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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Derrick Walters died in a  motorcycle accident as he was being pursued by two police officers last  weekend in Brooklyn, NYC. (See previous  blog). The police are investigating if the two Brooklyn cops violated NYPD policy on vehicle pursuits. In the mean time the two officers were stripped of their shields and guns. Read more in the New York Daily News

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Since the de Blasio administration  launched The Vision Zero program to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities in New York, jaywalking tickets have been increasing significantly. By the end of last year, according to NYPD statistics, jaywalking summonses had nearly quadrupled the average for the previous six year.  In a long article, the Village Voice looks at the history of  Jaywalking in the city since 1920 and question the  manner it is being enforced by the NYPD these days.  Read the complete article here 

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One day before he died in a construction accident, 19 year old Fernando Vanegas told his mom that he was worried about the safety of the construction site after a retaining wall designed to hold back the soil around the base of a building where he was working had almost fallen. The wall fell the day after killing Fernando and badly injuring two other construction workers. The construction site locatedat 656 Myrtle Avenue, near Franklin Avenue, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn had been previously vacated because of structural problems but in recent months the contractor received a permit for remediation work and the site was reopened. Read more in the New York Times

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656 Myrtle Ave before the collapse of the wall

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A 21 year old woman died and  her 22 year old friend was  seriously injured in a bicycle accident in New York City.  The two women were riding their bicycles on Hylan Blvd. in Great Kills yesterday afternoon around 4:30 pm when they were struck by a boat trailer that had slipped off  the truck that was towing it. The two women were transported to the hospital.  One of them died, the other one is expected to survive.  The driver stayed at the scene of the accident. Allegedly the trailer hinge had been modified. The driver hasn’t been charged.  Read more in the New York Daily News 

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In 2001, Pam Tusiani died as a result of Medical Malpractice in New York  after she fatally  reacted to Parnate, an antidepressant she had been prescribed by a treatment center that was providing medical care without a license. The young woman was suffering from  borderline personality disorder, a disease often misdiagnosed.

Using the settlement from their malpractice suit, Pam’s parents started the Borderline Personality Disorder Resource Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital in 2003. Last July the Tusianis hosted some of New York’s top neuroscientists and psychiatrists at a day-long event to review the latest science on BPD and devise new avenues for research.

Read more in The Washington Post 

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A 27 year old woman was killed in  a bicycle accident  on the City Island bridge in the Bronx, NYC. The police are looking for the driver of a 2015 White Hyundai who struck 27 year old Gabriella Aguilar and sped away, leaving her to die on the road. See video below

 

 

 

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A 29 year old man and a 27 year old woman died in two  separate motorcycle crashes early Saturday night in  New York City. The first motorcycle accident occurred in Brooklyn  around 1:15 AM. The driver of the motorcycle tried to  pass a van by squeezing between the parked cars and the van on Parkside Avenue near Park Circle.  He lost control of his motorcycle and  died in the hospital a few hours after the crash.

The second accident happened 40 minutes later in the Bronx. A 27 year old woman who was riding as a passenger on a bike driven by a 30 year old man was ejected from it after the driver lost control of the vehicle on Commerce Avenue near Newbold Avenue.  The woman died and the driver suffered a broken jaw. Having ridden motorcycles for over 50 years the lack of foresight never ceases to amaze me. We all know riding bikes carries a multitude of risks from other drivers. Why compound it by riding foolishly.

Read more in the New York Daily News

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Another construction worker died in New York yesterday. 30 year old Juan Cerezo was doing facade work on a scaffold on the 14th floor when he fell and landed on the sidewalk shed. The fatal accident happened on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 363 East 76th Street around 4:00 pm yesterday. It is not clear so far if the worker was wearing a safety harness at the time of the accident. Four complaints have been filed against the building’s renovation this year, two for the second-floor scaffolding breaking or not being up to code, according to city records. The man was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead (read more in DNA).

The boom in construction in New York City has led to a significant increase of workers and non workers being injured or being killed on or nearby construction sites.  A few days ago a 30 year old hard hat died after he fell down an elevator shaft on a construction site in Midtown on the West side of Manhattan.  (see previous blog).

So far this year 12 people died in construction accidents including non construction workers such as pedestrians struck by debris or tenants killed in gas explosions.

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Construction_AccidentAmong all industry sectors in the U.S.,  construction has the highest number of fatal injuries with  more than 800 construction workers dying every year.  A  lot of  research has been done and written on construction safety and health but the challenge is to ensure that  promising research findings become safer practices on construction sites.

Last month, the  American  Journal of Industrial Medicine devoted a special issue on Research to Practice (r2p)  at The Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR)  covering the following subjects:

  •  Using social marketing to stop construction falls
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yield to pedestriansVision Zero’s “Right of Way” law makes it a misdemeanor for drivers who killed or injured a pedestrian because they failed to yield. However after 6 bus drivers were arrested last year, TWU, the bus drivers’ union started a heavy campaign to protect bus drivers from the law. Yesterday a federal lawsuit brought by TWU against Mayor de Blasio in April resulted in a settlement that drivers will not be strictly liable for seriously injuring or killing pedestrians in a crosswalk. Investigators will have to determine that a driver failed to “exercise due care,” which will now be defined as “care which is exercised by reasonably prudent drivers.”  Read more in the NY Daily News