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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cme-concussion-2015-std-canonicalEvery day students from elementary school to college are sustaining concussions during sport or playground activities.  A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury that can affect the student’s cognitive, physical emotional and sleep functions.  Recent research has shown that knowledge of a concussion’s potential effects on a student and appropriate management of the return-to-school process is critical for helping students recover from a concussion.  Clinicians and school personnel who are  are involved in the management of care for students with concussion can attend a one day conference on this subject organized on May 9th by the Children Hospital of Philadelphia. Click here for more info and to register. For detailed information on Traumatic Brain Injury see the CDC related web page.

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A 42 year old woman was loading her luggage in the trunk of a cab when she was hit by another cab that crashed into her and pinned her between the two vehicles. A witness who saw the crash said that the taxi crushed the leg of the woman who fell on the ground in extreme pain. The witness also stated that she lost a lot of blood. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital in critical condition. Both taxi drivers remained at the scene and none of them was charged as the police were till investigating the cause of the accident. This morning’s icy and slushy weather may have played a role in the crash. According to the sister of the victim, the woman was on her way back to California after she came to New York for the wake of a friend who was sick and had just passed away. Read more in the NY Daily News 

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NSC35,400 people died and 4.3 million people suffered personal injury that required medical attention last year on American roads according to preliminary statistics from the National Safety Council (NSC). The number of crash fatalities is 0.5% higher than in 2013 however because 2014 was a year of economical expansion during which the estimated mileage on US roads increased 1.4%, the estimated annual mileage death rate was 1.18 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, a decrease of 1% from the 2013 rate. It is also the lowest NSC preliminary estimate ever recorded. The number of personal injuries that occurred during a crash in 2014 was unchanged.  Read more in Automotive Fleeet

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oxy Elite dangerous productThe FDA is asking consumers to stop using the weight loss product  Oxy Elite Pro Super Thermogenic after the agency found  that the product was tainted with fluoxetine, a potential harmful class of drugs called serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). When used without doctor supervision, SSRIs can have serious side effects such as sucidal thougts, abnormal bleeding and seizure. SSRIS use can be deadly and result in ventricular arrhythmia or sudden death when mixed with other medications such as aspirin, ibuprofen, or other drugs for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, blood clots, chemotherapy, heart conditions, and psychosis. Read more in the FDA press release

It is not the first time that the FDA has discovered hidden ingredients in Oxy Elite Pro.  In october 2013, 1 person died and 11 suffered serious personal injury and had to be hospitalized for liver failure in Hawaii after they used Oxy Elite Pro. The product was subsequently pulled from shelves nationwide. (see previous blog)

 

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10 pedestrians died and 1220 suffered personal injury  in traffic accidents last December bringing the total number of pedestrian deaths to 135  in 2014 compared to 168 in 2013 and 130 in 2014 according to car crashes data recently released by the NYPD.  The total number of pedestrians injured in vehicle accidents for 2014 was 11,000 compared to 11,978 the previous year, a decline of 8%. While pedestrian deaths are back around the level of 2012,  deaths as a result of a bicycle accident increased by 73% with 19 fatal bicycle accidents in 2014 compared to 11 in 2013. The number of people injured in a bicycle accident decreased by 2% with 3960 cyclists injured in 2014 compared to 4043 in 2014.

Globally New York City roads were less dangerous in 2014 than in 2013 with a total of 250 people dying in crashes in 2014 compared to 286 in 2013 – a decline of 12% – and 50,896 road users suffering personal injury in 2014 compared to 54,818 in 2013 – a decline of 7%.

new york traffic accident deaths 2013 2014new york traffic accident personal injuries 2013 2014
Even though pedestrian deaths and injuries decreased in 2014, the number of pedestrians suffering personal injury in a vehicle accident was above 1200 in December, the highest monthly number for the last two years. Monthly pedestrian deaths never went over 15 in 2014, an improvement compared to 2013, a year during which the monthly number of deaths jumped to 25 in November and 20 in January.

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A construction worker was seriously injured on a construction site in TriBeCa, downtown Manhattan. The worker was trying to unload a sheet of drywall from a stack when 3 of them toppled on to him. Three other workers had to hoist the sheet off of him. He was taken to the hospital in serious condition. The construction accident happened inside the sixth floor apartment of 60 Beach street, a luxury condo building. The workers’ company is Noranda Special Projects. Read more in DNA Info.

