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.

Articles Tagged with New York Wrongful Death

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An elderly pedestrian died after being struck by a taxi on The Upper West Side of Manhattan, NYC early Sunday morning. 88 year old Luisa Rosario, a beloved neighborhood figure, was starting to cross 109 street with the light and had the right of way when a taxi which turned right onto 109th Street from Columbus Ave hit her. The taxi driver, 73 year old Salifu Abubkar,  said he didn’t see the victim. He also told the police that he had been working non-stop for 16 hours.  He was charged with failure to yield.

Taxi drivers are prohibited by the Taxi and Limousine Commission to drive more than 12 hours straight and if they do so they may be issued a summons by the Commission.

Salifu Abubkar has been driving a cab for 30 years and had never had any serious accidents. Taxi drivers don’t have retirement pensions therefore if they don’t have any other source of income they are forced to continue to work.  Read more in the NY Daily News

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An 86 year old woman died after being struck by a car in Manhattan last Friday around 5:00 pm. The woman was crossing West End Ave near 64th Street on the Upper West Side when she was struck by a car. The driver remained at the scene of the accident while the victim was transported to the Hospital. The police are still investigating the accident.

The elderly woman was the 9th pedestrian to be killed last week in a car accident. Read more in the Gothamist

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Qualified and competent OSHA inspector OSHA construction site safety inspectors play a very important role in preventing  workers from being injured or dying on construction sites. Unfortunately with the recent boom in the construction business in New York City, these inspectors are very hard to find and their rates have been increasing significantly.

Certified Site safety inspectors have taken a safety course with OSHA and must meet specific criteria before receiving a OSHA certification. However these last years many  unscrupulous workers just blew off the classes and presented falsified OSHA cards to contractors in order to become site safety inspectors.

Since the beginning of the year the City has been cracking down on these workers.

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FullSizeRender (1)The recent construction boom in New York has lead to a significant increase of hard hats dying on construction sites. These deaths could have been prevented if safety measures were proprely implemented and workers better protected.  Among the workers who died this year, 9 fell because they weren’t proprely secured and several of them were crushed by improperly braced walls.

Unfortunately while the number of new construction sites has expanded significantly,  the number of available site-safety inspectors has dropped.  According to a Daily News investigation, there were 1,171 available inspectors in NYC in 2011 compared to 1,105 in 2014, a decrease of almost 6%.  During that same period of time building permits increased by 18% from 121,000 in 2011 to 142,000 in 2014.

According to the NY Daily News, the rarity of site-safety inspectors has led to a tremendous increase of their rates. Some of them are routinely jumping to better-paying jobs in the middle of ongoing projects to snag higher pay creating dangerous conditions because there is no continuity. Retired inspectors are also coming back on the market because of the high rates but they are often too old for the job and sit behind a desk instead of actively inspecting the construction site. In some cases, contractors used fake safety inspectors. Last year the city busted two contractors who had hired a cook, a hotel bellhop and a hairdresser to sign off on safety reports.

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34 year old Kelly Mayhew died from medical malpractice last May in New York. She had traveled from Maryland with her mom to get cosmetic silicone injections of her buttock in Queens New York, City. Unfortunately, the doctor who injected her was an unlicensed phony plastic surgeon who fled the scene soon  after Mayhew started to gurgle and struggle to breathe leaving her victim to die.  The fake doctor never surrendered and the NYPD believe she know lives in England. The case is currently being presented to a grand jury in front of which the city Medical Examiner said that the cause of the death was “systemic silicone emboli due to cosmetic silicone injections of buttocks” and “the manner of death was homicide”. Read more in the NY Daily News

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Injuries and fatal crashes Woodhaven NYCBased on New York crash statistics analyzed from July 2012 to December  2014, the most dangerous intersections on Woodhaven Boulevard were:

  • 101st Ave & Woodhaven Blvd with 42 crashes, 62 injuries and 1 fatality
  • Jamaica Ave & Woodhaven Blvd with 38 crashes, 52 injuries and 2 fatalities
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4,737 people were injured and 21 died in 18,862 traffic accidents in New York City in August according to recent statistics released by the NYPD. The number of motor vehicle accidents has been increasing steadily over the last three years however the number of deaths and injuries are both on a declining trend in the city (click on graphs for a larger view) which indicates that New York City streets are getting a little safer.

Motor Vehicle Accidents Injuries Deaths New York City August 2015
Pedestrians are the most at risk of dying in a traffic accident in New York City. They represent more than half of the traffic fatalities. Last month 11 of them died after being struck by a vehicle compared to 6 during the previous month and 10 in August 2014.

While pedestrian fatalities are on a downtrend, bicycle accident fatalities have been increasing since the beginning of 2013. Last August 3 cyclists died in accidents. 3 cyclists also died in July bringing to 11 the total number of people who died in a bicycle accident this year. During the same period of 2013 and 2014  there were respectively 7 and 15 bicycle accident fatalities.

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Since the de Blasio administration  launched The Vision Zero program to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities in New York, jaywalking tickets have been increasing significantly. By the end of last year, according to NYPD statistics, jaywalking summonses had nearly quadrupled the average for the previous six year.  In a long article, the Village Voice looks at the history of  Jaywalking in the city since 1920 and question the  manner it is being enforced by the NYPD these days.  Read the complete article here 

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In 2001, Pam Tusiani died as a result of Medical Malpractice in New York  after she fatally  reacted to Parnate, an antidepressant she had been prescribed by a treatment center that was providing medical care without a license. The young woman was suffering from  borderline personality disorder, a disease often misdiagnosed.

Using the settlement from their malpractice suit, Pam’s parents started the Borderline Personality Disorder Resource Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital in 2003. Last July the Tusianis hosted some of New York’s top neuroscientists and psychiatrists at a day-long event to review the latest science on BPD and devise new avenues for research.

Read more in The Washington Post 

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A 27 year old woman was killed in  a bicycle accident  on the City Island bridge in the Bronx, NYC. The police are looking for the driver of a 2015 White Hyundai who struck 27 year old Gabriella Aguilar and sped away, leaving her to die on the road. See video below