy isn’t ultimately what we say we cared about.

It is what is different because we were here.

The Footprint of Life was presented in partnership with Laureus Sport for Good and supported by Cerity Partners, The Twenty Five, Privé and Worth Magazine.

Climate Week can sometimes feel very big—global summits, sweeping promises, ambitious targets and conversations about what the planet might look like decades from now. Project Petals is bringing the conversation considerably closer to home. Through September 27, the New York-based nonprofit is turning LinkNYC screens across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens into platforms for New Yorkers to talk about what climate change already looks and feels like in their own neighborhoods.

The campaign amplifies residents’ experiences with extreme heat, worker safety and environmental inequities that can change dramatically simply by crossing from one neighborhood into another. It is a smart approach because climate change isn’t experienced as a statistic. It is the construction worker spending hours outside during a heat wave, the elderly New Yorker living on a block with too little shade, or the neighborhood where trees, parks and other green infrastructure help lower temperatures while another community is surrounded by concrete absorbing every degree and throwing it straight back.

Project Petals’ campaign grew from Environmental Justice, Heat, Work, and Us, a Pulitzer Center-supported initiative that brought residents together to discuss their experiences with extreme heat, environmental inequality and the realities of working under increasingly difficult conditions. Now those conversations have escaped the conference room and landed directly on New York City streets.

Putting them on LinkNYC screens matters because environmental inequality is frequently discussed by policymakers, researchers and advocates in language that can make the people actually experiencing it disappear. Project Petals reverses that equation. Instead of speaking about communities, it gives members of those communities the microphone and then puts that microphone on a New York City sidewalk.

The campaign also highlights one of the most complicated aspects of environmental policy: New York does not experience climate change uniformly. One neighborhood can have mature trees, parks, gardens and significant investment in green infrastructure while another has relatively little protection from heat. The temperature reported for New York City may be the same, but the experience of living through that temperature can be remarkably different depending upon where you live and work.

That is where Project Petals has concentrated much of its work. Community investment can determine whether a neighborhood has access to environmental solutions capable of making it healthier and more resilient. During Climate Week, however, the organization is doing something equally important: it is making those disparities visible to the rest of the city.

There is something wonderfully New York about using LinkNYC to do it. We walk past those screens every day. They are part information source, part urban furniture and part background noise. Suddenly, the person staring back isn’t selling us a movie, a sneaker or the latest must-have product. It is one of our neighbors telling us what is happening where they live.

Climate Week will end. The international delegations will leave, the panels will conclude, the credentials will come off and New York will move rapidly toward whatever is next. The neighborhoods will still be here, and so will the people living in them. Project Petals is making sure that, for at least one week, New Yorkers aren’t merely the subject of the climate conversation.

They’re the ones having it.

There may be no television sound more instantly recognizable than dun dun. Now, for two days in October, it could also mean lunch.

NBC’s Law & Order “Dun Dun Diner” is returning to New York City on Friday, October 9 and Saturday, October 10, transforming Bill’s Bar & Burger at Rockefeller Center into an immersive celebration of one of television’s most enduring—and most thoroughly New York—franchises.

Running from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m. both days, the pop-up combines themed food, interactive experiences, photo opportunities and exclusive merchandise with something Law & Order has always understood particularly well: New York itself.

This time, some serious New York food royalty is joining the investigation. Ess-a-Bagel, Katz’s Delicatessen, Magnolia Bakery and Serendipity3 are collaborating on a specially curated menu for the event. NBC hasn’t yet revealed every dish, which means the evidence remains tantalizingly incomplete, but the four institutions bring together some of the city’s most recognizable bagels, deli fare and desserts under one very familiar television umbrella.

Fans have two ways to enter the scene. For $30, the Booth Service Dining Experience offers a seated meal inside the Dun Dun Diner, including the guest’s choice of one featured collaborative dish, dessert, Law & Order-branded merchandise and interactive touches inspired by the series. For those more interested in investigating than eating, the free Grab & Go Experience includes merchandise giveaways and a themed photo opportunity. Both experiences require reservations.

Reservations opened September 18 on a first-come, first-served basis, so anyone planning to report for duty should probably move faster than Detective Benson arriving at a crime scene.

The timing couldn’t be better. The Dun Dun Diner opens one day after the new seasons of Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit premiere Thursday, October 8 on NBC, with episodes streaming the following day on Peacock. This year’s event also falls during NBC’s centennial celebration, marking 100 years of the network’s television history.

The pop-up itself has become something of a tradition. Last year’s Dun Dun Diner also descended upon Rockefeller Center, complete with memorabilia, themed experiences and plenty of opportunities for fans to insert themselves into the Law & Order universe. For 2026, the diner moves into Bill’s Bar & Burger and expands the culinary component with its lineup of distinctly New York collaborators.

Because two days hardly seems sufficient to interrogate a pastrami sandwich, select dishes from the collaborations will continue at participating partner restaurants on October 12 and 13. Which dishes and locations will participate have yet to be announced.

There is something wonderfully appropriate about Law & Order turning itself into a New York diner. For decades, the city hasn’t merely served as the backdrop for the franchise; it has been one of its principal characters. Courthouses, precincts, sidewalks, brownstones, restaurants and recognizable corners of Manhattan have given the shows a sense of place that no soundstage could quite duplicate.

Now New Yorkers get to step inside that world—with considerably less danger and considerably more cheesecake.

The Law & Order Dun Dun Diner takes over Bill’s Bar & Burger at 16 West 51st Street on October 9 and 10 from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Reservations are available through the Dun Dun Diner reservation page.

In the culinary justice system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups: those who secure reservations—and those who wish they had.

Dun dun.