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 Personal Injury

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car van crashA speeding driver blew a stop sign and crashed into a van with six passengers after which he ran by foot from the scene last Friday night in NYC. The car crash took place at the intersection of Shore Ave and Princeton Street, in Jamaica, Queens, NYC around 11:00 pm. 6 church goers were coming back from a service in a van when a rental car crashed into them. The impact was so strong that the van flipped upside down. The police believe the driver stole the rental car on a nearby  street shortly before the accident. The passengers of the van were a pastor and his pregnant wife, their 3 month and three year old children, another family member and a teenager.   Thankfully the 6 of them only suffered minor injuries. The police are still looking for the hit and run driver.

Read more on the New York CBS Local website

Picture: Jack.Danielz526 on Instagram

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printing houseA construction worker died after a scaffolding plank fell on his head at a New York construction site. 32 year old Luis Mata, was dismantling scaffolding at the Printing House Luxury Condos on Hudson Street when one of the planks became loose and fell 10 stories on his head. The construction worker was wearing a hard hat but the impact was so strong that he suffered severe head and neck injuries. He later died from his injuries at the hospital. Luis Mata was a non union worker from Mexico. He was living with his uncle in Westchester County. He was supporting his mom in Mexico.

Unfortunately we are seeing an increasing number of construction site accidents on non union jobs, as a result of contractors not implementing proper safety measures.

Following the accident, the NYC Department of Building issued a partial stop work order on the building. DOB records for the building located at 421 Hudson Street show that at the time of the fatal accident, the building had 6 open ECB violations including two class 2 and two class 1 violations  as well as 8 DOB violations.

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KingsbrookA hard hat worker suffered critical injury in a NYC construction accident yesterday. A construction truck hit a suspended cable line causing a pole to fall, knocking down the construction worker into a 15 foot trench. The accident happened at the corner of East 49th Street and Rutland Road in Brownsville, next to the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center.

When Brian Yokers, one the ER doctors at the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, heard about a worker in cardiac arrest at the construction site next to the hospital he ran out to the construction site and followed the crowd to the trench. The worker was still breathing when he arrived. He stepped down the ladder into the trench to help the worker.  He held his head stable to prevent a spinal cord injury until the FDNY arrived with a neck brace. The worker was then placed on a backboard and hoisted out of the trench. He was then transported to the Kings County Hospital.

Kudos to Brian Yokers!

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In New York  City’s heavy traffic, bicyclists who are commuting to work are facing the risk of being injured or dying in a bicycle accident. As part of the Vision Zero initiative, Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to make New York City a friendly city for bike commuters. Protected bike lanes have proven to be one of the best ways to protect bicyclist from injury or death by negligent car drivers. Unlike regular bike lanes, that are often blocked by cars, protected bike lanes physically separate car traffic and bicycles with concrete, trees or parking lanes.

In 2016 the DOT will implement 15 miles of these types of bike lanes in the City. Last year 12 miles were added. Among this year’s projects, the DOT has work planned and in progress in the following areas of the city’s five boroughs:

  • In the Bronx: using excess roadway space on the accident prone area of Bruckner Boulevard between Hunts Point and Longwood Ave to create a protected bike lane (read more on Streetblog and download DOT PDF here )Protected bike lane Bruckner Blvd
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Bicycle accidents injuries deaths NYC February 2016Bicycle accidents in New York have been on the rise in recent years and so have the number of people injured or killed in these accidents. Commuting by bike has become quite popular among New Yorkers but it remains quite dangerous mostly because car drivers are driving negligently.

Despite new Vision Zero safety measures such as street re-design and the addition of miles of protected bike lanes the biggest danger bicyclists are facing in the city are negligent car drivers. To raise awareness about the danger that commuters are  facing while using their bicycle to go to work, Jake Dobkin from the Gothamist has asked several colleagues who use their bikes for their daily commute to film their ride.

Jack Dobkin commutes daily between Park Slop and Dumbo in Brooklyn and he is using his bicycle to go to work as well. In Episode One of this series, Jack shows his own daily bicycle ride to the office. Jack says that he’d rather ride one more mile on each commute to avoid using Jay Street which is one of the most dangerous street for bikers in NYC (if you want to understand why check the video clip on our( NYC bicycle accident lawyer page).

