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 Personal Injury

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A construction worker suffered critical injury in a ladder accident in New York.  The accident happened on a construction site located on W. 17th Street near Sixth Ave in the Flatiron district in Manhattan. The hard hat was standing on a ladder, installing sheet rock on a ceiling frame when the accident happened. The worker who was not wearing a harness fell 50 feet down an elevator shaft and was impaled on steel rebar. The pieces of rebar pierced his abdomen, back, thigh, buttock and groin. Flagrant construction site safety violations are to blame for the accident. According to a primary investigation by the New York City Department of Buildings, the hard hat was not wearing a mandatory security harness. Adding to that, the elevator shaft wasn’t covered and there were no orange safety caps on the top of the rebar. This is the reason it is so important to fight against any changes in Section 240(1) of the New York State Labor Law which hold owners, general contractors and others liable for injures resulting from a lack of safety devices in height related accidents.

The construction site has a history of unsafe working conditions. The owner and developer, 34 17th Street Project LLC, was fined last August for “failure to maintain the building in a code complaint manner” and  unsafe or improper use of elevator or hoisting equipment at the same location. The violation indicated that the hoistway doors wer not secured “causing an immediate hazard that could cause someone to fall down the shaftway”.  In November nothing had changed and 34 17th Street Project LLC was fined for “failing to certify correction of an immediately hazardous violation”.

New Empire Builder Corp, the general contractor who is managing the site also has a history of violations. In 2014 OSHA inspectors responded to a complaint at 286 Spring Street, New York, NY. They found hard hats working in extremely unsafe conditions.  Some workers were standings on scaffolding resting on bricks. A worker was standing 10 feet above ground on a scaffold with no fall safety equipment while raising material on a pulley. Furthermore other workers were at risk of being electrocuted while using an ungrounded electric cement mixer. The contractor was fined  $19,600.

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A taxi struck a pedestrian in Manhattan early yesterday. The accident happened in the Chelsea neighborhood. The 25 year old man was crossing West 15th Street near 10th Avenue when he was hit by the cab. He was transported to the hospital where he was listed in critical condition. According to a witness the impact was so strong that the young man landed on the front right window of the taxi and badly cracked it.  The taxi driver stayed at the scene of the accident and wasn’t charged. The police are still investigating the crash. Read more in the NY Daily News.

Pedestrians have a higher risk of being  injured in a New York car accident during the winter months than during the summer months. Recent statistics related to pedestrian injury in New York city show that 1,107 pedestrians were injured in January 2013 and 902 in January 2014. The graph below indicates that since 2013, the monthly number of pedestrians injured in a vehicle accident in NYC was always above 900 during the cold months of October, November, December and January. During the warm months of July and August this number was always below 900. Last year the monthly number of pedestrians injured in a crash was below 900 from February to September included. Even though too many people are still injured on the streets of the city, statistics show a trend of decreasing injuries. The Vision Zero initiative can be somewhat related to this improvement.

nyc pedestrian injuries 2015

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4 construction workers at a construction site in upper Manhattan, NYC were injured in a scaffold accident on Saturday afternoon including two seriously.  The construction accident happened while the workers were “repointing” the facade of a six-story building located on Seanman Ave near Beak Street . The four hard hats were standing on  a scaffold when a cable holding it snapped. The scaffold collapsed and the four men were left hanging in the air, saved by their safety harnesses.  Two of the construction workers suffered serious injury. One of them was struck in the head by the snapping cables. The two others only suffered minor injuries. This accident demonstrates that it is essential that construction workers performing work at heights be provided with fall protection including safety harnesses and lanyards.

Minutes later the FDNY were on location and were able to pull two of the construction workers to safety through the windows. They saved the third one with the help of an aerial ladder and pulled the fourth one onto the the roof with a rope.

The 4 workers were transported to the hospital. The NY Department of Buildings is investigating the accident.  Read more in the NY Daily News 

 

 

 

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A woman suffered critical personal injury after being hit by a car in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC early Saturday. The woman who was in her thirties was hailing a cab near Rodney Street and Metropolitan Avenue when she was hit by silver BMW. The driver sped off in the night leaving the woman agonizing in the street. The woman was transported to the hospital. She suffered serious head trauma and was listed in critical condition. The police are still looking for the driver and have released the below surveillance image of the car.

hit and run car

Read more in the Gothamist

 

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Pollak GettoInsurance Companies most often pay the settlements in lawsuits related to negligence, accident, personal injury or fatality. The insurance company will have to evaluate if the claim needs to be legally defended or if an early settlement is more appropriate. The claims adjuster is the person making this decision in an insurance company. In a recent article, Daniel Pollack, a professor at Yeshiva University’s School of Social Work in New York City and Cameron R. Getto, a shareholder with Zausmer, Kaufman, August &
Caldwell, P.C. in Farmington Hills, MI provides a thorough look at the role of claim adjuster and defense counsel in human services litigation. The article focuses on claims that involved human service agencies however the role played by a claims adjuster or defense counsel in a personal injury claim is very similar.

