Multiple traffic accidents, including 59 MTA bus crashes as well as slips and falls caused by black ice created a backlog of hundreds of 911 calls in New York on Sunday. According to the FDNY as many as 600 emergency callers were put on hold on Sunday early in the day. The NYPD responded to a total of 1800 calls compared to an average of 400 to 500 a day.
Read more in the New York Post
The family of 19 year old Catherine Cando Cornejo is claiming that medical malpractice is at the origin of the death of the young beauty queen. The young woman decided to have an abdominal liposuction after she won a coupon for a surgery during a beauty pageant in Ecuador. According to the family, doctors had been pushing her at multiple occasions to undergo what seems to be an unnecessary surgery to loose one inch from her waist. The victim apparently died from cerebral edema according to autopsy results. Medical Malpractice in Ecuador is punishable with one to three years in jail.
Read more in the New York Post
Lack of comprehensive regulation in the hospice industry has lead to repeated instances of abuse and neglect of patients. More and more patients in hospice care are suffering needlessly because they don’t get routine hydration, nutrition, medical attention and proper prescription medication. In this video, Farron Cousins, a guest host of Ring of Fire Radio, describes how the corporations came into the hospice business turning it into a full for profit venture with an incentive to cut costs and minimize the amount of care to maximize profit.
In New York, poorly maintained cellar doors leading to death or injury can result in premises liability against the owner of a building. It’s the nightmare of every New Yorker. Yesterday a man in his 30’ies fell 12 feet and died after walking on a metal cellar door on Bedford Ave in Brooklyn, NYC. The doors were leading to the basement of an abandoned building.
Red more in the New York Daily News
Transportation accidents are killing and injuring thousands of people every year. Many of these accidents are preventable.
To support and increased awareness of the most critical changes needed to reduce these accidents the NTSB is releasing every year its most wanted list.
This year, distracted driving caused by portable electronic devices (PEDs) is at the top of this list, followed by substance impairment while operating a vehicle and helicopter safety. Implementation of train control, improvement of rail tank car safety, increased safety in mass transportation, prevention of loss of control in non-airline flights, medical fitness for duty, strengthening of commercial trucking safety and strengthening procedural compliance among airlines are the other priorities on the NTSB Most Wanted List.
Too many children in New York City died or suffered personal injury because a speeding car hit them on their way to or from their school.
To prevent these types of accidents and as part of the Vision Zero initiative, the NYC Department of Transportation started to install speed-cameras in school zones. 19 cameras have been installed so far in the city.
Last September the speed-cameras indicated that on average 3,539 drivers in a day drove at least 10 mph over the limit. As word spread about the cameras, drivers became more careful and in December he average number of drivers speeding at least 10 mph over the speed limit went down to 1461.
Death, injury and warranty claims can serve as an early warning of defects or other problems in a car and manufacturers are required by law to submit this information to the government. For the last 11 years, Honda consistently under reported these claims and was fined $70 million for not doing so (see Honda Fined for Violations of Safety Law).Even though this penalty is the highest amount ever fined a car manufacturer by the federal regulators it still seems very modest in comparison to the revenue of the giant car manufacturers. The Obama administration wants to raise the maximum fine to $300 million but would that be enough?
After 12 cases of Legionnaires’s disease were diagnosed in the Bronx, the NYC Department of Health started an investigation to find the source of the disease.
Preliminary tests found Legionella Bacteria in Co-Op City Cooling Towers. The Health Department has instructed River Bay Corporation, the manager of the cooling towers, to decontaminate the towers to mitigate the risk of further contamination.
The health department also stated that only the water used to cool the heating and electrical system is contaminated. This water is self self-contained and is separate from the water used by Co-Op City residents for drinking, cooking and bathing. The water at Co-Op City is safe to drink, bathe and cook with.
Roadside inspections can be effective at reducing the number of large truck accidents. However police officers are often reluctant to do it because they are concerned about the safety of pulling the truck over or because they do not understand the documentation involved.
To solve to this issue the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance have put together a national program to train officers on safely conducting truck and bus stops, properly verifying documentation and being familiar will all violation types.
The program will be launched on February 17th.
The recent case of Delfino Jesus Velazquez Mendizabal, a Mexican construction worker who died while working at a demolition site in Staten Island, NYC is a tragic example of how dangerous the construction industry has become for Latino workers.
Often undocumented and working for small contractors who are less regulated, Latino workers are exposed to much higher risks and dangers than other construction workers.
In the case of the death of 43 year old Mendizabal, his employer Formica Construction did not have a valid permit to perform the demolition at the site. It is also not the first time that Formica Construction has been negligent and put its construction workers at risk of an accident. Ken Formica, the construction company’s owner was convicted of criminally negligent homicide after one of his employees, 39 year old Lorenzo Pavia was asphyxiated and died as he was working in an unsafe trench that caved in on him.
New York Personal Injury Attorneys Blog