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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safety culture constructionConstruction workers have a high risk of getting injured or even dying in an accident while at work. Construction accidents often happen when negligent contractors try to save time or money and put profit ahead of their own workers safety. A new study looking at safety practices among contractors shows that increased safety on construction sites indeed increases Return on Investment (ROI) and attracts and retains more talented hard hats. The recently released study “Building a Safety Culture SmartMarket Report” was produced by the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) and United Rental, a construction equipment rental company.

For the study, Dodge Data & Analytics analyzed 254 American contractors using 33 indicators of safety culture in the construction industry. They found that approximately one third of the contractors were promoting a high safety culture standard in their day to day business and were investing heavily in safety management practices. Another third were somewhat promoting safety culture in their company. The last third were contractors who didn’t have much interest about safety culture and didn’t invest much in it.

The study shows that contractors who invested the most in workers safety reported less injuries, improved their projects quality, increased their projects ROI, had a lower staff turnover and were able to attract staff more easily than contractors who didn’t invest in workers safety.

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bicycle accident locationA bicyclist was fatally struck by a car in NYC on Friday Morning. The bicycle accident happened at the intersection of Classon Avenue and Lexington Avenue in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, New York. The driver was making a left turn from Classon Avenue onto Lexington Avenue when she hit the 34 year old female bicyclist. According to the NYPD the bicyclist was riding southbound against the traffic. According to StreetBlog, the driver, a 41 year old woman, got out of her car and fainted in the street after she saw the victim. The bicyclist suffered severe head and body trauma and was transported to the hospital where she later died from her injuries.

The accident happened at the entrance of a 20 mph neighborhood slow zone. Classon Avenue has a history of accidents and in 2012 the avenue was completely redesigned to become a one-lane road with broader parking spaces on each side. No bike lane was included in the design.

Read more in Streetblog

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carlos monkayoLast year Carlos Moncayo died in a construction accident in New York. Moncaya was working on a construction site located at 9-19 Ninth Ave in the meatpacking district in Manhattan where the old Pastis restaurant was turned into a Restoration Hardware Store. The 22 year old construction worker was buried in a pit after unstable soil gave way. The accident was fully preventable. An hour before it happened an inspector warned the two construction site supervisors, Alfonso Prestia and Wilmer Cuerva that the 13 foot deep pit wasn’t proprely re-enforced and that nobody should get in the trench. Both men ignored the warning. An hour later the inspector saw 4 men in the pit and rushed again to the two supervisors to urge them to halt work. Two hours later the supervisors finally decided to call the crew out of the pit but it was too late. The trench collapsed and Moncaya died. The two supervisors were charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment. According to recent court papers, the two supervisors are now blaming each other for the fatal construction accident. Prestia says that he wanted to fire the foremen who created the unsafe conditions but that Cuevas always opposed it. Read more in the NY Daily News 

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confidentialMost product liability lawsuits against manufacturers never go to trial. For obvious reasons, companies don’t want regulators or the public to know that some of their products have injured or killed someone. Therefore they will often reach a confidential settlement agreement with the injured plaintiff or Estate.  In this secret pact the plaintiff usually agrees to keep the lawsuit secret as part of the settlement agreement. Such settlements may be perceived as a win win situation for both parties as the plaintiff is being compensated for his loss and avoiding a costly trial while the manufacturers can deal with the defective product internally, avoiding expensive recalls and other profit killing consequences.  However concealing important information about dangerous products may put the public at risk of an accident with more people being injured or killed. Some manufacturers simply put profit ahead of safety and find it cheaper just to pay for a lawsuit rather than correct a defective product. This type of reasoning is especially true with the automobile industry and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently published a notice entitled “Recommended Best Practices for Protective Orders and Settlement Agreements in Civil Litigation” to try to fight this very disturbing problem. In a recent article in Fair Warning, Ben Kelley a board member of the Center for Auto Safety, and author of  “Death By Rental Car: How the Houck Case Changed The Law,”  comments on the vicious consequences of such contracts. However many manufactures refuse to settle absent such an agreement. An attorneys first obligation is to the client. In very strong liability cases it is often possible to successfully refuse to include a confidentiality clause. If the defendant refuses to settle and the offer is a good one the plaintiff’s attorney should , obviously, only proceed to trial with the client’s consent. In our experience in such cases the manufacturer will often back down.

Read the complete article here

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skye brunettiA young mother and her dog were fatally struck by an out of control car in Long Island, NY. 25 year old Skye Brunetti had just dropped her 4 year old boy at school and was walking back home with her dog when a car jumped the curb and fatally hit both of them.

