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 Wrongful Death

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Fall Prevention Campaign887 workers lost their life after falling at their job sites in 2017 according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is the highest number of fall deaths ever recorded by the BLS since the agency started to track these numbers almost 30 years ago. Fall fatalities account for 17% of all job-related fatalities and 40% of all construction job-related fatalities.

The most at risk are often construction workers with little training and experience who have been hired to work on construction sites after the recent boom in construction led to a labor force shortage in the industry. 60% of construction workers who died in a fall in 2017 were working for small companies (1 to 10 workers). As a comparison small construction companies only hire a third of the workforce in the construction industry in the US. Small companies are often hired for residential construction, a sector where fatal falls more than doubled between 2010 and 2015. Hispanic workers are the most at risk of dying in a fall accident. Language barrier, little training and also the fear of immigration authorities preventing undocumented workers to report dangerous conditions to OSHA are among the factors that led Hispanic workers to perform some of the most dangerous jobs in the construction industry.

Fall related violations are the most common OSHA violations

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93,800 people were injured in an ATV accident and treated in a hospital in 2017 compared to 150,900 in 2007. 295 died in 2017 in an ATV accident compared to 832 in 2007. While still being dangerous and accounting for a significant number of injuries and deaths to adults and to children, a recent report from the CPSC indicates that ATVs have been getting safer over the years.

ATVs are not only popular with teenagers but also with children.  Among the 93,800 people who check into emergency rooms for ATV injury, 24,800 or 26% of them were younger than 16 and among these 24,800 47% of them or 11,700 were younger than 12.  In 2007 among the 150,900 people injured in ATV accidents 27% of them were younger than 16-year-old and half of them were younger than 12-year-old.

Among the various age categories the most significant decline of injuries over 10 years was recorded among the 16 to 24- year-old category.

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311 E. 50th Street scaffolding accident locationA stone fell on the head of a NYC construction worker and killed him on Monday. 51 year old Nelson Salinas from Queens was on a scaffold, repairing the facade of  an Upper East Side residential building in Manhattan when the accident occurred.   A delivery man saw him dangling in midair with his head covered in blood and called 911. The worker was rushed to the hospital but he couldn’t be saved.

Nelson Salinas who was employed by Vlad Restoration, was performing minor facade repair on a suspended scaffold system. He was located at the 7th floor level of the 14-story building locates at 311 E. 50th Street near Second Ave when a coping stone that may have been knocked loose by the equipment used to secure the scaffolding to the facade fell on his head.  According to the Department of Buildings investigators the stone was a piece of the building’s parapet.  Read more about the accident in the NY Daily News

Preventing NYC Scaffold Accidents

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accident sceneTwo more pedestrians died in traffic accidents in NYC at the end of last week. One was hit by a bus and the other one by two cars. A total of 51 pedestrians and cyclists died in traffic accidents since the beginning of the year, an increase of 30% compared to the same period of 2018.

Struck by a reckless driver

On Friday night a pedestrian was killed in Queens. The man whose identity wasn’t revealed, was crossing Sunrise Highway in the crosswalk when he was hit by 62 year old Renford Tait.  The pedestrian fell to the ground and was struck by another car. Both drivers stayed at the scene of the accident. The first driver who failed to yield to the pedestrian while making a turn from Brookville Boulevard onto Sunrise Highway was also unlicensed. He was charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care. The other driver wasn’t charged. The intersection is notoriously dangerous and known for speeding. Last year 126 crashes resulting in 58 people getting injured occurred at the intersection. Read more in Streetblog

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location of the fatal car accidentA 63 woman died in a car accident in New York City. Patricia Lancaster, a Brooklyn real estate agent was driving home from work.
As she was crossing East 56th Street and Avenue J, a speeding 19 year-old driver drove through the red light and t-boned her car. The woman was rushed to the hospital but she didn’t survive.
The teenage driver stayed at the scene of the accident and so far hasn’t been charged.
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A 19 year old driver died and two teen passengers were injured in a car accident in New York City. The accident occurred Tuesday afternoon around 4:30 pm.  19 year old Claudio Poggy was speeding in a Mercedes. Two of his friends aged 16 and 19 year-old were on board. According to witnesses, he was drag racing. As he was speeding north on Kings Highway, Brooklyn, the driver lost control of his vehicle and hit a tree at the intersection with avenue D. The impact was so brutal that the driver died at the scene of the accident. The 16 year old passenger suffered critical injury and the 19 year old one minor injuries. Investigators found that the speedometer was stuck on 130 mph on the unregistered Mercedes.

