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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Presbyterian The New York Presbyterian Hospital / Weill Cornell Medical Center recently settled a 2.2 million lawsuit with the Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for allowing a TV crew to film two patients without their consent (see press release).

In 2011 Mark Chanko was hit by a garbage truck and rushed to the New York Presbyterian Emergency Room. He was critically injured and doctors were unable to save his life. A crew of “NY Med”, a reality show featuring DR Oz, was shooting in the Emergency Room when Mark Chanko arrived. The crew filmed nurses and doctors taking care of Mark Chanko as he was dying. The crew recorded footage of Chanko asking about his wife and also doctors comments about the dying patient. When the show was aired a year later on ABC the face of the patient was blurred and his voice was muffled.  Mark Chanko’s wife, Anita saw the show and recognized her husband despite the blur on his face and the changes in his voice. Anita Chanko was in  shock. She heard her husband ask the doctors “Does my wife know I’m here?’ and then she saw him dying before her eyes.

Intimate moments like this one as well as any disclosure about a patient’s health are supposed to be shared only with the patient and designated family members under a federal patient privacy law known as HIPPA which stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Under this law, media are not authorized access to patients health information without the patients consent. Anita or any other members of her family were never asked by the hospital or the TV crew if it was OK to film her husband (see previous article in the New York Times). Her son, Kenneth Chanko also filed a lawsuit against the hospital and ABC.

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In New York  City’s heavy traffic, bicyclists who are commuting to work are facing the risk of being injured or dying in a bicycle accident. As part of the Vision Zero initiative, Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to make New York City a friendly city for bike commuters. Protected bike lanes have proven to be one of the best ways to protect bicyclist from injury or death by negligent car drivers. Unlike regular bike lanes, that are often blocked by cars, protected bike lanes physically separate car traffic and bicycles with concrete, trees or parking lanes.

In 2016 the DOT will implement 15 miles of these types of bike lanes in the City. Last year 12 miles were added. Among this year’s projects, the DOT has work planned and in progress in the following areas of the city’s five boroughs:

  • In the Bronx: using excess roadway space on the accident prone area of Bruckner Boulevard between Hunts Point and Longwood Ave to create a protected bike lane (read more on Streetblog and download DOT PDF here )Protected bike lane Bruckner Blvd
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Bicycle accidents injuries deaths NYC February 2016Bicycle accidents in New York have been on the rise in recent years and so have the number of people injured or killed in these accidents. Commuting by bike has become quite popular among New Yorkers but it remains quite dangerous mostly because car drivers are driving negligently.

Despite new Vision Zero safety measures such as street re-design and the addition of miles of protected bike lanes the biggest danger bicyclists are facing in the city are negligent car drivers. To raise awareness about the danger that commuters are  facing while using their bicycle to go to work, Jake Dobkin from the Gothamist has asked several colleagues who use their bikes for their daily commute to film their ride.

Jack Dobkin commutes daily between Park Slop and Dumbo in Brooklyn and he is using his bicycle to go to work as well. In Episode One of this series, Jack shows his own daily bicycle ride to the office. Jack says that he’d rather ride one more mile on each commute to avoid using Jay Street which is one of the most dangerous street for bikers in NYC (if you want to understand why check the video clip on our( NYC bicycle accident lawyer page).

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NYCHA Buildings2 baby girls died in an apartment fire in the Bronx, NYC yesterday. According to the NY Daily News, a pregnant mother left her two year old daughter and her 18 month old sister alone in her apartment while she was going to do the laundry at a nearby laundromat. She also left some incense burning in the house and may have disabled the smoke alarms. According to the New York Housing Authority who owns the building where the fire happened, the alarms were functioning five hours before the blaze.

A neighbor also told the Newspaper that the mother,  26 year old Haya Conce, was always burning incense by the window and she often left the kids alone in the apartment. She was warned that it was dangerous but she ignored the warnings. When the firefighters carried the dead bodies of her babies out of the building shes collapsed on the sidewalk. Firefighters said the dramatic accident may have been prevented if the fire alarms hadn’t been disabled.

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High School AthletesWhile a lot of emphasis has been recently put on protecting professional and college athletes from suffering serious injuries and their long term consequences, very little is done on a national scale to protect high school athletes. In a recent article in the Health section of the New York Times Jane E. Brody points out that there are still no national guidelines or rules protecting high school athletes and that it is the responsibility of the states and the schools to protect them. Unfortunately most states and schools are lagging behind in implementing serious safety measures. Last year in the US 50 high school athletes died while playing organized school or league sports and thousands of them suffered long term complications from sports related injuries.

