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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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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Florence NGWU critically injured in a truck accidentFlorence Ngwu, a beloved mother and nurse who was critically injured in a truck accident in New York City on Sunday morning did not survive. She died on Monday afternoon from her injuries.

The horrific accident took place on Mother’s Day around 8:30 am on 167th Street and 120th Avenue in South Jamaica, Queens, NYC.

The driver of a large Ford F-550 truck belonging to the construction company Pawar Builders crashed multiple times into a white BMW while trying to make a U-turn in the dead-end street.

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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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As traffic accident fatalities in New York City rose to levels never seen since Vision Zero started in 2014 (see our recent blog), Mayor Adams just announced that he was launching a $4 million multi-platform, multilingual campaign to counter rising traffic violence and curb dangerous driving behaviors.

The campaign entitled “Speeding Ruins Lives, Slow Down” is the largest investment in public safety awareness since Vision Zero was launched in 2014. It  comes in the steps of a previous $900 million investment in street safety that is being used to physically redesign 1,000 dangerous intersections located in the New

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York City five boroughs: Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island as well as campaigning for New York City to have more control on traffic safety tools such as speed cameras.

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NYC Construction Safety WeekFalls are the main cause of  injuries and deaths for construction workers in New York City and most of them can be prevented.

A large safety awareness campaign is going on this week in New York City to reduce accidents on construction sites, with a focus on fall accidents.

Construction Safety Week is a yearly safety campaign organized by the NYC Department of Buildings to remind workers and their employers and families that safety best practices on construction sites prevent accident injuries and deaths.

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29 pedestrians, 17 passengers and 12 motor vehicle operators died in crashes in New York City during the first 3 months of the year for a total of 58 fatalities. There were no cyclist fatalities. Since Vision Zero started in 2014, the highest number of auto accident deaths reached 51 in 2014. The only positive news during the first quarter was that no cyclist deaths were reported during this period which never occurred before.

car accident fatalities NYC Q1 2022
NYC Car accident injuries were higher during Q1 22 than during the same period of 2010 and almost reached the same level than in 2020. Among the injured were 4,632 drivers, 3,120 passengers, 649 bicyclists and 2,100 pedestrians. Compared to the same period a year before, all categories of road users sustained a higher number of injuries with the exceptions of the cyclists which might indicate that all the new measures to make cycling safer in  the city have a positive impact.

auto accident injuries New York City Q1 22
12 motor vehicle operators died in crashes during Q1 compared to respectively, 10, 10, 9, 13, 8, 13, 8, 15 and 15 during the same period 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013. While the trend line of motorist deaths is still declining, the numbers of this last quarter are significantly above this trend line.

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scene of the fatal chain crashA pedestrian was fatally struck between two parked cars in Brooklyn, NYC on Saturday morning around 9:35 am.

The accident occurred as 48 year old Everton Stewart was cleaning his car parked in front of his parents’ house located in Canarsie on E. 89th Street near Avenue L. He was standing between the back of his car and the front of his father’s car which was parked right behind him when another car that was coming down the street slammed into his father’s car and pinned him between the two vehicles. The man was rushed to the hospital but he did not survive.

The driver who caused the chain accident, a 46 year old woman with a child in the car, swerved to avoid a car and then according to the police “accelerated for no reason” and crashed into the father’s car.  She was arrested by the police and charges are still pending.

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construction workers working at height in NYCAs spring is here and construction activities are booming in the city, the recent release of the NYC Department of Buildings Construction Safety report is a bleak reminder of the multiple fatalities that occurred on New York construction sites during the same season last year. After two workers fell to their death in February,  two other hard hats died in April, one from electrocution and the other from a fall. Then in May, two workers were crushed by a falling elevator cabin and one of them died while the other one was critically injured. The same month two other workers fell to their death in Long Island City and Flatbush.

After this horrible spring, the DOT organized a giant sweet of almost all construction sites in NYC, sending to the field an army of investigators and shutting down any construction site where major safety violations were discovered.  As a result  fewer fatalities were reported during the remaining months of the year with two other worker falling to their death, one in Manhattan in September and one in Gowanus in November.

The reports also confirms that after a drop of activity related to the Covid19 lockdown, construction activity in NYC increased again in 2021. A total of 168,423 construction permits were issued in 2021 compared to 147,760 in 2020. Manhattan was the borough with the highest number of permits issued (63,320)  however Queens came number one for new buildings filed with 573 applications, followed by Staten Island with 521 application.  Brooklyn had the highest number of certificates of occupancy issued (2,053) followed by Queens (1,613).

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Car Accident Attorney Ben RubinowitzOur managing partner Ben Rubinowitz will be a Faculty Member at the 360 Advocacy Auto Crash Litigation 8.0 on April 24-26, 2022 in Las Vegas.

Named 4 times Best Lawyers®’s Lawyer of the year, NYC car accident lawyer Ben Rubinowitz has a long and vast experience trying auto accident cases  and has achieved multi-millions verdict and settlements.  Among the most recent were a record setting $71 million verdict for a 19 year old student who suffered a spinal cord injury in a devastating car accident and  a $41.5 million for the family of a sanitation worker wo was killed by a street sweeper truck.

Ben will be part of a faculty made of the top trial attorneys in the nation and participants will learn: