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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NYC fatal bicycle accidentA bicyclist was struck and killed by a reckless driver in New York City yesterday night. The 26 year old driver of a Honda Sedan was caught on a surveillance camera recklessly speeding on Brooklyn streets moments before the accident. Witnesses told CBS news that they saw the car speeding on Avenue P and blowing two red lights. At the second light the reckless driver collided with a car that was crossing the intersection with the green light. The impact was so strong that the two cars careened away into a nearby bicyclist who got pinned under one of them. Witnesses ran to the scene of the accident and lifted the car to liberate the bicyclist but he couldn’t be saved and died from his injuries. Firefighters had to cut one of the cars in half to free the driver. Both car drivers only suffered minor injuries. The reckless driver is now in police custody and he is facing criminal charges.

Picture source: courtesy of New York Rescue Response Team on Twitter

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medical-malpracticeIf you learn that your doctor was sued for medical malpractice, should you immediately change doctors? A recent article in Consumer Reports  explains how patients can find information about their doctor and what they should do about it.

Not every doctor who was sued for medical malpractice is a bad doctor.  Consumer Reports talked to Michelle M. Mello, a Professor of Law and of Health Research and Policy  at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Mello is an expert on the medical malpractice system, medical error and patient safety. She told Consumer Reports that very often medical malpractice lawsuits “are not the best indicator of substandard care” for several reasons.  For example:

  • The lawsuit may settle before a trial without the doctor admitting his error
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Construction_worker_harnessFalls are the leading cause of death in construction accidents in New York and in the U.S. Some of them are caused by inadequate safety measures while others occur even though all OSHA safety measures were followed by the construction workers.

Steelworkers for example are allowed to to work up to a height of 25 feet without the use of a safety harness. OSHA rules also permit construction workers climbing a scaffold to unhook their attachment and hook it again to a higher tie-off point as they ascend.

Some contractors in New York believe OSHA rules are not strict enough and require all their workers to use a harness when they work 6 feet and higher above the ground. Some NY construction companies also require that workers climbing scaffolds use two harnesses so they are constantly hooked onto something and protected. Gilbane Building is among the contractors in New York that require all workers to follow these two rules.

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A pedestrian died in NYC after being struck by a car that drove over him and didn’t stop. Sunday morning around 2:30 am, 43 year old Doodnach Lalcahn started to cross the intersection of 115th Ave and 131st Street in Ozone Park Queens, NYC, when he fell on the ground. A video surveillance shows a car driving over him, slowing down and then continuing on its way. Other vehicles drove by without stopping . Finally a good Samaritan parked his car in front of the victim to prevent other cars from hitting him. Unfortunately it was too late. The man who suffered severe head trauma died at the scene of the accident.

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220px-Surgeons_at_Work251,000 people died from medical error in the US in 2013. This was the third highest cause of death that year  in the US after cancer (585,000) and heart disease (611,000) according to estimates calculated by Martin A Makary, professor and Michael Daniel, research fellow at the Department of Surgery of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21287, USA.

In a recent article published in the British Medical Journal, Martin Makary and Michael Daniel explain the difficulty of obtaining the exact numbers of people dying from medical malpractice in the US and how they “analyzed the scientific literature on medical error to identify its contribution to US deaths in relation to causes listed by the CDC“.

Every year the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  compiles data from death certificates to prepare statistics related to causes of death in the U.S. On death certificates the cause of the death is coded according to an International Classification of Disease (ICD). The CDC is using the ICD codes to prepare its yearly statistics but these codes do not capture human or system errors.  Deaths certificates from patients dying in hospitals will list a medical condition but not a medical error.

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DOT vehicleAmong its many responsibilities The NYC Department of Transportation is in charge of implementing Vision Zero a campaign to reduce fatal traffic accidents in New York City. Therefore it would be expected that DOT employees driving around the city lead by example and drive carefully but some of them seem to believe the rules don’t apply to them.

A PIX11 investigation documented by shocking video shows that some DOT employees are complete reckless drivers. One of them was caught using a laptop while driving, another one was caught running a red light and a DOT car was repeatedly seen driving at high speed in a school zone.

PIX11 also found that since the Zero Vision Initiative started in 2014, DOT employees received more than 500 summonses for  driving recklessly. Further since the start of Vision Zero in 2014, city vehicles have received 11,367 summonses.

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A motorist was severely injured by a bicyclist who hit him in the head with his bike lock in a road rage incident in Brooklyn NYC.  Around 7:30 pm on Monday night, a 59 year old man had just left a Greenpoint gas station and was driving his car on McGuinness Boulevard between Meeker Avenue and Bayard Street when he got into a conflict with a bike rider. The bicyclist accused him of almost hitting him. He then took his bike lock and started to smash it on the car, He then opened the car’s door, pulled out the driver and repeatedly hit the man on the head.  Then he fled. The police are still looking for him. The driver was transported to the hospital and treated for head injuries and cuts to his hands. Incidents of road rage are reaching epidemic proportions. It is a sign of increasing stress especially in N.Y.C. The perpetrators should be subject to Felony charges and sentenced to jail time.

Read more in the NY Daily News

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To reduce pedestrian accidents at dangerous New York intersections, City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) wants to re-introduce an old crosswalk system named the Barnes Dance. The Barnes Dance is a system from the 60ies where all cars have the red light at the same time at an intersection so all pedestrians can cross safely without mixing with traffic. This type of crosswalk system was named after traffic engineer Henry Barnes. The bill which will be introduced tomorrow is asking the NYC DOT to look at the feasibility of a Barnes Dance system at the 25 most dangerous intersections of the city. Read more in the NY Daily News

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Three people died in a plane accident in Long Island, NY. The passengers, two men and a woman had taken off from Myrtle Beach, SC and planned to land in Plainville Connecticut later on during the day. The airplane made a distress call to air traffic control and reported an instrument problem. The plane then disappeared from radar. It crashed on a residential road in Syosset, Long Island, NY. Debris fell from the skies into a school backyard and in residential properties. Witnesses said it was terrifying. Very foggy weather conditions may also have been a factor in the fatal accident. Investigators are still working on finding the exact causes of the crash.

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A window washer died on Monday in New York. The 57 year old worker was cleaning the windows of a building in the Upper East Side located on East 81st Street between Lexington and Park Ave. He fell off a third-story ledge and died. In New York Window Washers are protected under both Section 240 and Section 202 of the New York State Labor Law. For a discussion of Section 240 see our New York Construction Accident page. Section 202 known as The Window Washers Law provides that ” The owner, lessee, agent and manager of every public building and every contractor involved shall provide such safe means for the cleaning of the windows and of exterior surfaces of such building as may be required and approved by the board of standards and appeals.” As a practical matter most window washing accidents are covered by section 240 which is a self executing statute which does not require violation of a provision of The Industrial Code and to which comparative negligence does not apply.