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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Following the tragic death of  architect Erica Tishman who was killed by falling debris in Times Square, New York two days ago, Inside Edition looked at previous cases of victims struck by falling debris.

They talked to our client Jayson Greene who lost his 2 year old daughter Greta after a brick fell on her. At the time of the accident, Greta was sitting on her grandmother’s lap on a bench in the Upper West Side of Manhattan (see more info in previous blog). Jason  told Inside Edition that no one in New York City should fear for their life when walking in the street. He felt very sad for the family of Erica Tishman who will have to endure the same tragedy his family went through when his daughter was killed.

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Lexus-IS-300 A pedestrian who was standing between two parked cars was crushed to death by one of the car after it was remotely started by its owner. 21 year old Michael Kosanovich was standing between two parked Lexus cars on 148th Street in South Jamaica, Queens, NYC,  Friday night around 10:00 pm when one of them was remotely started by its owner and started to roll forward. Kosanovich was pinned between the Lexus and the other car. Bystanders ran to the rescue and pushed the car back but then the car moved forward again causing additional trauma to the pedestrian.  He suffered critical injuries and died in the hospital the following day.

A driver should never remotely start a vehicle without being aware of its surroundings

The remote engine starter is a common add-on on Lexus cars. It allows the owner to start the engine from outside the vehicle, to activate the air conditioner, the heater or the defroster before the driver gets in the car. The vehicle is not supposed to move after it is being remotely turned on. However, the user manual specifies the following:   “NEVER remotely start the engine if you are unaware of the circumstances surrounding the vehicle as it may cause a life threatening situation for those located in the vehicle’s vicinity.” The police didn’t release the identity of the owner of the Lexus who hasn’t been charged so far even though failure to exercise due care could probably apply to this case.

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Mount-Sinai-HospitalPatient safety, infection control staffing ratio as well as patient boarding and conditions are out of control at the Emergency Room of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Executives who 3 years ago hired medical experts to assess the ER department issues, are fully aware of the situation but are doing nothing to improve it. According to former employees at all levels, at Mount Sinai Hospital profit comes before patient safety.  Staffers and doctors who worked there, were so horrified by the conditions of the ER that most of them quit after a few months. Dr. Eric Barton was the head of the emergency department for the Mount Sinai hospital Network for less than a year. He told the New York Post that he had to leave because the organization was not caring for patients. Nurses who quit because of the horrendous wok conditions remember seeing patients going into cardiac arrest without anyone noticing. Patients requiring critical care are often not admitted in the critical care unit timely because it is overloaded. ER Nurses who according to medical safety standards are supposed to care for five to six patients a day are assigned 14 to 18 of them a day.

Globally Mount Sinai has a solid reputation because some excellent doctors work there. It ranks #3 in New York and #14 in the US Best Hospitals Honor Roll of the US News ranking. It also ranks nationally in 9 adult and 5 pediatric specialties. Additionally the hospital was rated a high performer in 4 adult specialties and 7 procedures and conditions. The problem with Mount Sinai is that to access this high ranked care, patients are being parked in very unsafe conditions for up to two days in the emergency room or in the nearby hallways. The conditions are so bad that a worker said the emergency room at Mount Sinai look like Times Square.  While the hospital ranked well in the US News ranking  it ranks very poorly  – 3,874 out of 4,221 hospitals – in term of patient satisfaction on the NY department of Health website.

Shortly after the Post denounced the horrendous conditions at the Emergency Room, Governor Cuomo announced that he had ordered the State Health Department to probe the allegations in the Post.

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the intersection where the fatal accident occurred23 year old Joanna Dixon was killed in a car crash in New York City on the night of her birthday. The young woman was riding in a black Mazda car with another girlfriend and the driver when the accident occurred. The driver of the Mazda blew a stop sign on East 55th Street in East Flatbush, Brooklyn and was T-boned by a speeding white 2019 Nissan GT-R travelling east on Foster Ave. The impact was so strong that the Mazda spun out of control and hit a telephone pole. Debris were scattered all over the place up to a half block away from the intersection.  The driver of the Nissan stayed at the scene of the accident and was identified as Rohan Shaw, an off-duty NYPD officer working for the counter terrorism bureau’s critical command. The police found that the officer was not only speeding but he was also drunk at the time of the accident. He was initially charged charged with reckless driving, speeding, driving while impaired with alcohol, vehicle manslaughter and negligent homicide. However charges were dropped a day after the accident according to a law enforcement source in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.The driver of the Mazda took off by foot and hasn’t been found  yet. He left Joanna Dixon dying and her 22 year old best friend critically injured behind him. The accident occurred early Sunday morning just before 5:00 am.  The police have put up a sign at the scene of the crash asking for anyone who witnessed the crash to provide additional information. They are still looking for the driver of the Mazda.

Read more on NBC New York

Picture of the location of the accident: courtesy of Google Map

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burn injuries suffered by Claudette in the botched chemistry experiment18 year old Claudette Joseph and another female student suffered severe burn injuries in a botched chemistry experiment that occurred in October 2018 at the Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies High School for Violin and Dance located in the Bronx, NYC. Our partner Jeffrey Bloom is representing Claudette and recently filed a lawsuit on her behalf.

Claudette was burned in an accident similar to the one suffered by Alonso Yanes, another client from our firm who was represented by Ben Rubionowitz ( read more about this personal injury case). She was part of a group of students attending a so-called “Carbon Snake Experiment”. The experiment consists in burning sugar and baking soda together. As the sugar and the baking soda burn and decompose, carbon dioxide gets trapped within the carbon and creates gas pockets that extend longer and longer like a black snake. Students were gathered around Eric Broussard, the teacher  to look at the experiment. Despite a recent CSB_Back_to_School_Safety_Alert  asking chemistry teachers to use only small quantities of flammable chemicals during experiments, the teacher used a bottle of rubbing alcohol for the experiment. Vapors came out of the opened bottle and ignited in a fireball that severely burned Claudette and another student on their face, torso and hands.

