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.
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map of crash fatalitiesAn estimated 42,915 people died in crashes in the US in 2021.Traffic accident fatalities which had been on a declining trend for 30 years started to increase since 2020. Last year, the US DOT announced that it would apply the Vision Zero concept nationally to tackle this problem.

New Yorkers are familiar with Vision Zero which started in 2014. The program was successful at the beginning but got out of hand since the Covid19 crisis.  The program was  good at identifying dangerous corridors and areas that needed improvements but the implementations of safety measures in dangerous areas, especially those  located in historically disadvantaged communities remained too often unrealized. As a result, most road fatalities in New York City  still occur in dangerous areas that had been identified as such almost 10 years ago.  Just like in 2014 in New York City, the US DOT did some outstanding in-depth research and developed amazing interactive maps to point out dangerous areas in each community of the entire country.

The work of the DOT is extremely impressive:

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OSHA picture of the fatal construction accidentThe negligence of a contractor caused the death of a construction worker in Poughkeepsie in 2017. Maximiliano Saban died and another of his colleague suffered personal injury after a wall collapsed on them.

The wall collapsed because the contractor, Finbar O-Neil who owns OneKey LLC, did not follow OSHA safety rules. O-Neil had to implement a soil compacting plan involving piling large quantities of dirt called surcharges on top of the construction sites of 3 buildings. An engineering company prepared the plan on how to use the  surcharges. However to gain time, O-Neil decided that, instead of following the plan, he would build a wall that would retain one of the surcharges so that workers could start to work on the building next to it. He made the decision on his own without consulting with engineers to know if the wall would sustain the surcharges.

On the day of the accident, some construction workers complained that construction machines were on the top of the surcharges adding dirt to it. Later on during the day, Maximiliano and a colleague were working next to the wall when it collapsed. They both ran away but Maximiliano was unable to escape.

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Health-Technoogy-Hazards-scaledWhile health technology is often synonymous with progress, some medical devices can be dangerous and lead to patient injury and death. Every, year the ECRI Institute compiles a list of the 10 most hazardous technologies in healthcare. This year the Top 10 health hazards are:

1. Confusing recalls of at-home medical devices

This health hazard arises from Philips’ chaotic recall of defective respirators that cost the lives of hundreds of  at home patients suffering from sleep apnea.  Between April 2021 and October 2022, the FDA received 260 reports of  patients who died while using the Philips respirator. The device was recalled but the manufacturer contacted mostly healthcare providers which were supposed to pass the information to their patients. The process was chaotic and many patients were never proprely informed. As a result, they continued to use the defective device and died. Some patients were contacted directly by the manufacturer, but the notification was unclear. The language was technological jargon that patients did not understand proprely.

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Emotional-trauma-not-compensated-in-NY-wrongful-deathThe Grieving Families Act, a wrongful death bill that would allow courts to consider emotional damages when calculating financial compensation in a wrongful death lawsuit was vetoed by NY Governor Kathie Hochul. The bill also extended the statute of limitation and extended the definition of family to not only the parents but to other loved ones close to the person who died such as siblings, grandparents or domestic partners.

Our partner, NY wrongful death attorney Jeffrey Bloom, who was instrumental in helping the bill pass the Assembly and the Senate spoke to CBS News in the video below.

New York wrongful death law has not been updated since 1847 and the bill that was passed last June with a large bipartisan majority by both chambers in Albany would have modernized the actual pre-civil war wrongful death statute

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More pedestrians and more passengers died in auto accidents in 2022 than in 2021 while cyclists and motor vehicle operators fatalities declined. Bus accidents increased while truck accidents remained stable. Motorcycle accidents remain at record levels.

After reaching a record high in 2021, NYC traffic deaths reached their second highest number since Vision Zero started in 2014

According to traffic collision data provided by the NYPD, 251 people died in crashes in the city in 2022 compared to respectively 254, 239, 214, 199, 209, 223, 235, 250 and 286 in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013. As a reminder, NYPD traffic collision data might differ slightly from the real data, especially for fatalities as sometimes people died from their injuries several days or weeks after the accident occurred.

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FDNY rescuing children in fire caused by Ion lithium battery18 children were injured after a fire erupted in an unlicensed daycare located in Queens. The fire was caused by a defective lithium-ion battery that exploded in the basement.

Firefighters were called yesterday afternoon around 2pm for a fire in a basement located at 147-07 72 Drive in Queens, NYC. When they arrived on location, the basement was filled with heavy fire and smoke. They removed 18 children from the building, most of them on the first floor and one of them in the basement. They found out that an illegal daycare was operating on the first floor.  Most children suffered minor injuries and did not require to be hospitalized. One of them was critically injured and still remains in the hospital. Two adults also suffered injury in the fire.

A neighbor took care of the children as parents were alerted and asked to come pick up their young kids. The fire was controlled in 45 minutes.

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traffic fatalities map NYC16 children were killed in crashes in New York City last year according to a report recently published by Transportation Alternatives.  This is the highest number of child road fatalities in the city since Vison Zero started in 2014. 

Globally a total of 255 people were killed in traffic accidents in the city in 2022 compared to 275 in 2021. After last year this is the second highest number of road deaths in the city since Vision Zero started.

While Vision Zero studies clearly identified areas were safety improvements were needed, the city has left many of them unaddressed and as a result people continue to die. The numbers speak for themselves with 33% of all fatalities and 44% of pedestrian fatalities occurring in what Vision Zero calls “priority corridors”. These dangerous areas which have now been a priority for the last 10 years represent only 7% of all city streets. Fixing them proprely could lead to a significant reduction of traffic fatalities in the city.

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Evelyn_Yang was sexually abused by HaddenA NYC  gynecologist has been sexually abusing patients for over two decades including Evelyn Yang, the wife of New York politician Andrew Yang, was convicted of sex trafficking yesterday.

64 year old Robert Hadden, a former Columbia University gynecologist was convicted of federal sex crimes yesterday after a two-week trial. The gynecologist who sexually abused patients while working at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital sexually abused patients from 1993 to 2012. He was previously convicted of sexual abuse after being accused by 19 patients but had been able to avoid jail time by signing a state-court plea agreement. The plea agreement infuriated hundreds of women who had been abused by the doctor.

Yesterday  Robert Hadden was charged with sex trafficking after four patients complained the doctor induced them to cross State lines for what they thought were medical examinations during which the doctor assaulted them. The doctor enticed his patients to travel to New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nevada to engage in illegal sexual activity.  Robert Hadden’s sentencing is scheduled for April 25th. Despite some victims asking for the abuser to remain in jail, Judge Berman allowed Hadden to remain free for now.  He said Hadden was not a flight risk and was the caretaker for his son who suffers from cerebral palsy and autism as well as his wife who has diabetes and neuropathy.

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The New York City hospital where the deadly medical error occurredA mother about to give birth died from medical malpractice in a New York City Hospital.  On July 2020, Sha Asia Temple, a 26 year old pregnant woman was at Woodhull Medical Center about to give birth to her daughter. Dr Dmitry Shelchkov, the anesthesiologist who was in charge of giving her the epidural inserted the catheter to deliver the anesthesia 13 inches deep in her back instead of the recommended 4 inches and administered a full dose of anesthesia neglecting to first administer a test dose and check on the patient before administering the full dose. As a result the anesthesia liquid was injected into the cerebrospinal fluid. The patient complained that she could not breath anymore and died shortly after. According to the federal hospital inspection report, a doctor who rushed to the rescue screamed at Dr. Schelchkov “I can’t believe this is happening again!”. Sha Asia Temple died but her baby, Khloe, survived.

The causes of the death of Ms. Temple were only recently made public and the investigation report indicates that over the two years preceding the death of Ms. Temple, 6 patients in  labor at Woodhull Medical Center “suffered adverse outcomes related to the administration of anesthesia” and Dr Shlchkov was involved in most of them. The same errors of pushing the epidural  needle too deep and mixing the anesthesia with cerebrospinal fluid as well as not proceeding to a test before administrating the full dose were reported. Despite the obvious pattern, the hospital did not take any measures to monitor the doctor who was finally stripped of his medical license in 2021.

Epidural complications are rare and while epidural complications started to occur regularly at Woodhull Medical Hospital, the system was so dysfunctional that cases went unreported. It took the death of a mother for the administrators of the hospital to notice the pattern.

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nine street where the fatal bike accident occurred37 year old Sarah Schick, a mother of two children, was riding an electric Citi Bike when she was fatally struck by a truck on Ninth Street near Second Avenue in Gowanus, Brooklyn, NYC. Multiple cyclists and pedestrians were previously killed or injured on this notoriously dangerous street. Among them was one of our clients, actress Ruthie Ann Miles whose daughter died after being struck by a reckless driver as she was crossing the road with her mom. The actress herself was seriously injured in the crash and additionally, later on, lost her unborn child as a result of the accident.

On Friday, at a vigil for Sarah, around 100 cyclists and bike activists as well a group of politicians including Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez gathered at the corner of Second Ave and Ninth Street. According to Hell Gate, Ydanis was touring the area with other members of the DOT to figure out exactly what type of safety improvements were needed to make Ninth Street safer. He faced a crowd of angry activists and reminded them that he also was an activist back in the day and that he had only been in office for 4 months. He told them that the DOT was on the job to redesign the street and make it safer.

Previous safety improvements were not enough

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