Male teen driver with teen passengers is a deadly combination

The risk of car accidents is higher among 16 to 19 year-old drivers than among any other age group. Car accidents are indeed the leading cause of death for American teens. According to statistics 6 teenagers die and hundreds of them are injured every day in car accidents in the US. The risk of dying in car accidents is two times higher for male drivers than for female drivers. When another teen is on board with a teen driver, the risk of a fatal crash doubles and increases further when more teen passengers are in the car.

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141street-and-AmsterdamA pedestrian was killed by a hit and run driver in New York on Friday. 26 year old Erica Imbasciani was fatally pinned against a parked car by a speeding hit and run driver on 141st Street and Amsterdam on Friday night. The driver was caught by the police and identified as 27 year old Tyrik Cooper.  The police alleged the driver was on drugs and he was slapped with numerous charges including driving without a license, leaving the scene of an accident and vehicular manslaughter.  The young female pedestrian suffered massive head and body trauma. She was rushed to the hospital but didn’t survive.

Community Board  opposed Vision Zero  street safety redesign

The accident occurred in an area that had been targeted by Vision Zero for a safety street redesign as early as March 2017 that had been opposed by the community board. On March 2017, the DOT presented a proposal to the Community Board 9 to eliminate one through lane in both directions and add an unprotected bike lane as well as other traffic calming measures such as left turn treatments and pedestrian islands on Amsterdam Avenue between 113rd Street and 162nd Street. The street redesign was proposed after statistics indicated that the area was particularly prone to speeding and reckless driving. Four pedestrians were killed and 28 of them were injured on this street segment between 2010 and 2014. An additional 8 people were  also injured in bicycle accidents during the same time and in the same area.

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New-York-Slip-and-Fall1Every day 223 older adults visit the emergency room after being injured in a fall in NY State, 140 are hospitalized and 2 die. Fall is the leading cause of unintentional injuries and deaths among older New Yorkers and among older people in the US as well. In the US every 19 minutes an older person dies from injuries related to a fall.

For people over 65 year old, falls often have serious consequences that can affect their global well being, their mobility, their independence and their mental health. 60% of the older New Yorkers who are hospitalized after a fall end up in a nursing home or a rehabilitation center. 11% of them suffer traumatic brain injury and 27% of them suffer from hip fractures.  In most cases falls occur at home. 60% of older adults hospitalized for a fall in New York fell in their own home.

Obviously as people get older, they loose some of their strength,  they sometimes have physical disabilities, their vision is decreasing and they take more medication which can lead to drowsiness. All these factors increase the risk of fall.

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Second-Avenue-and-BordenA cyclist was fatally struck by a car in NYC on Thursday. The victim, identified as 53 year old Robert Spencer, is the sixth person to die in a bicycle accident in New York City since the beginning of the year. Spencer was riding his bicycle on Borden Avenue on Thursday morning a little bit before 8:00 am when he was struck by a car traveling on Second Street in Queens. The driver, a 51 year old man stayed at the scene of the accident and wasn’t charged.The victim was rushed to the hospital but he couldn’t be saved.

The area where the accident occurred used to be industrial but recent developments are quickly transforming the neighborhood into a more residential area. While there is a protected bike lane on Second Street, Borden offers no protection for cyclists.  According to residents, speeding double parking and failing to yield to pedestrians is common on Borden. The shareholders of the Murano, a residential building located a block away from the accident have already written a letter to the city and to their Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer to ask for a two-way protected bike-lane on Borden as well as other traffic calming measures. Their effort was supported by Van Bramer who wrote directly to the DOT on March 4th to support the residents’request for a bike lane and other traffic calming measures. The residents of the Murano also tried to lobby their local community board for protected bike lanes along Borden Avenue, but the community board refused to consider their request. (read more in Street blog)

Bike lane delays are not about the money but about the community

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Defective Boeing 737 Max groundedThe second fatal crash of a Boeing 737  MAX last Sunday in Ethiopia has led to a worldwide decision by aviation authorities to ground all Boeing 737 MAX. The US was the last of 42 other countries to make this decision.  157 people lost their lives in Sunday’s crash and 189 died in October in Indonesia in a very similar airplane crash.

According to recent investigations both crashes occurred  in a very similar manner. A new flight control system for which pilots weren’t proprely trained may have caused both accidents according to preliminary investigations. According to an article in the New York Times, after the first accidents, the pilots union complained that Boeing didn’t inform pilots that in some cases  the new flight control system could automatically push the nose of the plane down. Experts believe this change may have played a role in both accidents.

PILOTS LOOSING THE BATTLE AGAINST THE NEW FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM