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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Pennslylvania Blvd and Linden Blvd where the pedestrian was killedAnother pedestrian died in a a car accident in Brooklyn, NYC, early Tuesday morning.  The 62 year old  woman stepped off the curb on Pennsylvania Avenue near the intersection of Linden Boulevard stumbled and fell on the road around 12:58 am. Shortly after a car ran over her and kept going. The police said it was not clear if the driver knew he hit someone. The woman suffered massive traumatic brain injury and died at the scene of the accident.  Located in East New York, Pennsylvania Boulevard is a massive speedway that did not receive the type of Vision Zero safety treatment that can be seen in wealthier areas of New York. (read more in the NY Daily News).

Additionnally on Sunday around 4:00 am a reckless driver totaled his a car and a war monument  in a massive explosion in Brooklyn. The driver of a BMW with a Texas license plate was speeding when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the war memorial in the center of Bartel Pritchard Square near Prospect Park.  Two people were in the car, the driver and a 23 year old female passenger. The young woman was injured and transported to the hospital while the driver refused medical attention.  It is difficult to understand why the driver of this car was still allowed to drive. The license plates show that the car had 145 violations since January 14 2021.including 95 speed camera tickets and 25 red light cameras tickets. The car was also issued two dozen parking tickets but was never impounded despite being way above the $350 threshold in unpaid tickets for being towed away.

People are getting killed  and injured in car accidents in New York City at a rate never seen since Vision Zero started in 2014.   NYPD data indicate that between January 1st and March 6 2022 car accident injuries increased by 12.1 % compared to the same period a year earlier. Since the beginning of the year, a total of 6,977 people were injured in car accidents. This indicate that every day, in average, 107 people are injured  in NYC car accidents.

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hospital patientMore than 150 models of medical devices manufactured by more than 100 manufacturers and equipped with PTC Axeda agent and Axeda Desktop Server  have dangerous cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could potentially harm patients. The Axeda agent and Axeda Desktop server  sold by PTC are  components allowing one or more people to view and operate the same remote desktop, through the Internet. However,  it was recently found that hard-coded credentials were used in these components making them particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Hard code credential  is a practice used by software developers in which authentication data such as password are embedded directly in the source code. This practice was identified 9 years ago as a significant cybersecurity threat and is considered outdated and dangerous. It is particularly concerning that medtech vendor PT  is still selling products using this technology, especially products providing remote support functionality which are among the most targeted by hackers.  Hard code credential vulnerabilities, if exploited, allow hackers to fully access the system, execute remote code, change the configuration, read or save changes directly to files and folders on the user’s device, access user’s login information and flood the targeted device or network with traffic until the target cannot respond or simply crashes, preventing access for legitimate users. Designing medical devices containing such outdated and dangerous components is negligence that can cause injury or death to patients.

Defective medical devices with cybersecurity flaws are considered the number one health technology hazards in 2022 by the ECRI Institute. The FDA issued a cybersecurity alert and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an advisory with a detailed description of the vulnerabilities,  recommendations to mitigate them and a list of the main manufacturers  using Axeda agent and Axeda Desktop servers in some of their products. Among them are Accuracy, Agilent, Bayer, BD, Elektra, GE, Roche Diagnostic, Smith Medical and Varian. These manufacturers have all released their own information in regards to affected products.

Read more in Medtech Dive

 

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https://www.newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneysblog.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpBuilding owners, contractors or other construction professionals that do not respect construction safety rules put workers and civilians at risk of accidents. To prevent misconduct, the NYC Department of Buildings conducts thousands of inspections and bad actors are sanctioned. A list of the main sanctions is published monthly by the DOB. What comes out of the January DOB Enforcement Action Bulletin is that sadly, in New York City, endangering the life of construction workers comes at a much cheaper price tag than displaying advertising in illegal locations or being an illegal Airbnb host.

Here are the highest penalties issued by the NYC Department of Buildings in January:

  • The owner of a two-family building located at 29 Marconi Place in Brooklyn received the highest fine with a total of $74,250 in penalties.  After a fire erupted on location, a DOB investigation found that the owner had illegally converted the property to add 4 single-room occupancy units. The construction work was effectuated without a permit and the owner failed to comply with previous orders from the DOB to legalize the conditions at the property.
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location of the Bronx fatal dump truck accidentA 76 year old pedestrian was fatally struck by a dump truck in the Bronx, NYC, on Monday morning. 76 year old Lola Blair was crossing Enstein Loop around 11:45 am when she was hit by a dump truck making a left turn from the Hutchinson River Parkway service road onto Einstein Loop.  The dump truck driver first continued to drive but then returned to the scene of the accident. The woman was rushed to the hospital where she died from her injuries. She was living nearby, in Co-op city.

Drivers, especially truck drivers must exercise due care when driving in residential areas but so far the NYPD did not charge the dump truck driver for failure to exercise due care.

On Friday another pedestrian was fatally struck by a garbage truck in Brooklyn ( see previous blog).

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garbage truck accident Brooklyn TwitA 62 year old man was killed in a garbage truck accident in Brooklyn, NYC, on Friday afternoon. The accident occurred around 3:30 pm in front of the Atlantic Terminal Mall near the Barclay Center.  The pedestrian was crossing Flatbush Avenue at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue when he was struck by a commercial garbage truck belonging to the private hauler Safeway Services Corp. The 37 year old driver remained at the scene of the accident.

