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 Wrongful Death

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Queens construction site where the fatal accident occurred
NYC Construction workers who have been injured or families of construction workers who died on the job can often sue the contractor and/or the owner of the construction sites as, sadly, the majority of construction accidents occurring on New York sites are the result of negligence.

The most common construction accident cases resulting in litigation in New York City are accidents related to falls. New York Labor Law Section 240 also known as the Saffold Law protects hard hats who fell from heights or got struck by a falling object.

A look at last April NYC construction accidents indicates that out of the 35 accidents that resulted in death or injuries, 20 of them were preventable and occurred after safety rules were violated. Among them were 12 fall accidents. Two of them were deadly.

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Andrew_Gounardes wrote the speed camera billsIn an effort to reduce an increase in fatal car accidents in New York City, legislators in Albany have signed a deal to renew the existing cameras program and to have them running 24/7 instead of the current schedule of 6:00 am to 10:00 pm.

Safety advocates were pleased that the deal was signed and the new amended bill was on its way to be delivered to Governor Hochul and signed.  The signature of the bill allows the speed cameras program to be extended for 3 years. However the deal is a watered down version of the bill proposed by Senator Andrew Gournades (picture) who originally included several other propositions such as:

  • Requiring the DMV to notify car insurance companies about any car accumulating five or more speed camera tickets
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OSHA logoDME Construction Associates, a negligent NY contractor who is now also listed as a severe violator, was issued a $1.2 million  fine by OSHA for 4 serious and 9 willful violations of safety rules.

The contractor was slapped with the hefty fine after one of its employees fell to his death while working on the roof of the Town of Oyster Bay solid waste disposal facility in Old Bethpage, Nassau County, NY. The accident occurred on August 19th 2021. The 56 year old construction worker fell 18 feet through an unprotected skylight. Despite working on a rooftop, he was not provided any personal fall protection equipment by his employer as required by law.

OSHA’s investigators found that the contractor failed to provide personal fall safety equipment for employees working on the rooftop. Additionally the contractor failed to protect the skylight as well as other roof openings and roof edges and exposed workers to falls of up to 22 feet.

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The intersection where Lin was fatally struckAnother pedestrian died in a crash in New York City on Saturday after the driver of a van failed to yield to her

62 year old Tian-Rong Lin was crossing Seward Avenue in the Bronx when a van making a left turn from Olmstead Avenue struck her. The accident occurred on Saturday morning around 11:00 am. The driver, 54 year old Ramon Cedeno-Ortiz, stayed at the scene of the accident. He was charged with failure to exercise due care and failure to yield to a pedestrian.

Drivers rarely charged when they kill a pedestrian

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Location of the deadly MTA Bus AccidentA pedestrian was fatally struck by a MTA Bus in Staten Island, NYC, last Friday early morning and the bus driver never stopped.

69 year old Patrick Varriale, a New Springville resident and the the electronic media services division director for the American Federation of Musicians of US and Canada, an instrumental musicians union, was crossing the intersection of Forrest Hill Road and Platinum Avenue in Staten Island around 4:40 AM on Friday when he was struck by a MTA bus driver who never stopped and left the victim dying in the street.

The intersection is a block away from the MTA Yukon Bus Depot and after investigation, the police found out that the bus driver who hit the victim was a 52 year old man who was travelling eastbound on Forest Hill Road. He hit the victim as he was making a left turn onto Platinum Avenue. The man was driving the SIM 10 route bus.

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Speed cameras prevent crashes59% of all deadly crashes in New York City occur during hours when speed cameras are turned off and speeding is the number one factor of car accident fatalities in New York City with 4 out of 5 fatal crashes caused by speed according to a new report recently published by Transportation Alternatives.

Speed cameras in New York City have proven to be among the most effective tools to address speeding and reduce car accidents.  The speed camera program that was implemented in 2014 in New York City is not regulated by  New York City but by New York State in Albany.  Albany not only limits the number of speed cameras but also their location (only in school zones and at few intersections) and their hours of operation (Monday to Friday from 6:00 am to 10:00 pm).   Mayor Adams wants the city to have control over the speed camera program and two days ago, the NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner, Ydanis Rodriguez reiterated Adams’ call on lawmakers in Albany to hand over control of the city’s speed camera program (see article in the Gothamist).

Both the NYC DOT and street safety activists are asking for speed camera to be active 24/7.  Previous studies effectuated by the DOT show that as soon as the cameras are turned off, speeding comes back and that 31% of all crash fatalities take place in a school zone area at a time when cameras are turned off.

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this is where the man on a motorised scooter was fatally killedA 72 year old man on a motorized scooter is the 8th person to die in a traffic accident in New York City in one week

After a student was killed by a drunk driver in Manhattan, a 16 year old was killed by a truck while on her way to school in the Bronx,  a bike rider was killed by a garbage truck in Brooklyn, a delivery man was fatally struck by a van in Brooklyn, two pedestrians were fatally struck the same day in Queens and a mother was fatally struck by a stolen hit and run truck in Queens as well , an elderly man who was trying to cross the street on his motorized scooter was killed by a van in the Bronx on Sunday night just a few hours before a 20 year old driver speeding on the Belt Parkway killed herself and critically injured her passenger after crashing her car in a city truck.

Additionally, on Monday, a 69 year old man was critically injured after being struck and dragged by a box truck in the UES.

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Raife fatally struck by drunk driverMichael de Guzman had a blood-alcohol content of .13 when he struck  and killed a pedestrian in Downtown Manhattan.

21 year old Raife Miligan was attempting to cross Houston Street near First Avenue last Monday around 2:45 am when the drunk driver fatally hit him.

According to an article published yesterday in the New York Post, just after he struck the student with his red Chevy Camaro, the driver told the police that he saw “a shadow running across the street” and while he tried to swerve to avoid it, he crashed into a Honda CRV and the divider. The officer who took the complaint wrote the following “I observed [de Guzman] ask the passenger of his vehicle if he hit the other car and the passenger stated to [de Guzman] in substance, no you just hit the guy, meaning the pedestrian,”.

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2 hard hats died during the first quarter of 2022 and 110 of them were injured while working on construction sites in New York City. Both fatalities were fall accidents, both occurred in Brooklyn and both were preventable.

The first fatality occurred on February 11. Angel Pilataxi, a father of 3 children and 3 step children fell to his death at a construction site located at 124 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn. According to the DOB investigation,  the worker was taking measurements on the edge of the roof on the eighth floor when the accident happened. He was not using a safety harness and fell over the parapet. He was found unconscious lying on the second floor terrace. He did not survive. Investigators found that the worker and a co-worker who was working with him at the time of the accident not only did not have a site safety training card but also did not receive any site-specific safety training and did not participate in a pre-shit meeting in the morning. At the time of the accident a full stop order was issued and the DOB issued a violation failure to safeguard persons and property affected by the construction operations.

The second fatal accident occurred on a construction site located at 295 St John’s Place on March 21st. A rigging foreman who was installing a suspended scaffolding go caught between the fire stairs and the scaffold, lost his balance and fell fifteen feet onto a metal fence. He died from his injuries. A full stop work was issued and the DOB also issued a violation for failure to safeguard person and property affected by construction.

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In its latest bulletin, the Center for Construction Research and Training looks at injuries and fatalities sustained by construction workers in the US over a 10 years period. Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) for the fatal injuries and on on employer logs obtained from the BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) for the non fatal injuries, this bulletin provides an overview of the trends of injuries and deaths in the construction industry.

Construction work remains one of  the most dangerous job in the US

In 2020 construction workers represented 7.3% of the total workforce in the US and 21.7% of the workforce fatal injuries. Globally, between 2011 and 2020, working on a construction site became more dangerous with both hard hat fatality and injury rates on the rise. 2020 was affected by the Covid 19 pandemic and while less fatalities and injuries were reported because the activity was limited, the fatality rate and the injury rate both reached a record high that year.

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