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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Hard-Rock-Hotel-construction-accident-e1582228604154The construction industry saw a period of growth during the last decade and with more workers employed, the number of hard hat injuries and deaths also increased.

The Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) recently published a study looking at construction worker fatal injuries from 2011 to 2019. They found that while the number of workers employed in the industry grew by more than 25%  between 2011 and 2019, the number of fatal injuries recorded a 41.1% increase. While looking at ethnicity, Hispanic workers were the most commonly hired workers and their employment rate grew by 55% during the period under review. They also recorded a jump in 89.8% in job fatalities.

While looking at construction workers ‘age, the middle age workers category (45 to 64 year old) recorded the highest number of deaths, however while looking at the rate of fatalities, workers over 65 years old were the most at risk of dying on the job with a rate of 22 deaths per 100,000 Full time workers (FTWs), compared to 9.6 per 100,000 FTWs for workers under 55 years old.

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Intentional header and head injuriesTraumatic Brain Injuries sustained by young athletes while playing football has been the subject of multiple research while less attention has been given to other high school sports such as lacrosse, soccer, basketball and field hockey. Additionally research mostly concentrated on head impact and head injuries sustained by boys.

In  “Sport- and Gender-Based Differences in Head Impact Exposure and Mechanism in High School Sports”, a recent study published in the Orthopedic Journal of Sport Medicine, several researchers at the Center for Injury Research & Prevention of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia tracked head impact injuries of male and female players in soccer, lacrosse, basketball and field hockey (girls only.) Researchers equipped each player under study with headband impact sensors and filmed each impact to make sure it was not a fake signal sent to the sensor such as a player dropping the sensor on the ground.

While not every head impact results in traumatic brain injury, researchers are concerned that repetitive head impacts, even light and not diagnosed as injury might be linked with short-term cognitive deficits. Therefore this study might help understand how head impacts could be reduced in these popular high school sports.

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nyc buildingsIn New York, landlords have a legal duty to make sure that their tenants have safe living conditions. While most landlords are serious about their responsibilities and maintain their buildings in decent condition, a few bad apples are  collecting building violations and putting their tenants at risk of injuries. Some landlords are doing it intentionally to harass them.  Since the beginning of the month, such practices are not tolerated anymore in the city. Local Law 104 of 2019 was activated on March 4th  and stipulates that landlords that have too many violations for hazardous and or unsafe conditions that violate the Housing Maintenance Code or the Construction Code will not be able to apply for construction permits until they have resolved these violations and corrected the unsafe conditions. Landlords applying for a construction permit will not be allowed to have two or more violations for every unit on buildings with 35 or more dwelling units or three or more violations for every unit on buildings with fewer than 35 dwelling units.

List of bad actors updated daily by the DOT

The Department of Buildings has created a list of all the multiple dwelling buildings with these ratios. The list is updated every day. Buildings that are on this list, will not be allowed to obtain construction permits until dangerous conditions are repaired and violations taken care of. Permits will however be issued if they are necessary to correct a violation.

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top 10 patient safety concern ECRIEvery year, ECRI publishes a list of the top 10 patients safety concerns. This year the number one safety concern is the disparity of treatments based on races and ethnicities. The maternal mortality for example is 3.3 times higher for black mothers than white ones.  The Covid19 crisis also highlighted this concern with a much higher number of black and Latino Americans dying from the disease.  While looking at Covid19 deaths in the US, 32.5% of the victims are from Hispanic descent while Hispanics represent 18.5 % of the US population. Race disparities are also significant while looking at deaths from strokes. While black adults are 50% more likely to have a stroke than white adults,  black men are 60 % more likely to die from it than white men and black women 30% more than white women. Health organizations must incorporate health equality in their strategic planning.

The top 2 patient safety concern identified by ECRI is the emergency preparedness and response in aging services. The covid19 pandemic and previous hurricane situations have shown that aging services such as nursing homes and other elderly facilities are not well prepared for emergency situations.  Plans must be developed and communicated to all parties from resident, to staff, families, public and emergency responders.

The top 3 patient safety concerns that were uncovered during the actual pandemic is that, globally, the US Health system was absolutely not ready for a pandemic. From the inability to triage and plan patients flow, under capacities, inadequate supplies of medical equipment, mortuary mismanagement and the mishandling of infection prevention and control, the crisis showed that pandemic preparedness across the health system is a major patient safety concern.

