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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An 88-year-old woman died and her husband were critically injured in a fire that erupted in their apartment in Harlem.  Firefighters rushed to a fire alert at their apartment located at 70 LaSalle Street near Amsterdam Avenue in Morningside Heights, NYC. They found the couple inside and rushed them to the hospital. Unfortunately the wife didn’t survive. The husband is still in critical condition. The couple’s apartment was located at the 15th floor of the building. The cause of the fire is still being investigated. Read more in the NY Daily News

In New York City, seniors have a higher risk of dying in home fires than the rest of the population. According to statistics from the New York City Fire Department , smoking is the leading cause of fire deaths in the homes of adults who are 65-years-old and older. Heating equipment is the second cause of  fatal fires at seniors apartments followed by cooking equipment and electrical.

Leading Causes of fire Death for elderly in NYC
Elderly people who are smoking have a much higher risk to be the victim of a residential fire than those who are not smoking. The FDNY recommends elderly people who are smoking:

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A construction worker died in a scaffolding accident in New York City last Sunday. The 58-year-old hard hat was working on a construction site located at 1382 Nostrand Avenue in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC. The man was found on the ground by a paramedic team. He was transported to the hospital in critical condition. He didn’t survive his injuries and was pronounced dead shortly after his arrival at the hospital. A preliminary investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) indicates that a part of the scaffolding went vertical causing the worker to fall.

The site was immediately issued a stop work order by the NYC Department of Buildings. The building and the ex building owner have a long history of violations, neglect and non compliance. This building as well as another one next door located at 241 Linden Blvd were sold to an LLC associated with investor Steven Vegh for $3.7 million in December 2016. They previously belonged to Lewis Alleyne and other associates. Lewis Alleyne is a Brooklyn slumlord who miraculously escaped jail in 2011 after failing to fix more than 500 building violations and ignoring fines. Together this building and the other building located at 241 Linden Blvd have lost all but 3 of their rent stabilized apartments between 2007 and 2014.

The building where the construction worker fell has several open violations some of them immediately hazardous such as defective stairs and windows and exposed lead paint. Also it wasn’t exactly clear what type of work the man was doing on Sunday. Despite all the violations the owners were able to get a permit for a sidewalk shed.

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Dan Hanegby died in a NYC bicycle accicdentA bicyclists died after colliding with a bus in New York Monday morning. 36 year old Dan Hanegby, a financial executive at Credit Suisse was riding a Citi Bike on West 26th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. He was riding between the parked cars and a charter bus when the collision occurred. The man fell to the ground and was run over by the rear wheels of the bus.

The accident happened around 8:15 am on Monday. Hanegby was wearing a suit and was most probably on his way to work. The young man was transported to the hospital in critical condition. He died shortly after his arrival to the hospital.  The bus driver stayed at the scene of the accident. He wasn’t charged.

Hanegby grew up in Israel and served in the Israel Defense force. He was also an avid tennis player according to his social media profile.

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A woman died from burn injuries in her New York apartment. The 34-year-old woman was cooking in her kitchen yesterday afternoon around 3:00 pm when  her clothes caught fire.  According to the police she first ran around the apartment and then went to the bathroom where she died.  Her chest was covered with burns.  Cooking fires are unfortunately among the most common residential fires. The majority of kitchen fires occurred when the equipment is left unattended. It is not very common that person’s clothing catch fire while cooking. According to statistics from the National Fire Protection Association in less than 1% of the cooking fires, clothing items were the ones ignited first. However these types of fires are some of the deadliest and account for 18% of  deaths related to kitchen fires.

Fire statistics from NFPA

 

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A worker was fatally hit by a train in New York City on Saturday morning. The victim’s identity hasn’t been revealed as investigators are still trying to determine the causes of the accident and why the worker was on the tracks at that time. According to the Gothamist, the accident occurred near the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) Queens Village train station. The worker who was a LIRR employee was struck by a Penn Station-bound train coming from Huntigton, Long Island.

Passengers were stuck in the train at for least an hour before being evacuated and transported by bus to their destination. Many of them reported seing blood on the train windows as well as blood, guts and flesh on the tracks.

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child in carLast week a bill that would help prevent kids dying from heat stroke in hot cars was introduced in Congress. Backed by several safety, health and consumer advocates, HOT CARS Act of 2017, H.R. 2801 is a bi-partisan proposal introduced by U.S. Representatives Tim Ryan (D-13th OH), Peter King (R-2nd NY) and Jan Schakowsky (D-9th IL). The  bill was launched at the same time as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) kicked  off  The National Vehicular Heatstroke Prevention Campaign. More than 700 children died in hot cars over the last 18 years. Every summer distracted parents unintentionally leave their children unattended in their car. This situation occurs mostly when the children fall asleep in the back seat and parents temporarily forget about them.

The bill that was just introduced proposes to require car manufacturers to install an alert system to remind parents that a child may still be seated in the back. A similar bill stalled in committee last year. If this bill was passed it would still take several years for changes to be implemented.

Some manufacturers however have already started to offer to options to prevent them from leaving their child in the back seat.   The company evenflo now has car seats equipped with sensors that will remind the driver that a child is in the car seat when the car engine is turned off (see video below). Many cases of children dying in hot cars have been reported after children entered a car and locked themselves in it. The new line of General Motors Acadia SUV is equipped with an alert that will go on if a back door is open before the vehicle is started.

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NYC construction workersOver the last few years, the number of construction workers dying or suffering severe injuries on the job increased dramatically in New York  City. According to the most recent statistics from the New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health, 25 hard hats lost their life on NYC construction sites in 2015 compared to 17 in 2011. The majority of the fatal construction accidents in the city occurred on non unionized construction sites. Undocumented immigrant workers are often the most at risk of suffering catastrophic injuries or of dying in construction accidents.  One of the fundamental reasons why such a significant number of workers are dying on non unionized sites is the lack of training. Construction workers on non unionized sites are often not trained as well as unionized workers or not trained at all in some cases.

Mayor Bill de Blasio also believes that many construction accidents could be avoided if construction workers were better trained.  According to Politico, the mayor is working on a proposal to increase training for all construction workers in New York City. In the new proposal, all workers will be required to attend minimum training  of 54 to 71 hours. Supervisors will have to train an extra 30 hours on the top of the minimum requirements. Workers who are doing more dangerous tasks such as those working in confined space or workers doing work related to rigging safety, scaffolding, excavation, demolition and perimeter protection will have to attend additional training specific to their activity.

The new training rules are expected to be introduced to the City Council  in the next few weeks.

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Mattern-hudson-yards-3A construction worker died in New York on Monday. The accident happened at  Hudson Yards, a gigantic construction site in Manhattan. It is not the first time that a construction worker fell to his death on this site. Another deadly fall occurred at Hudson Yards in August 2015.

Around 6:40 pm on Monday evening, 62-year-old Roger Vail of Montgomery was doing a survey on the 16th floor of  the 400 W. 33rd St building when a wooden platform he was standing on gave way.  The man fell 10 stories and landed on the 6th floor. He died at the scene of the accident. Vail was hired by the company 50 States engineering which itself had been hired by Tishman Construction. Sadly, he was working on the installation of a fall prevention system.

Fortunately, in New York a construction worker is mot limited to Workers compensation. Pursuant To Section 240(1) of The New York State Labor law (the Scaffold Law) the next of kin of the worker are entitled to bring what is known as a Third Party action against Tishman and the owner of the construction site. At least they will be able to receive  compensation for this tragedy.

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seatbelts prevent children from dying in car accidentsToo many children are dying in car accidents in the US  because they are not adequately restrained. Improper restraint is the number one cause of children fatalities in car accidents in the US. A recent study published in The Journal of Pediatrics found that if the percentage of children unrestrained or inappropriately restrained while riding in  a car in the US  decreased from the actual estimated figure of 20% to 10%, 232 children deaths would be averted every year. The study by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas and the Department of Surgery, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX,  looks at car accident data by States from 2010 to 2014.

Important variations were found from state to state. Globally 52% of the children who died in a car accident in the US camme from the South, 21% from the West, 19% from the Midwest and 7.4%  from the Northeast. While looking at factors that may increase the risk of children deaths in car accidents, the researchers found that in New Hampshire only 2% of children who died in a car accident were improperly restrained while in Mississipi 38% of the children who died in a car crash were improrely restrained.

The type of roads as well as the absence of legislation in regards to red light cameras are also important factors in children mortality in car crashes. Rural roads are the type of roads where children have the highest risk of being killed in a car accidents. Several factors such as poorer road quality, limited lighting or visibility, lesser enforcement of speed or long distances to trauma centers may explain why more children are dying on the road in rural areas. Researchers also found an increased risk of pediatric mortality in car accidents in States that didn’t have legislation for red light cameras.

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ABScan prevent fatal motorcycle accidentsApproximately one-third of all fatal motorcycle accidents in the US could be avoided if motorcycles were equipped with mandatory ABS according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. ABS stands for anti-lock brake systems. This technology which is used on most cars prevents the wheels from blocking when a driver brakes abruptly and vigorously. It is also helps controlling the vehicle while braking for emergency conditions or on slippery roads.

The NYPD and the California Highway Patrol bikes are all equipped with this system which has proven to be very effective to decrease motorcyclist deaths and injuries. ABS is now mandatory on all new bikes sold in Europe and soon they will be mandatory on all new bikes sold in Japan, India and Brazil.

In the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulators came very close to making ABS on motorcycle mandatory in 2009. ABS was put on the NHTSA regulatory agenda in July 2009 with the agency citing ” potentially large benefits for braking improvements”. The regulators then suddenly changed their mind and decided “there wasn’t enough proof that the lives saved and the decrease of injured motorcyclists would outweight the additional cost to manufacturers”. Now with the anti-regulatory Trump government, motorcyclists will continue to die on American roads before regulators make the right decision.

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