Both students were rushed to the hospital to be treated. Claudette suffered second degrees burns that have left her with permanent scars. The young woman who is an accomplished violonist  is still traumatized by the horrific accident. “This has been extremely traumatic for her and her family,” Jeffrey Bloom told The Post. “Every time she sees these scars, she is reminded of what happened that day.”

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Despite an increase in bicycle accident fatalities and in motorist injuries the total number of NYC motor vehicle accidents and the total number of resulting injuries and deaths decreased during the third trimester of 2019 compared to the third trimester of 2018. The total number of accidents declined from 57,642 during the third trimester of 2018 to 52,567 during the third trimester of 2019. This is the lowest number of crashes since the same period of 2014.

auto accident NYC third trimester 2019
While a high number of fatal bicycle accidents painted a very negative picture of New York street safety, not all numbers are bad. For example pedestrians fatalities were at their lowest during the period of July, August and September 2019. Motorists fatalities were lower than the two previous years during this same period and passengers fatalities were stable.

traffic fatalities in NYC third trimester
The total number of auto accident related injuries were slightly lower than the previous year. A total of 167,083 people were injured in traffic accidents during over the summer 2019 compared to respectively 16,300, 15,860, 16,048, 13,998, 13,472, and 14,900 during the same 3 months of 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013. Motorists injuries account for almost half of the injuries and continue to increase. While efforts to protect pedestrians has led to a substantial decrease in pedestrian injuries and deaths, distracted driving remains the number one cause of  motor vehicle accidents in New York City and needs to be addressed.

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Operating-roomThis week, both Northwell Health of New York and Massachusetts General Hospital agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle medical malpractice cases related to concurrent surgery. Double-booked surgery also called simultaneous surgery or concurrent surgery is a recently new practice implemented by hospitals all over the country during which a surgeon is involved in two or more surgeries in different operating rooms at the same time.  While some medical studies have been backing this practice other studies have pointed out the resulting complications and inherent safety risks to patients. Last year in their Trial Advocacy Column in the New York Law Journal, Ben Rubinowitz and and Evan Torgan raised the alarm about this practice.

Deadly negligence and fraud

The case settled by Northwell Health of New York claimed that Dr David Samadi, urologist at Lenox Hill Hospital who raised to fame after performing several prostate surgeries on celebrities was allowing urologist residents to perform conventional surgical procedures in a room while performing high risk complex robot-assisted surgeries in another room. The surgeon would shuttle back and forth between the operating rooms during the simultaneous procedures.  The  hospital would then bill Medicare for the procedures performed by the unsupervised trainees. The practice of upping Dr Samadi’s salary for referring more patients to Medicare is illegal. It violates the federal Stark Law.  Dr Samadi was one of the highest paid surgeon in the US. In 2017 his salary was estimated at $6.8 million. Several patients died after undergoing surgery with him and many others suffered post surgery complications.

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Personal Injury Attorney Ben RubinowitzOur managing partner, Ben Rubinowitz, will be a panelist at the “Expert Witnesses” CLE program presented by the Federal Bar Council in New York on December 5th.

Expert witnesses are at the center of modern litigation of all kinds, from personal injury litigation, complex commercial cases to mass torts and white collar crime. This program will cover Daubert motions and other limitations on expert testimony, best practices for drafting expert reports, tips on how to effectively present complex expert testimony to a jury, and strategies for cross-examining experts. The panel will also discuss innovations that may improve expert practice in the federal courts.

Ben will be part of of a group of 5 panelists that includes Jonathan P. Bach, Esq. from Shapiro Arato Bach LLP, Sheila S. Boston, Esq. from Arnold & Porter, Mark R. Seiden, Esq. from Jones Day as well as Professor Daniel J. Capra,  Reed Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law and Reporter for the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Evidence. The judicial moderator of the program will be The Honorable Colleen McMahon, Chief U.S. District Judge, Southern District of New York.

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location of the bicycle and dump truck accidentA 25 year old cyclist was killed by a garbage truck in New York early Sunday morning. Matt Travis is the 28th person to die in a bicycle accident in New York City this year. Matt was riding South on the Willis Ave Bridge bike path when a dump truck made an illegal U-turn to get on the bridge from a service road (technically 1st Avenue, see map) and fatally struck him. The driver then fled the scene of the accident. The police indicated that they are looking for him but they haven’t released any information yet.

Matt was found by the police lying on the street with severe trauma. He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Matt Travis was a rising star pro wrestler and a student at the House of Glorty Wrestling School in Queens. He was recently interviewed by Vice magazine about his passion. Friends and fans have been posting tributes to the young man on social media and at the location of the accident.

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Our Partner, NY personal injury attorney Christopher J. Donadio has been invited by the New  York Medical Malpractice Attorney Christopher_DonadioCounty Lawyers Association to lecture at a continuing legal education event titled “From Voir Dire to Verdict: Trying a Personal Injury Case” which will be held on Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 6:00pm at the New York County Lawyers Association office at 14 Vesey Street, New York, New York. Mr. Donadio has been asked to provide a plaintiff’s attorney’s approach to all aspects of a personal injury trial.

In addition to Mr. Donadio, the event will also include a defense attorney’s approach to personal injury trials, provided by Alecia Walters-Hinds of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, as well as the perspectives of the Honorable Kathryn E. Freed and the Honorable Louis L. Nock, judges in the New York State Supreme Court, New York County.

Please click on the following link to register for the lecture: https://www.nycla.org/NYCLA/Events/Event_Display.aspx?EventKey=CLE111419

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