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It is very disappointing to see how some motorists in NYC have so little concern about pedestrian safety. In the video below, a man driving a pick up truck makes a right turn without yielding to an elderly pedestrian in Brooklyn, knocking him down to the ground and just continuing on his way as if nothing happened.  The police are now looking for him.

location of the Boulevard of Death accidentAnother pedestrian recently died from the injuries he sustained in a similar accident.  Last Friday afternoon , 55 year old Jaipaul Persaud was crossing Queens Boulevard, also nicknamed “Boulevard of Death”, when a motorist making a left turn off 84th Drive onto Queens Boulevard fatally struck him (see location of the accident on Google map picture to the left). The pedestrian was in the crosswalk with the light in his favor. The 33 year old woman who struck him also travelled at the green light but was supposed to yield to pedestrians while making her left turn. The impact was so intense that Persaud who was hit by the front bumper of the car, flew onto the windshield and then crashed down on the street. Persaud was rushed to the emergency room but he died from his injuries on Sunday. The driver stayed at the scene of the accident and so far has not been charged (read more in the Daily News and in the LIC Post )

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NYC Medical Malpractice Attorney Jeff BloomCongratulations to our partner Jeffrey Bloom for being ranked 19th on the City & State list of the 100 most powerful legal professionals in New York! Jeffrey joined Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf immediately after he graduated from  law school in 1979. He became one of the most prominent personal injury and medical malpractice attorneys in New York and has achieved multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements for his clients in personal injury cases related to car accidents, construction accidents, product liability and medical malpractice.  He also served as lead counsel, representing the Estate of Joan Rivers in a medical malpractice action arising from her death following surgery at an ambulatory surgical center.

Jeff is  co-chair of the Medical Malpractice Committee and LAWPAC of New York (the influential Trial Lawyers’ political action committee) for the New York State Trial Lawyers Association. He combines his vast knowledge in the field with his political acumen to effectuate change and preserve justice for those injured through the fault of others.  Jeff who has successfully represented multiple clients whose cancer was misdiagnosed, was instrumental in passing the “Lavern’s Law,” which mandated that the statute of limitations in cases on behalf of cancer patients and their families begins to run when the patient reasonably discovers that he/she has been the victim of malpractice.

For more than a decade, Jeff has been listed yearly in Best Lawyers and Super Lawyers. He is also a member of the prestigious International Academy of Trial Lawyers which limits the number if its members to 500.

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e-scooter-4496668_640Electric scooters have become extremely popular and New York City finally is implementing a first e-scooter share program in the Bronx (see previous blog). The e-scooter wave started around 2017 and researchers have been accumulating data worldwide for a few years that are allowing them to provide pertinent reviews on the risk of accidents and injuries related to e-scooters.

Yesterday, the Injury Prevention online section of the BMJ Journals released “Injury patterns and circumstances associated with electric scooter collisions: a scoping review”, an in depth study on e-scooter collisions and the resulting injuries conducted by Manish Toofany  (Faculty of Medicine, The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada), Sasha Mohsenian, (Faculty of Science, The University of British Columbia), Leona K Shum (Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, The University of British Columbia) Herbert Chan and Jeffrey R. Brubacher (both part of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine The University of British Columbia and the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology & Evaluation (C2E2) in Vancouver).

The researchers were able to gather the materials that have been published worldwide about scooter collisions and their injuries during the previous years  to identify injury patterns such as cause, type, body location, and severity of the injury

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fall prevention 2021Despite safety regulations and awareness campaigns falls continue to be the number one cause of deaths and injuries among construction workers.  According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, among the 1008 construction worker fatalities recorded nationally in 2018, 320 were fall fatalities.

To continue raising awareness about the risks of fall, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is partnering with multiple construction safety advocates and governmental organizations  such as  the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR), the National Construction Safety Executives (NCSE),  the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA),  the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH),  the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), the U.S. Navy to educate as many construction workers as possible on fall safety.

Any companies involved in construction can participate in the Stand-Down 2021 and will receive a certificate of participation if they do so

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safety on construction site is keyPreventing construction accidents and making sure every hard hat is safe on a job site should be a priority for every contractor and developer. Recently Construction Dive looked at the construction safety trends for 2021. Here is a summary:

  • OSHA penalties have been adjusted to the inflation rate and now the maximum penalty for serious and other-than-serious violations is $13,653 per violation compared to 13,494 last year. The maximum penalty for for willful or repeated violations is now $136,532 per violation. It was $134,937 per violation last year.
  • OSHA also announced that it changed the system used to collect penalties. Violators will receive a series of 3 payment letters that will be sent 7, 30 and 60 days after a violator failed to timely pay the penalty. A phone call will also be made 14 days after the payment due date. Establishments that are not on an affordable payment plan and did not pay a penalty will be put on a priority list for further inspection.
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NYC DOT scooter pilotThe NYC DOT recently announced that a new scooter pilot program is on the way but did not elaborate much as what will be done to prevent accidents and make the rides safe for users. In a recent press conference, the new DOT commissioner, Hank Gutman, just promised new dedicated bike lanes in the East Bronx to make the rides safer for scooter users and cyclists.

While it is exciting that commuters who have a long way to get to the closest train station can now benefit from such programs, it is important that these commuters can do so safely. Street safety activists believe that while encouraging New Yorkers not to use a car, the NYC DOT has been lagging behind in keeping cyclists and scooter users safe. Last year a record  number of people were killed or injured in bicycle accidents.

Scooter-share programs have now been launched in many cities all over the word. Every state has different regulations when it comes to safety  but they are not standardized like they are in some European countries. For example in Italy, a law requires all users of recreational scooters to use a helmet to reduce head injuries which are quite common in scooter accidents.

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