The car driver, 50 year old Barbara Cottone was transported to the hospital in critical condition. The accident happened on Union Boulevrad in East Islip.  People living in the neighborhood told the NY Daily News that the area was notoriously dangerous and that many accidents previously happened at the same location.

If you want to help the family pay for her funeral expenses you can go to GoFundme

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A female pedestrian was critically injured after being hit by a school bus in New York City. The bus accident happened Monday morning around 9:20 am in Queens. The 32 year old woman was crossing Grand Ave near 74th street when she was struck by a yellow school bus. No children were on board. The woman suffered head trauma and a broken shoulder. She was transported to the hospital where she was listed in critical condition.  There is no cross walk at the intersection of 74th Street and Grand Ave, making it a dangerous intersection for pedestrians.

pedestrian accident location

picture source: Google Map

 

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Will SmithA surveillance video shows that Will Smith initially hit the car of  the man who then murdered him in an act of road rage. The surveillance shows Smith’s car bumping into a Hummer. While the hummer’s driver, identified as Cardell Hayes, pulled to the right side of the road, Smith just drove around it and continued on his way. Hayes became enraged that Smith didn’t stop and started to pursue Smith with his Hummer.  Hayes then caught up with Smith’s car and rear ended him, sending Smith’s car crashing into a third vehicle. As Smith stepped out of his vehicle words were exchanged before gunfire erupted. The former Saints player died of multiple gunshots, allegedly fired by Hayes. His wife only suffered personal injury as she was struck twice in the leg. Another senseless act which illustrates the consequences of carrying a gun by people who are not mentally stable.

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renal mass

renal mass in a 3 year olds child

Failure to timely diagnose Denys-Drash syndrome can be medical malpractice that can lead to renal failure and ultimately death. Denys-Drash syndrom is a very rare congenital disorder that affects young children. There are only 150 known cases in the world therefore very little information is available for doctors to diagnose and treat this disorder.

What is known so far is that  90% of the children with this disorder develop a rare pediatric kidney cancer known as Wilms tumor. Undescended testes and severe proximal hypospadias are also associated with this disorder. The Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (JAAPA) recently released an article describing the case of a 3 year old patient affected by this syndrome. The authors Shawn C. Smith,  Barry Chang and Laura Beth Fleming are all from the Cardon Children Medical Center in Mesa, AZ where the patient was admitted.  The article describe how the authors of the article diagnosed the disorder and which treatments were used to treat the patient. The complete article can be found here 

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Jeffrey BloomOur partner, New York Medical Malpractice Lawyer Jeffrey Bloom was quoted in an article about medical malpractice insurance in NY which appeared on Politico New York/Capital New York.com. The article focused on the influx into the New York medical malpractice insurance market of out of state insurers known as risk retention groups. While New York’s carriers are more expensive, they are safer than out of state insurers because they pay into a guaranty fund that acts as a safety net.  If one of them is in trouble and goes belly up, the costs are passed along to the other insurers of the State. Out of state companies also known as Risk Retention Groups (RRGs) do not pay into this guaranty fund. This is one of the reasons why they can offer cheaper rates to physicians than New York insurers.  RRGs are regulated by their home state and not by New York Sate. If a RRG goes under,  in some cases physicians maybe exposed and personally liable for malpractice claims. Because New York can’t regulate these funds it weakens the state’s safety net. Additionally the recent turmoil of Physicians’ Reciprocal Insurers, or PRI, the second largest carrier in the state, is further undermining the market.  Jeff pointed out that the New York  medical malpractice market is not only quite stable but obviously viewed as a potentially  quite profitable market by medical malpractice insurers nationwide.
In addition to trying and managing medical malpractice cases, Jeffrey Bloom is the Co-chair of the Medical Malpractice Committee of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association as well as the Co-Chair of LAWPAC New York, the Trial Lawyers political action committee. In these roles, he works to protect the rights of victims of medical malpractice in Albany with the Legislature and State government.
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Daniel+Pollack-1To avoid children being injured, re-traumatized and abused again it is important that potential adoptive and foster parents be proprely vetted. A proper vetting doesn’t only mean criminal background check identity verification, employment history, character, and residency but also going through the life history of each parent and make sure the information they provided is accurate and complete. In a recent article, Daniel Pollack, a professor at Yeshiva University’s School of Social Work in New York City explains what prospective adoptive or foster parents should expect during the vetting process. The complete article can be downloaded here

In another short article, Daniel Pollack looks at informal parenting. For various reasons some children are being raised by caregivers who are not the parents. Caregivers can be relatives or friends of the parents. Most of the time no lawyers or legal documents are signed between the parents and the caregivers. It is based on a trust relationship. However in some specific cases informal parenting arrangements may need approval from the State. The article discusses these specific cases and can be downloaded here.

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