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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A construction worker suffered critical personal injury after being hit by a block of concrete that fell on his head. The accident happened at a building demolition site located at 317 Madison Ave between 42nd and 43rd street in Midtown Manhattan. The worker was on the 20th floor of the building when he was hit by falling debris.  The worker lost consciousness during the accident. He was transported to the hospital where he was listed in critical condition. It is not the first time that an accident happened on this specific demolition site. Last July two construction workers were injured in a ceiling collapse.

Read more in the NY Daily News

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A construction worker fell to his death in New York last Thursday. The 62 year old man was working on a construction site located on East 107th Street near Lexington in East Harlem New York. He was standing on a fire escape at the back of the building when the accident happened. Another worker who was standing on a nearby scaffold was passing some equipment to him when he lost his balance and fell six stories. The man wasn’t wearing any safety equipment. He died at the scene of the accident.   Falls are the number one cause of death in Construction in the US. Almost 300 construction workers are dying every year after falling on the job.

Read more in the NY Daily News

 

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A pedestrian died after being hit by a school bus Friday evening in Brooklyn, NYC.  The bus accident happened on Atlantic Avenue near Schenectady Avenue in Crown Heights. The bus driver was driving East on Atlantic Ave when he swerved to avoid another car. He jumped the curb and fatally hit a 50 year old woman. During the accident the bus also hit two light poles, a gas station and multiple parked cars. The police are investigating the cause of the accident.

Read more in the NY Daily News

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A recent accident at the New York Nuclear power plant Indian Point has nearby residents worried about their health and the safety of their water.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered an investigation after a tritium-tainted water leak from the plant resulted in an increase of 65,000% of radioactivity in the ground. The New York nuclear plant is located in Buchanan, Westchester, 45 miles away from Manhattan in a densely populated area.  According to Entergy, the plant owner, the radiation hasn’t migrated off-site and doesn’t pose a safety threat.  However Governor Cuomo said in a statement that this last incident was unacceptable and that “This failure continues to demonstrate that Indian Point cannot continue to operate in a manner that is not protective of public health and the environment.”

Read more in the New York Times

Indian_Point

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crane collapse picA man died and four other people were injured in a crane collapse in New York around 8:30 this morning. The accident took place on Worth Street near Church Street. The accident occurred when a  massive construction  crane whose boom extended 565 feet high collapsed on a row of park cars.  The accident was caught on video by Glenn Zito, a construction worker  who was on the upper floors in a building across the street. Glenn and two of his colleagues had just been ordered to stop to work on the upper floors because the wind was too strong. He was on his way down when he capture the below video.

According to FDNY, 38 year old David Wichs had just exited from his car when the crane crashed on him and killed him. Mr. Wichs was an outstanding young man who immigrated from Czechoslovakia as a teenager, graduated from Harvard and worked in the financial industry. He lived with his wife in Manhattan on the upper west side. He was said by friends to be an extremely decent man.   Still in the car was 73 year old Thomas O’Brien who suffered head laceration but survived.  Another victim, 45 year old Dawn Kojima suffered leg injury and another person suffered minor injury after being hit by debris.

This morning the wind was blowing at more than 20 mph and it was snowing. The crew had suspended work and a decision was made to lower the crane to a more secure level. The accident happened as construction workers were lowering the crane’s boom in order to move it into a safe and secure position .

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As medical technologies are getting increasingly sophisticated so do the risks for hospital negligence and medical malpractice. The ECRI Institute recently released its 2016_Top_10_Hospital_C-Suite_Watch_List and going through this list almost feels like reading a sci-fi novel. Link to 30 page detailed report on blog.  Here is an overlook of the top 10 new medical technologies that hospitals should put on their watch list:

  1. Mobile Stroke Units are high tech ambulances specially outfitted with equipment allowing patients to be diagnosed and if necessary treated directly at their home by a specifically trained staff.  The units are also equipped with telemedecine technology that allows the mobile staff to communicate directly with remote clinical personnel. Strokes are a leading cause of death and traumatic brain injury. Timing is crucial and a reduction of time between the diagnosis and the treatment can save lives and reduce severe injuries.
  2. Medical Device Cybersecurity is a major risk to patients that hospitals have been so far unable to fully control. Medical devices such as a pace-maker or infusion pump are connected through a wire or wifi  to the Electronic Health Record of a patient. These devices can often be too easily hacked. Thieves can then use the personal data for identity theft or to invade the home of the patient when he or she is in the hospital.  In other cases it may even be a murder weapon. Dick Cheney’s doctor had the wifi disabled on his pace-maker due to fear he may be hacked to be assassinated.
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Falls are the number one cause of fatal construction accidents. Every year in America, more than 10,000 hard hats suffer serious personal injury  and more than 200 died because they fell while working on a construction site.  In 2012 a coalition of government, labor and management representatives launched a yearly campaign to raise awareness about this issue. This year, the campaign which consists in a National Stand Down will take place from May 2nd to May 6th.  On that day, OSHA is asking employers that hire construction workers to take the time to stand down and conduct a fall prevention workshop or other activity related to fall prevention with their employees. OSHA is providing interested employers with toolboxes to help them discuss specific fall prevention subjects such as ladder safety, scaffold safety or fall protection equipment.

The Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) recently released a detailed report about the Safety Stand Downs conducted in 2014 and 2015. The reports shows that the campaign reached around 2 million workers over the last two years. Stand-downs were mostly organized by commercial construction companies but also by highway, governmental and residential companies. Most common activities conducted on stand-down last year included training, equipment inspection and audit as well as toolbox talks. The year before meetings and handing out materials to employees as well as training were the most common activities.

Even though the participation was lower last year, the organizers are hopping to see greater participation this year and to reach out to more construction workers. On February 16th the CPWR will organize a webinar related to this campaign . Leaders from CPWR, NIOSH and OSHA will be discussing last year’s Stand-Down and highlighting the plans for 2016. People interested in attending this webinar can register here.

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Between 2005 and 2015 claims related to people injured in construction accidents related to falling bricks or other debris in New York City have been decreasing by more than half. This decline is mostly related to the city creating stricter and stricter laws to protect New Yorkers from construction accidents.  Among the laws enacted by the city, one them requires the erection of sidewalk sheds to protect pedestrians from falling debris.  According to a recent article in Crains, there are now 9000 sheds all over the city compared to 3,500 in 2003. Some of these sheds can remain for years as some building owners find it cheaper to pay  a fine and keep the shed rather than paying to renovate the facade of their buildings. Some New Yorkers are complaining that the sheds not only cut off sunlight, create a safety hazard and hurt businesses but also accumulate garbage and serve as a shelter for loiterers. The need for sidewalk sheds or overhead protection, as they are also known at active construction sites in New York is critical to the safety of both workers and the public. The comment in the article that, “And developers may not be inclined to spend on nicer sheds because of the growing cost of settling lawsuits brought under New York state Labor Law 240/241, better known as the scaffold law. The statute holds building owners and contractors 100% liable for any gravity-related accident in which they are at least partially at fault,” misses the point. If it were not for these statutes there would be thousands of serious injuries and fatalities each year in NYC, since to cut costs many construction companies mostly on non-union jobs would cut costs and not be inclined to have any sheds. which was the case when the Labor Law was not strictly enforced. With regard to building owners who install sheds rather than performing needed facade renovation work, the City must start to actively track the issuance of shed permits. An owner should not be issued a permit and fail to commence construction within 90 days of issuance. Escalating fines should be levied against the owner for failing to commence construction. Further, the City must start to ease the antiquated process of filing and approving construction permits. Although it is a difficult situation one must remember that Safety comes first.

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A pedestrian died and another one suffered personal injury after they were struck by a drunk driver in Washington Heights, New York City, early Saturday. The two pedestrians, a man and a woman in their 40ies  were walking on West 181st Street near Amsterdam Avenue when a car crashed into them. The driver, identified as 34 year old Jonathan Segura, was drunk. He had just exited the George Washington Bridge when he lost control of his vehicle and slammed into the pedestrians. He sped off in the night but returned later to the police station to surrender. He was charged with drunk driving, leaving the scene of an accident, vehicular manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

Read more in the NY Daily News

 

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A construction worker suffered critical injury in a ladder accident in New York.  The accident happened on a construction site located on W. 17th Street near Sixth Ave in the Flatiron district in Manhattan. The hard hat was standing on a ladder, installing sheet rock on a ceiling frame when the accident happened. The worker who was not wearing a harness fell 50 feet down an elevator shaft and was impaled on steel rebar. The pieces of rebar pierced his abdomen, back, thigh, buttock and groin. Flagrant construction site safety violations are to blame for the accident. According to a primary investigation by the New York City Department of Buildings, the hard hat was not wearing a mandatory security harness. Adding to that, the elevator shaft wasn’t covered and there were no orange safety caps on the top of the rebar. This is the reason it is so important to fight against any changes in Section 240(1) of the New York State Labor Law which hold owners, general contractors and others liable for injures resulting from a lack of safety devices in height related accidents.

The construction site has a history of unsafe working conditions. The owner and developer, 34 17th Street Project LLC, was fined last August for “failure to maintain the building in a code complaint manner” and  unsafe or improper use of elevator or hoisting equipment at the same location. The violation indicated that the hoistway doors wer not secured “causing an immediate hazard that could cause someone to fall down the shaftway”.  In November nothing had changed and 34 17th Street Project LLC was fined for “failing to certify correction of an immediately hazardous violation”.

New Empire Builder Corp, the general contractor who is managing the site also has a history of violations. In 2014 OSHA inspectors responded to a complaint at 286 Spring Street, New York, NY. They found hard hats working in extremely unsafe conditions.  Some workers were standings on scaffolding resting on bricks. A worker was standing 10 feet above ground on a scaffold with no fall safety equipment while raising material on a pulley. Furthermore other workers were at risk of being electrocuted while using an ungrounded electric cement mixer. The contractor was fined  $19,600.

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