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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Two children died after they opened the zippers of an Ace Bayou bean bag chair , crawled inside the chair’s foam bed and got trapped. They suffocated from the lack of air and inhaled the foam beads.
The voluntary standard requires non-refillable bean bag chairs to have closed and permanently disabled zippers. The Ace Bayou Bean Bag Chairs don’t comply with this standard. The recalled products have two zippers, one on the exterior cover and one underneath on the bean bag itself. Both can be easily opened by children who can then crawl inside and get trapped.

The recalled products were manufactured in China and come in various shape colors and sizes. For more information click here

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Intro 371 proposes heavy fines for drivers fleeing accident scenes when they know or have a cause to know that an injury occurred. The City Council bill was proposed Today at a transportation committee meeting by Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and transportation chair Ydanis Rodriguez.

Because the penalty for a hit and run is less severe than the penalty for causing injury or death while intoxicated, impaired drivers have an incentive to leave the scene of an accident.

Read more in Street Blog

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Another pedestrian was hit by a car on West End Avenue. The victim a 73 year old woman is in critical condition. She was crossing West End Ave yesterday night around 8 pm when an auto driven by an 87 year old man ran over her. The driver stayed at the scene and wasn’t charged. (read more in the Gothamist)

West End is very a very dangerous avenue. This year, 61 year old Jean Chamber and 9 year old Cooper Stock were both killed in car accidents on West End Ave. Between 2008 and 2012, 96 pedestrians, 41 cyclists and 160 motor vehicle passengers were injured in crashes on West End. To stop the bleeding, The NYC Community Board 7 approved a complete redesign of West End Ave (see previous blog) that should be completed before the winter. (see West Side Rag)

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An 88 year old church deacon driving to mass ran over a homeless pedestrian pushing a shopping cart on the crosswalk as she was making a left turn from Bedford Ave. The elderly woman said she didn’t see the man. Left turns are more dangerous than right turns. Often drivers making a left turn concentrate on finding a momentary break in the traffic to rush through and don’t see pedestrians crossing at the same time. According to a previous article in the NY Post, left-turn crashes in which the pedestrians either suffer severe personal injury or die outnumber right-turn ones by 3 to 1 in New York.

Read more in the New York Post

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After a young boy fell in the Hudson River near the JFK marina in Yonkers, several people jumped in the water to rescue him. The boy was safely brought out of the water but among the good Samaritans a 40 year old man didn’t make it. The man drowned and was found by NYPD divers assisted by the Yonkers police. The drowning occurred around 6:30 during a community cookout.

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The NYPD Motor Vehicle Collision Data report for the month of July is a blow to the various Vision Zero Initiatives that have been deployed since the beginning of the year to reduce traffic deaths. The initiatives that have been mainly focusing on pedestrian fatalities didn’t seem to have been very effective this summer with the number of pedestrian fatalities more than doubling from 7 to 15 between June and July. 11 cyclists also died since the beginning of the year, almost twice more than in 2013 when 6 cyclists lost their lives during the first 7 months of the year.

Even though the total number of vehicle crashes in NYC was lower last July (17,361) compared to the same month in 2013 (17,548) and compared to the previous month (18,321), the total number of vehicle accidents since the beginning of the year is slightly higher than last year with a total of 118,195 crashes compared to 117,022 for the first seven months of 2013.

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4591 people suffered personal injuries during a vehicle collision in NYC during the month of July, a decrease compared to 4950 in June and 5077 in July 2013. Personal injuries related to vehicle crashes are also down by 7% for the first 7 months of 2014 compared to the first 7 months of 2013 with motorists injuries down by 9%, passengers injuries down by 6%, cyclist injuries down by 3.5% and pedestrian injuries down by 7%.

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Potential medical malpractice during a routine procedure for her vocal cords may have lead to the death of Joan Rivers earlier Today. A few days ago we wrote that the 81 year old comedian and TV personality had to be rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York after she stopped breathing during vocal cord surgery (see previous blog). After doctors at Mount Sinai tried unsuccessfully to bring her out of her coma, her daughter Melissa gave the go-ahead to remove her mother from life support Today. RIP Joan Rivers. New York state health officials are investigating the outpatient clinic where Joan Rivers underwent the endoscopic procedure before she stopped breathing last week. It will be interesting to learn the role anesthesia played in leading to her respiratory distress and cardiac arrest. She was a ground breaker and will be missed.
Read more in the Daily Beast

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ben%20small.jpgIn their Trial Advocacy column in the New York Law Journal, New York Personal Injury Attorneys Ben Rubinowitz and Evan Torgan write: Our first article on the topic of secretly taping so-called “independent medical examinations” was met with wide criticism by certain members of the defense bar. However, if we are to achieve fairness in the adversarial process, and if trials are to remain reliable means of discovering the truth, then both sides must be permitted to use covert video surveillance where appropriate.

Read more in the New York Law Journal

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To reduce the number of injuries and fatalities related to truck accidents the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) started to study the possible unintended safety consequences of the various methods by which truck drivers are compensated.

The agency issued a Notice and request for comments that can be downloaded here.

Truck drivers are usually paid by the mile and are usually not paid for time waiting to load and unload. This type of compensation may push drivers to unsafe practices in order to make a living.

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As bicycling in New York became more and more popular and was recognized as a serious mode of transportation, the Bloomberg administration focused on preventing bicycle accidents and increasing cyclist safety by developing a bigger bike network and safer street designs. Bicycling was also encouraged with the development of the Citi Bike program. What bicyclists are seeing in the streets of New York now are all the results of the projects developed when Janette Sadki-Khan was at the head of the DOT during the Bloomberg administration. The projects developed by the de Blasio administration will start to be implemented this fall but the final results will be seen next spring. In a series of 5 articles that started to be published Today in Street Blog, former New York City Department of Transportation Policy Director, Jon Orcutt provides an overview of what New York cyclists can expect under the de Blasio administration.

Read the first article here