Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Construction Accident

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In April, we wrote about a controversial study related to the New York Scaffold Law that steered debate between the Construction Industry and Construction workers advocates. The study was published by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York and funded by the Lawsuits Reform Alliance of New York, an organization lobbying against laws protectingworkers in favor of the construction industry and other corporate interests.

The study drew so much controversy that Freedom of Information Law requests were filed to find out if the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute was pressured by the lobby during its research or after the release of the report.

Last week the Institute produced the draft report that researchers submitted to Tom Stebbins, the leader of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance as well as as email correspondence between them.

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Tower_Climber_Worker.jpgNine workers died so far in 2014 while working on the construction or the maintenance and repair of communication towers. Last year there were 13 fatalities, double the two previous years together according to OSHA’s most recent statistics. In order to better protect tower climbers, OSHA recently updated its Communication Tower Directive regarding the use use of hoist systems used to move workers to and from workstations on communication towers. (see OSHA press release).

Tower climbing is one one of the most dangerous job in the US. A Daily Kos article from 2012 estimated that the death rate for tower climbers was about 10 times that of construction workers. Tower climbers are hired through hundreds of subcontractors and are employed mostly by communication wireless carriers to build, maintain and repair communication towers. An investigation by ProPublica and PBS Frontline shows that by outsourcing the jobs to subcontractors cell phone carriers’ have kept their connection to tower climbing invisible.

The most common causes of deaths and injuries are:

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Two construction workers were injured in an elevator accident in Greenwich Village on Wednesday after the elevator counterweight snapped causing the elevator to drop half a floor. The two construction workers loaded the elevator with construction material. Some of the construction material which protruded through a hatch in the roof of the lift became entangled with the elevator’s cord and counterweight just before the elevator dropped. The two workers got trapped in the elevator for an hour and half during which they feared that the elevator was going to plummet to the ground. Luckily firefighters were able to shore up the elevator and rescue the two men.
Read more in New York CBS Local

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A MTA contractor was killed by a 2700 pound industrial battery that fell of a crate that he was unloading from a truck. The accident happened at the Throgs Neck Expressway facility near Pennyfiels Ave in the Bronx, NY. The workers at the facility are operating and maintaining the Throgs Neck Bridge. The contractor was part of a team who was working on upgrading the electrical infrastructure at the site.

Read more in the New York Daily News

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US Demco of Brooklyn exposed construction workers to potential fatal falls by failing to provide and ensure the use of lifesaving fall protection on a demolition site located at 50-54 Clarkson Ave in Brooklyn, NYC, according to OSHA inspectors.

Inspectors also found that the guardrails for planking used by workers to access sections of the second and third floors were missing increasing the risk of a fall.

Additionally workers were not supervised by a competent person with the knowledge and the authority to identify and correct fall hazards. Inspectors also noticed that falling debris exposed workers to dangers of lacerations and broken bones and ungrounded power tools could have lead to electrocution and burns.

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Thankfully nobody was hurt in a scaffold accident that happened early this morning in New York. 2 construction workers were being hoisted up on a scaffold when it apparently became unhinged on one side. The two men were between the 12th and 13th floor of a 20 story building located ner Lexington on 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. Rescuers were able to pull the workers to safety through the windows.

Read more on NBC New York website

Click here to read more about Scaffold Accidents in NYC

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Falls are the number one cause of death in the construction industry and construction companies are required by law to provide adequate fall protection to their workers. After OSHA received a complaint of imminent danger on a construction site, the agency started to investigate Kay Waterproofing Corp. a masonry and waterproofing contractor located in the Bronx, NYC. OSHA discovered that the contractor was exposing its workers to serious fall hazards and cited Kay Waterproofing Corp. for 13 serious safety violations that included fall and scaffolding hazards. Other violations included failure to provide eye protection for employees chipping and cutting masonry; failure to provide hard hats where overhead hazards existed; failure to ensure equipment had an electrical grounding pin and was properly guarded and protected; and failure to ensure ladders were used for the designed purpose and were not defective.

Read more in the OSHA news release

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A construction worker died recently after plunging 5 stories down an elevator shaft on a New York construction site. The worker was wearing a safety harness but he wasn’t connected to a lifeline. A second worker was also injured as he plunged from the second to the first floor. The site, a 6-story new building under construction, was hit with a stop work order by the Department of Buildings.

Falls is the deadliest hazard in the construction industry. The accident happened during the OSHA National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction.

Read more in CBS New York

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Falls are the leading cause of death in the construction industry in New York and in the US. Many of those deaths are preventable. To raise awareness of preventing fall hazards, OSHA asked employers in New York and all over the nation to organize during this week a voluntary event to talk to their employees about fall prevention safety.

In New York State, several events already occurred at the beginning of this week. On Monday June 2nd Turner Construction Company suspended work across the company to deliver a message focused on “Proper Pre-Task Planning for Safety” to 45,000 employees. The same day, in Malta, NY, Turner hosted a falls in construction stand down for 700 employees.

On Tuesday, in Manhattan, Related Hudson Yards hosted two falls in construction stand down events along with the sites general contractor, Tutor-Perrini (Buildings) for about 800 employees.

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AzureNYCcraneaccident.jpgThe long legal battle that ensued after two construction workers died in a crane collapse on 91st Street and First Avenue in Manhattan in 2008 just took another unexpected turn last week.

After the owner of New York Crane and Equipment Corporation, Jame Lomma, was cleared of all charges in a criminal prosecution in 2012 a judge just declared a mistrial in the civil lawsuit against the construction magnate because he was hurt in a bad car accident and was still in the hospital.

The families of the victims, Donald C. Leo, the crane operator and Ramadan Kurtan, a sewer worker, who were suing James Lomma for wrongful death, will have to wait at least until September to pursue their fight for justice.