The complete article can be downloaded here

 

 

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269,140 people were injured in NYC auto accidents last year compared to 256,005 in 2014. This represents an increase of almost 5% in one year. The number of crash injuries first decreased between 2013 and 2014 before significantly increasing in 2015.  By categories motorist injuries and cyclist injuries added to the increase while pedestrian injuries and passengers injuries both declined.

While injuries were on the rise, the yearly number of deaths related to motor vehicle accidents gradually declined. From 286 in 2013, it went down more than 12 % to 250 in 2014  and more than 6% to 235 in 2015. By categories, motorists deaths, pedestrians deaths and bicyclists deaths all declined while passengers deaths increased.

Click on graphs to increase to increase size

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train accident fireAlmost a year ago 6 people died and 15 others were injured (including seven severely)  in a Metro-North train accident  between the Valhalla and Mount Pleasant stations in New York.  The Valhalla railroad accident that happened on the evening of February 3rd 2015 was the deadliest in Metro-North history.

Ellen Brody, a mother of three was driving her SUV through the Commerce Street rail crossing in Valhalla. The vehicle got stuck inside the crossing gate when it descended. The approaching Metro-North train engineer spotted her too late and crashed into her vehicle. She was killed in the accident along with 5 other train passengers who were sitting in the lead car of the train. An alleged defective third rail became dislodged and entered the first car of the train. Investigators believe the fuel from the car combined with the sparks of the dislodged third rail ignited the fire that ravaged car 4333 (see picture from the National Transportation Safety Board Investigation on the left).

Our partner, NY train accident attorney Howard Hershenhorn is representing the wife of one of the victims. Last week he filed a negligence lawsuit against Metro-North and its engineer Steven Smalls Jr. as well as the town of Mount Pleasant. The lawsuit lists multiple reasons for the defendants alleged negligence. Among them:

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Flag footballAn increased number of parents have been worrying about their kids getting injured in contact sports after seeing the movie “Concussion” (see our previous blog). In a recent article Kristy Arbogast, Co-Scientific Director and Director of Engineering for the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a Research Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania says many parents have asked questions about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Parents want to know if kids who play contact sports are at risk to  develop CTE in the future. Kristy Arbohast who is a brain injury specialist, says that so far unfortunately there is no answer to this question. Some kids who played contact sports at high level (collegiate football or rugby) have developed symptoms of CTE but scientists still don’t know what predisposes a person to CTE.

Kristy Arbohast recommends that parents whose kids are interested in being involved in a contact sports make sure they are are proprely managed and coached. Parents should check that their child is playing in a league that requires coaches to be trained to recognize concussion signs. The coach should not only be trained in recognizing concussion signs but also have to respect the time that is needed to recover from a concussion. Recent research has shown that the best way to recover from a concussion is rest and then a progressive return to learning and playing activities.  Additionally parents should advocate for changes in rules to promote safety. Some rules can be changed so children are protected from injuries but still learn the skills for a specific sport. Flag football is a good example of how a child can still develop football skills while limiting personal injuries related to tackling players to the ground. Rules in hockey which prohibit body checking for youngsters have also help in reducing the number of head injuries in youth hockey.

The complete article can be read here

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In Davis v. South Nassau Communities Hospital, Edward Davis sued this  New York hospital for medical malpractice after he was injured in a car accident caused by an impaired hospital’s patient. The patient was Lorraine Walsh. Walsh presented herself to the South Nassau Communities Hospital Emergency Room with stomach pain. The ER doctor gave her a very powerful pain medication and told her she could go home.  Because the patient was allergic to morphine, she was given Diluadid, an opioid, which is stronger than morphine and Ativan, a fast acting benzodiazepine with a 6 hour half life intravenously.  The medication that was given by the ER doctor can impair the ability to operate a motor vehicle. However the doctor didn’t warn the patient nor ask if she was indeed driving home alone.

As she was driving back home, Lorraine Walsh, impaired by the medication, crossed a double yellow line into oncoming traffic and struck a vehicle driven by Edward Davis. Edward Davis suffered personal injury caused by the car accident. Davis then filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital and the physician. The suit was dismissed by the by the trial court and by the Appellate Division. Davis then appealed to the New York Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals had to rule on an interesting question: can a third party injured by an impaired patient sue a medical provider under the theory that the medical provider’s malpractice was the cause of of the third party injury even though the third party didn’t have a direct relationship with the medical provider. In a 4-2 decision, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that Davis’claim was permissible.  The Court held that defendants had a duty to plaintiffs to warn Walsh that the drugs administered to her impaired her ability to safely operate an automobile.“Our decision herein imposes no additional obligation on a physician who administers prescribed medication. Rather, we merely extend the scope of persons to whom the physician may be responsible for failing to fulfill that responsibility.” Judge Stein and Judge Abdus-Salaam dissented in a lengthy opinion

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A man who was involved a  car accident on a New York highway was hit by another car going in the opposite direction. The accident happened yesterday night around 7:30 pm on the FDR near 41st Street. Two cars collided on the northbound side of the highway. One of the drivers exited his car and attempted to cross the highway on foot.  As he was crossing the FDR Drive he was struck by a car and critically injured.  Read more in the NY Daily News

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