60 Beach Street

60 Beach Street, source: Google Map

 

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A high speed chase across the Verrazano Bridge and Staten Island, NYC, ended with 2 police officers suffering personal injury  in a car accident between the fugitive and the police. The fugitive, 41 year old Anthony Mazza had failed to appear to a sentencing for aggravated assault in New Jersey and was tracked by a US marshal fugitive task force.  The fugitive, 41 year old Anthony Mazza, was charged with eluding and assault on police for injuring the two officers in the cruiser.  A video shot from an helicopter shows a very dangerous high speed chase across the Verrazano Brige. Thankfully no civilians were injured but such a chase still raises questions about how far the police should go without seriously endangering  New York road users and pedestrians to catch a fugitive. Read more in the NY Daily News

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A 63 year old woman suffered serious personal injury after she was hit by a hit and run driver who is still at large. The accident happened Sunday morning at 89th Avenue and 120th street in Queens, NYC.  The driver hit the pedestrian at 89th Avenue and 120th Street in Queens, and sped off on 89th Ave. The police are still looking for the  driver and have released the below video. The vehicle is a dark gray Nissan Pathfinder. The victim was taken to the hospital where she is in serious condition.

 

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truck rear ends carNew technologies that can help prevent truck accidents such as  forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking (F-CAM) systems should be mandatory on all new big trucks and buses according to The Truck Safety Coalition, the Center for Auto Safety, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and Road Safe America. These four lobbyists have sent a joint petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to ask the agency to start working on a regulation that would require manufacturers of big trucks and buses to equip all their new vehicles with forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking systems (F-CAM).  When a truck or a bus  is equipped with a Forward Collision Warning System, the driver is warned by a signal that he is getting too close to a “target” in front of him and if he doesn’t react, the Collision Mitigation Braking (CMB) will automatically apply the brakes  to reduce the impact speed or prevent the collision. The F-Cam system integrates both these technologies. This system has been studied by the NHTSA for a decade now. More recently the NHTSA also published a complete evaluation of the installation of F-Cam system on medium to heavy commercial vehicles that shows the benefits of such a system.

According the the most recent statistics, more than 100,000 people suffer personal injury in truck accidents and close to 4000 of them are dying every year. A large portion of these crashes are rear-end crashes in which the large truck is the striking vehicle that crashed into another vehicle on the roadway.  While every new manufacturer is proposing the F-Cam system on their new new trucks, only 3 % of the trucks on the road are equipped with it. Making this equipment mandatory seems to be the only way to achieve widespread implementation.  Download a PDF of the Petition for Rulemaking

 

 

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Reports of  medical staff suffering personal injury after being attacked by patients or patient’s visitors are on the rise.  Recent cases of extreme violence such as one involving a 68 year old patient attacking nurses with a metallic bar that he pulled from a bed (see video) or the death of a prominent cardiologist at a Boston Hospital who was shot by a gunman last month have led hospitals to revisit their security policy.

Shootings in hospitals are not that common but violence against hospital staff is happening daily. Workers are being kicked, scratched, punched beaten and even sexually assaulted by patients. Emergency room and psychiatric nurses and other workers dealing with elderly patients are the most at risk of being assaulted and injured by a patient. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics hospital workers are five time more likely to be assaulted on their jobs than workers in other industries.  Last year a study entitled “Incidence and Cost of Nurse Workplace Violence Perpetrated by Hospital Patients or Patient Visitors” and published by  the Journal of Emergency Nursing indicates that in the last year 76% of nurses experienced violence  (verbal abuse by patients, 54.2%; physical abuse by patients, 29.9%; verbal abuse by visitors, 32.9%; and physical abuse by visitors, 3.5%). Perpetrators were primarily white male patients, aged 26 to 35 years, who were confused or influenced by alcohol or drugs.

Hospitals have started to initiate various programs to train their staff on how to recognize and deescalate potentially violent situations but too little is being done to stop the assaults. According to a recent article, Epidemic of Violence against Health Care Workers Plagues Hospitals  published in Scientific American,  hospital administrators and the judicial system do little to prevent assaults by patients. The cost of violence prevention is small, however, when compared to the amount that hospitals lose in worker-compensation claims every year and in time off due to injury—roughly a third of which is patient-inflicted, according to OSHA statistics.