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 Posted in Elevator and Escalator

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Brown25 year old Stephen Hewett Brown was killed by a malfunctioning elevator in New York seconds after he saved a mother from being killed herself. New Yorkers moved by the terrible accident helped the family raise almost $14,000 for his funeral. On New Year’s Eve, Brown was in an elevator at 131 Broome on his way to a party on the 25th floor of the building. When the elevator reached the third floor, 43 year old Erude Sanchez stepped out to exit. At the same time the elevator started moving down. Brown immediately understood what happened and pushed the mother into the hallway, protecting her from injury and maybe death. Unfortunately seconds after he pushed the woman to safety he was pinned between the elevator’s roof and the third floor entrance. According to the 10 witnesses who were also trapped in the car, the elevator doors kept opening and closing on him when he was screaming that he couldn’t breath.

According to the New York City Department of Building records, the elevator at 131 Broom Street was defective at the time of the accident. The building had 3 open violations for failure to correct defects in the elevator going back to 2012. Last August, the owner of the building, Grand Street Guild East HDFC, received two Environmental Control Board Violations for failure to maintain the elevator in a code complaint manner. the hearing on that case was schedule the same day of the fatal elevator accident.

Dashia Impaeriali who was the president of the building tenants association from 2006 to 2011 told the NY Daily news that she wasn’t surprised by the accident. She explained that the elevator would sometimes jump several floors and go up and down without reason.

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A 37 year old man died in an elevator accident at the Espoir Building (see picture) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn early this morning. The victim was in the elevator with 14 people. A video depicts the elevator stopping well above the lobby floor. The door opened and the man, identified as Eran Modan was attempting to climb out when the elevator suddenly fell, trapping his upper body between the floor and the top of the cab. His roommate was then able to escape the elevator through a hatch in the bottom. She tried to resuscitate him but the man died in the lobby shortly after EMS arrived.

The building has a history of elevator problems according to the roommate. The Espoir apartment complex received four elevator violations since 2013.

Read more in the NY Daily News

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A construction worker died after he fell down an elevator shaft in New York. The accident happened yesterday at the beginning of the afternoon at the construction site of a future hotel located at 577 9th Avenue near 41st Street in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan.

According to DNA Info the construction worker  was not wearing a harness at the time of the accident. He was working on the fourth floor near the elevator shaft which, at the time, was just a hole that extended all the way to the ground. He fell in and landed on his back. The man who was 30 years old was transported to the hospital in critical condition. He later died.

A few months ago the general contractor for the construction site, BRF Construction Corp, was fined for failing to secure the site after a construction worker was spotted on a 15 to 20 foot wall without a harness. BRF employed non union workers.

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Five years ago a woman suffered horrific injuries in an elevator accident  in Brooklyn, NYC, after a negligent repairman bypassed a safety mechanism while he was fixing the elevator.  The doors of the elevator caught the arm and the leg of 52 year old Debra Jordan and struck  floor after floor, after the elevator car suddenly shot up. She was almost killed and she is now confined to a wheelchair. The 30 year old repairman was convicted of reckless assault and was sentenced to 3 months in jail with 5 years probation. Read more in the NYDaily News 

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UWS%20construction%20site.jpgA construction accident 0n the Upper West Side led to the death of a 61 year old worker. The man was working on the renovation of a landmark townhouse on 70th street near Columbus Avenue when he fell down the shaft of the elevator from the second floor to the first one. He was transported to the hospital where he died from his injuries.

Read more in the NY Daily News

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A man working in an elevator shaft was crushed to death by an empty elevator that moved down 3 floors at 75th West End Ave on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, NYC. A resident of the building complained that “elevators have been a mess in the building for years”. The building received 12 elevator violations since 2003 and 3 major violations for poor maintenance from last year are still open. The Brodsky Organization which owns and manages the building says it was in the process of modernizing the elevators.

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Two construction workers were injured in an elevator accident in Greenwich Village on Wednesday after the elevator counterweight snapped causing the elevator to drop half a floor. The two construction workers loaded the elevator with construction material. Some of the construction material which protruded through a hatch in the roof of the lift became entangled with the elevator’s cord and counterweight just before the elevator dropped. The two workers got trapped in the elevator for an hour and half during which they feared that the elevator was going to plummet to the ground. Luckily firefighters were able to shore up the elevator and rescue the two men.
Read more in New York CBS Local

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A man plunged to his death in the shaft of a broken elevator in an apartment building in Flushing Queens, NYC. The man was moving a small refrigerator and he had called the elevator to bring the refrigerator downstairs. When the doors opened the man didn’t realize that the car wasn’t there and he fell down the shaft with the refrigerator. An elevator repairman found him dead with the refrigerator lying on his chest.
Residents of the building say that the elevator was broken and that people would get stuck in it every two to three days. A resident also mentioned that 3 days before when he was in the elevator, the car started to move down while the doors stayed opened. Since 2005 seven complaints have been issued by inspectors for violations according to city records.

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A young man was found dead in an elevator shaft at a public housing building in the Bronx, NYC. 20 year old Tito Morales died after he got crushed between the wall and the elevator car. Morales was visiting his girlfriend last night at the Adams Houses in the Bronx. He went out to buy cigarettes at 3:00 am and was found unconscious crushed between the 18th and the 19th floor an hour later. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Residents of the building said that they were often getting stuck in the elevators and that they would sometimes wait for hours before being rescued. Another resident mentioned that the only way to get out was to try to get out through the top.
It is not clear yet what exactly happened to Tito Morales. The NYPD is invetigating the elevator accident.

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Chris%20Sallay%20and%20Tony%20Gair.pngOur Partners, Chris Sallay and Anthony Gair settled a New York County elevator accident case for $1,725,000 on behalf of a 64 year old woman. The plaintiff was a passenger in an elevator car traveling at 1000 feet per minute when it came to a sudden, abrupt stop causing her to sustain a severe fracture of her left ankle for which she has had multiple surgical procedures and which has left her with significant disability as a result.

Defendant Elevator Corporation was the sole entity responsible for the safe maintenance, service, operation and repair of the subject elevator. They had a resident elevator mechanic assigned to the subject building on a full–time basis whose duty it was to inspect service and maintain the elevators and their parts in a safe condition. Three days after the subject accident, the elevator was inspected by an elevator inspector with the local Building Department who concluded that the rope grip mechanism on the governor was defective and violations were issued. Defendant strongly maintained that they had no knowledge of the defective governor and that a problem with the power in the building caused the subject accident.

The plaintiff was extricated from the elevator by EMS and was taken via ambulance to a local emergency room. She was diagnosed with a trimalleolar fracture of the left ankle. Over the next year, she underwent 3 surgical procedures and months of physical therapy. Following extensive settlement negotiations with representatives of defendant elevator company, a settlement was reached in the amount of $1,725,000 on the eve of trial.

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