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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Build Safe NYCThe NYC department of Building just announced that the Construction Safety week will start Monday April 27th 2015 with the Build Safe / Live Safe conference. In this daylong series of seminars, Department experts will discuss industry trends and highlight safe construction operations.  Professional credit will be available. Tickets can be purchased here.

 

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thompsonLast December, Jean Bonne-Annee was crossing a road in Brooklyn,  when he was struck and killed by a New York City MTA bus making a left turn. The driver, Reginal Prescott, was arrested and charged with violating the Right of Way Law. The Right of Way Law was introduced last August in New York as part of the Zero Vision initiative to reduce personal injuries and deaths related to traffic accidents in New York City. After several bus drivers were arrested for violating this law, the Transport Workers Union, TWU Local 100, got  angry at the City Council. The union is currently lobbying for MTA bus drivers to be excluded from the law (see article in Transportation Nation).

Reginald Prescott was supposed to appear yesterday in front of the Broolyn Criminal Court but his arraignment was cancelled.  The spokeswoman for Brooklyn prosecutors only said that the case was still under investigation however Peter Donohue of the Daily News is questioning whether the District Attorney Ken Thompson may bow to pressure frrom the bus drivers’union and dismiss the case. Read more in the New York Daily News and in Streetblog 

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A 52 year old man died in a construction accident in New York yesterday. The construction worker was helping to install the green roof of the Barclays Center Arena when beams that were just unloaded fell on him and crushed him. He was transported to the Hospital in critical condition where he later died of his injuries. In a statement, the construction company, Greenland Forest City Partners said “We are all devastated by what happened. All of us at Greenland Forest City Ratner Partners and Barclays Center extend our most heartfelt condolences to the worker’s family and friends”. Read more in the Gothamist

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Picture: courtesy of Wikipedia

 

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Investigators in a  car accident that resulted in the death of 27 year old Pamela Pimentel determined that when Hernan Vega crashed into the victim’s cab he was driving at a speed of 107 mph in a street in the Bronx, NYC. Additionally a blood exam showed that the driver’s alcohol level was .14 and that he was also high on marijuana and ketamine a powerful animal tranquilizer. In a pretrial hearing, Vega was slapped with two counts of second-degree vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and two counts of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol. Read more in the NY Daily News

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38 year old Daniel Cabrera was trying to cross Broadway at W 225th street in Marble Hill, NYC, when he was hit by a driver who sped away and left him dying in the street.  Daniel Cabrera is the second pedestrian to die in 3 hit and runs in two days. The deadly accident happened in a very dangerous area located North of the Manhattan bridge.  The area is busy with pedestrians visiting stores and restaurants on both sides of Broadway and cars are often speeding. 450 speeding tickets have been issue in this area since the beginning of the year. The area is prone to accidents. 58 pedestrians were injured last year according to DOT statistics .  Crashstat.org recorded 8 pedestrian deaths and dozens of personal injuries between 1995 and 2009. Read more  in Streetblog

 

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Another pedestrian died in a bus accident this weekend in Brooklyn, NYC. 64 year old Martin Hernandez Tufino was caught under the front wheels of a Freightliner bus that hit him as he was in the crosswalk on Avenue M near Coney Island Ave in Midwood. The bus which was transporting handicapped people was making a right turn when he struck the victim. 12 people were on the bus. None of them were injured. Read more in the NY Daily News 

The driver remained at the scene and the police said that he wasn’t expected to be charged.  In his latest blog, Brad Aaron from Streetblog is questioning why the bus driver wouldn’t be charged as Tufino had presumably the right of way. Under the Right of way Law that took effect in August 2014 drivers who are injuring or killing pedestrians because they failed to yield are supposed to be charged with misdemeanor and punished by a fine or up to a month of jail.

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Illustration: Streetblog

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Trellis 6In December, Covidien announced a voluntary recall of  its Trellis-6™ and Trellis-8™ peripheral infusion systems  after customers reported a manufacturing error where the proximal and distal balloon inflation ports were labeled incorrectly resulting in the potential for incorrect sequence of balloon deflation. An incorrect sequence of balloon deflation  could potentially create blood clots that could travel downstream and go to the lungs and seriously injure the patient. Today Medtronic, that just acquired Covidien announced that the recall has now been classified as a class I recall by the FDA. Read more in the press release

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9 year old Cooper Stock recently died after being struck by a taxi. His uncle, Barron Lerner in a column for the New York Times explains why he believes that reckless drivers should be treated as criminals just like drunk and drugged drivers. Lerner who is a professor of medicine and population health at New York University, is also the author of “One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900” . Lerner compares reckless driving these days to drunk driving prior to 1980. He says that reckless driving “is poorly defined in the law, sometimes poorly investigated by police and almost never results in a criminal charge”.

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The car accident that killed Angel Figueroa, a 74-year-old Bronx resident, last month was the latest of many other accidents on Tremont Ave near Westchester Square in the Bronx New York.

At a recent presentation in front of the Community Board 10, the NYC DOT highlighted that between 2007 and 2011 traffic accidents in this area resulted in 149 motor vehicle passengers injuries, 30 pedestrian injuries and 4 bicycle injuries. During the presentation the DOT proposed a list of measures that would make the area safer and prevent future car accidents. This proposal was accepted on Monday by the Community Board 10 and work will begin next spring.

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In their most recent Article on Cross Examination, Ben Rubinowitz and Evan Torgan discuss comparative approaches to that part of the trial in which witnesses are often confronted with inaccurate statements based on dishonesty or mistake.Cross examination, if done properly, can disclose those facts. Too often, lawyers fail to take advantage of details that can make or break the case. In this article, the authors discuss when to use an aggressive approach on cross and when to use a friendly, even tempered approach to prove dishonesty or mistake and maximize argument for summation.

http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202575819706&CrossExamination_Comparison_of_Different_Approaches&slreturn=20120927104112