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High School AthletesWhile a lot of emphasis has been recently put on protecting professional and college athletes from suffering serious injuries and their long term consequences, very little is done on a national scale to protect high school athletes. In a recent article in the Health section of the New York Times Jane E. Brody points out that there are still no national guidelines or rules protecting high school athletes and that it is the responsibility of the states and the schools to protect them. Unfortunately most states and schools are lagging behind in implementing serious safety measures. Last year in the US 50 high school athletes died while playing organized school or league sports and thousands of them suffered long term complications from sports related injuries.

Cardiac arrest, head and neck injuries as well as exertion are the most common causes of death among high school athletes. The author indicates that many of these deaths could have been prevented if the high school had:

  • an emergency action plan
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spinal cord injuryThe medical practice of trying to avoid scar formation at the site of a spinal cord injury may indeed not be correct. Every year approximately 12,500 American will suffer a spinal cord injury and an estimated 276,000 people in the US are suffering from long term effects related to this injury. For decades the prevailing medical dogma was that that scars were preventing neuronal regrowth across the injured area but a newly released study says it is actually the opposite that happens. Scar forming cells called astrocytes may actually help nerve regrowth.  A study recently published in Nature and authored by  Mark A. AndersonJoshua E. BurdaYilong RenYan AoTimothy M. O’SheaRiki KawaguchiGiovanni CoppolaBaljit S. KhakhTimothy J. Deming & Michael V. Sofroniew found that   “scars may be a bridge and not a barrier towards developing better treatments for paralyzing spinal cord injuries.”

Read more in Medical News Today

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A few days after a DOI investigation revealed that NYCHA knew about faulty elevators that killed a resident and injured another, the NYC Housing Authority announced that Ken Buny, the head of the elevator division was fired. Five NYCHA employees who failed to communicate that the elevators were malfunctioning were also reassigned. They are all facing disciplinary charges that could also result in firing. (Read more in the NY Daily News)

The investigation revealed that NYCHA knew about the faulty elevator before the fatal accident happened but because of a communications  breakdown nobody went to fix it.  On December 24 2015, the NYCHA’s Customer Contact Center (“CCC”) received a phone call from a resident at the  NYCHA’s Boston Road Plaza senior building in the Bronx to inform them about a very dangerous malfunctioning elevator. NYCHA didn’t take immediate action to put the elevator out of service. An hour and half  later, 84 year old Olegario Pabon was critically injured when the elevator drifted upward as he was trying to get in. He died 3 days later from his injuries.  The investigation also found that the NYCHA senior management learned about the accident four days later. Another man was seriously injured in a similar accident that happened in another NYCHA building less than a month before.

In both accidents, the DOI found that brake monitors that should have automatically shut down the elevators were not functioning. After this discovery the DOI checked the 1,080 NYCHA elevators equipped with brake monitors and found that 80 (more than 7%) of them were not functioning.

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safety culture constructionConstruction workers have a high risk of getting injured or even dying in an accident while at work. Construction accidents often happen when negligent contractors try to save time or money and put profit ahead of their own workers safety. A new study looking at safety practices among contractors shows that increased safety on construction sites indeed increases Return on Investment (ROI) and attracts and retains more talented hard hats. The recently released study “Building a Safety Culture SmartMarket Report” was produced by the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) and United Rental, a construction equipment rental company.

For the study, Dodge Data & Analytics analyzed 254 American contractors using 33 indicators of safety culture in the construction industry. They found that approximately one third of the contractors were promoting a high safety culture standard in their day to day business and were investing heavily in safety management practices. Another third were somewhat promoting safety culture in their company. The last third were contractors who didn’t have much interest about safety culture and didn’t invest much in it.

The study shows that contractors who invested the most in workers safety reported less injuries, improved their projects quality, increased their projects ROI, had a lower staff turnover and were able to attract staff more easily than contractors who didn’t invest in workers safety.

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A female pedestrian was critically injured after being hit by a school bus in New York City. The bus accident happened Monday morning around 9:20 am in Queens. The 32 year old woman was crossing Grand Ave near 74th street when she was struck by a yellow school bus. No children were on board. The woman suffered head trauma and a broken shoulder. She was transported to the hospital where she was listed in critical condition.  There is no cross walk at the intersection of 74th Street and Grand Ave, making it a dangerous intersection for pedestrians.

pedestrian accident location

picture source: Google Map