The pedestrian was struck a few feet away from the faded crosswalk and pictures from the accident scene on social media may indicate that the pedestrian was using a walker. It is not clear if the garbage was driving through the intersection and was on Flatbush Avenue with the light in his favor or if he made a right turn from Atlantic Avenue onto Flatbush and both pedestrians and turning traffic had the green light when the accident occurred.  In that case the truck driver should have yielded to the pedestrian. It is not clear either if the garbage truck was equipped with guardrails.  The law requires that all garbage trucks above 10,000 pounds be equipped with guardrails by 2024.

The intersection remains dangerous despite structural improvements in 2018

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car accident scene in ManhattanThere are multiple ways to reduce car accident deaths in New York City.  One of the most successful ones has been the implementation of speed cameras and red light cameras in the city and the lowering of the speed limit to 25mph. The camera program as well as the speed limit control are in the hands of the state legislature and governor in Albany and as a result, not only the city of New York has to seek re-authorization for its automated enforcement program every 4 years as Albany still considers them “demonstrations” but also the city has to beg Albany any time it wants to make a change to this program.

As car accident fatalities in New York City are reaching highs never seen since the beginning of Vision Zero,  street safety advocate organization Transportation Alternatives is recommending Albany to:

  • Immediately authorizing home rule for the City of New York to have control over life-saving automated enforcement programs and speed limits.
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OxyContinThe lawyers for Dr Xiulu Ruan and Dr Shakeel Kahn will argue tomorrow before the Supreme Court of the United States that the criminal standard that physicians faced is not applied consistently among the federal circuits. Dr Xiulu Ruan was one of the largest prescribers of quick-release fentanyl drugs in the US and he is serving a 21-year sentence in federal prison. Dr Shakeel Kahn is serving a 25-year sentence after running pill mills in Arizona and Wyoming.  Their lawyers want their convictions to be overturned but the probability that it occurs is extremely low. However what the lawyers want is that the Supreme Court define a uniform standard that would allows doctors to raise a “good faith” defense and as a result a jury would be able to consider if a doctor was using his or her best medical judgement.

For doctors and patients all over the country the case is not about judging if Ruan and Kahn were bad actors among doctors and committed medical malpractice  but about good doctors who are risking criminal investigation because of  a difficult decision they made.  When the opioids started to flood the market 20 years ago, excessive prescribing was common. In order to curb the actual opioid crisis, authorities have been investigating prescription habits intensively to the point that doctors are now scared to prescribe them to their patients even though they need them.  People coming out of surgeries are being left to unnecessarily suffer because hospitals have implemented drastic guidelines and long term chronic pain patients can’t find a doctor anymore and have to turn to the illegal market.  As prescriptions for opioids fell down, the opioid deaths hit a record high last year in the US with most deaths being related to illegally obtained opioids.  Recent studies indicate this is not a coincidence as long term patients that have been cut from their doctors find themselves in the emergency room because they were poisoned by illegal drugs or committed suicide (See New England Journal of Medicine).

A recent article in the New York Time discuss this difficult issue extensively.

 

 

 

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Infusion pumps are at risk of cyber attacks75% of infusion pumps used by hospitals and other healthcare providers are at risk of being compromised by hackers and as a result can cause harm to patients or expose sensitive data.

Infusion pumps are some of the most commonly used medical devices and some big hospitals are managing thousands of these devices. A recent study by Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, looked at 200,000 infusion pumps manufactured by 7 different companies and being used by multiple hospitals and healthcare organizations that are all using IOT Security to monitor their medical devices.

Researchers found that an alarming number of these devices were highly vulnerable to cyber attacks with 40 known security gaps identified among the devices. Additionnally, 70 types of alert messages received from  these devices through the IOT security network where identified as messages related to security issues.  Most vulnerabilities identified were leakage of sensitive information and unauthorized access causing the device to become unresponsive.

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location of the two houses destroyed in the crash6 people were injured and two houses were destroyed after a car driver lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a residential building in Staten Island. The driver, identified as 38-year-old Mark Robles, was initially pulled over by the police for a broken brake light. One of the officers said he  saw a crack pipe in the car and the police attempted to get the man out of the car. Robles did not comply and sped away behind the wheels of his 2007 Jeep Patriot and the police started to chase him.

Residents were sleeping when the jeep crashed in their house

The chase took place at 3:30 am on Thursday morning during a rainstorm. Robles sped down on St Pauls Avenue, hit a patch of water, skidded, rotated 360 degrees and ended crashing into two houses located at the intersection of St Pauls and Van Duzer Street. 6 people suffered minor injuries.

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IPhone_12_-_3A recent study found that strong magnets in some electronic devices can interfere with the good functioning of  pacemakers and result in potential injury or death for the wearer.   “If you carry a portable electronic device close to your chest and have a history of tachycardia (rapid heartbeat) with an ICD, strong magnets in these devices could disable your cardioverter defibrillator,” said lead author Corentin Féry, a research engineer at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Institute for Medical Engineering and Informatics.

Devices that have been identified as potentially dangerous for people who have a cardioverter defibrillator are the new Apple 12, Apple Airpods charging cases, the second generation of Apple pencils and the Surface Pen from Microsoft. In the study, researchers were able to deactivate five different types of defibrillators by simply putting the electronic devices next to the defibrillators. Deactivation would occur when Apple products were at a 0.78 inch distance from the pacemaker and 1.14 inches for the Microsoft pen.

The study is a confirmation of a previous warning by the FDA that some electronic devices such as mobile phones and smart watches might cause some medical devices implanted in patients to switch to “magnet mode”. Many implanted medical devices are designed with a “magnet mode”,  which is a safety features that for example allows patient with such devices to undergo some medical procedures such as MRI. However this safety feature can actually become dangerous for patients, especially those wearing a pacemaker, if an electronic device such as a cellphone can switch the pacemaker to “magnet mode”.

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