Cardiac arrest, head and neck injuries as well as exertion are the most common causes of death among high school athletes. The author indicates that many of these deaths could have been prevented if the high school had:

  • an emergency action plan
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Desmoid-type_fibromatosis.gross_pathology Although very rare, failure to diagnose and treat desmoids tumors, also called aggressive fibromatosis, a tumor that develops in the fibrous tissue that forms tendons and ligaments, can be medical malpractice. Desmoids tumors are very rare and difficult to diagnose and doctors are still debating what is the most appropriate categorization and treatment. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman writes about a 24 year woman who suffered several episodes of excruciating stomach pain before being diagnosed and treated for a desmoid tumor.

Johanna Dickson was 23 years old when the first symptoms of the disease occured. She had just come back from South Africa when she suffered a first episode of acute abdominal pain. She thought she caught some type of stomach bug in her last trip. The family doctor sent her to the hospital for various tests but nothing was found and the pain disappeared.

Another crisis happened six months later but it went away quickly so she didn’t even bother to see a doctor.

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spinal cord injuryThe medical practice of trying to avoid scar formation at the site of a spinal cord injury may indeed not be correct. Every year approximately 12,500 American will suffer a spinal cord injury and an estimated 276,000 people in the US are suffering from long term effects related to this injury. For decades the prevailing medical dogma was that that scars were preventing neuronal regrowth across the injured area but a newly released study says it is actually the opposite that happens. Scar forming cells called astrocytes may actually help nerve regrowth.  A study recently published in Nature and authored by  Mark A. Anderson, Joshua E. Burda, Yilong Ren, Yan Ao, Timothy M. O’Shea, Riki Kawaguchi, Giovanni Coppola, Baljit S. Khakh, Timothy J. Deming & Michael V. Sofroniew found that   “scars may be a bridge and not a barrier towards developing better treatments for paralyzing spinal cord injuries.”

Read more in Medical News Today

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depressedA doctor who doesn’t screen a child treated for Cushing syndrome for depression related mental illness may commit medical malpractice.

Cushing syndrome is a rare disease that occurs when the body produces too much of the hormone cortisol. It can lead to obesity, infections, bone fractures and kidney stones. Therefore it shouldn’t be left untreated.  The disease can be caused by taking too much glucocorticosteroid medicine or by a pituitary gland tumor that releases Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) among other causes. When a child suffers from this syndrome the usual treatment is to remove the tumor that produces the excess cortisol.

A study recently released by the National Institute of Health however shows that children that have been treated for this syndrome have a high risk of developing anxiety and suicidal thoughts months after they have been successfully treated. The study looked at 149 patients and found that 6% of them thought about suicide and experienced depression, irritability, anxiety and anger with outbursts of rage after the treatment. These symptoms appeared from 7 to 48 months after the treatment.

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A few days after a DOI investigation revealed that NYCHA knew about faulty elevators that killed a resident and injured another, the NYC Housing Authority announced that Ken Buny, the head of the elevator division was fired. Five NYCHA employees who failed to communicate that the elevators were malfunctioning were also reassigned. They are all facing disciplinary charges that could also result in firing. (Read more in the NY Daily News)

The investigation revealed that NYCHA knew about the faulty elevator before the fatal accident happened but because of a communications  breakdown nobody went to fix it.  On December 24 2015, the NYCHA’s Customer Contact Center (“CCC”) received a phone call from a resident at the  NYCHA’s Boston Road Plaza senior building in the Bronx to inform them about a very dangerous malfunctioning elevator. NYCHA didn’t take immediate action to put the elevator out of service. An hour and half  later, 84 year old Olegario Pabon was critically injured when the elevator drifted upward as he was trying to get in. He died 3 days later from his injuries.  The investigation also found that the NYCHA senior management learned about the accident four days later. Another man was seriously injured in a similar accident that happened in another NYCHA building less than a month before.

In both accidents, the DOI found that brake monitors that should have automatically shut down the elevators were not functioning. After this discovery the DOI checked the 1,080 NYCHA elevators equipped with brake monitors and found that 80 (more than 7%) of them were not functioning.

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Coney Island HousesAn elevator mechanic died in an elevator accident in New York City on Friday. The accident happened at the Coney Island Houses in Brooklyn, a public housing development belonging to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).   54 year old Igor Begun, was working in the elevator machine room of the building located at 2926 W. 25th St when he was apparently electrocuted to death.

NYPD and NYCHA are still investigating the causes of the fatal accident. The report from the medical examiner will provide more explanation on the exact cause of the death.

Igor Begun was alone when the accident happened. Another elevator worker who was doing some maintenance work in the lobby found him unconscious in the elevator machine room. He was later pronounced dead.

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