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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Marisol Martinez was fatally struck by a MTA bus making a left turn. Martinez and two of her friends were in the middle of the crosswalk when they saw the bus. The two friends were a little ahead of Martinez and ran to avoid the bus. According to them the bus didn’t yield or stop hitting and killing their friend.

Martinez is the third person to die after being hit by a MTA bus this year. In the last 12 months at least 10 people died after being struck by a MTA bus according to Streetblog.

Northern Brooklyn had one of the highest numbers of traffic deaths in 2013 and elected officials and advocates are calling for Mayor de Blasio to focus street safety resources in this area

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A Brooklyn cop suffered severe personal injury after he tried to pull over a reckless ATV driver. As the officer approached the ATV driver to stop him he tried to get away. As the driver of the ATV hit the gas, the officer grabbed the quad’s handlebars. He was dragged close to 200 feet before the ATV driver knocked him off and ran over his leg and fled the scene.

Read more in the New York Daily News

Photo: Peter Gerber/New York Daily News

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A methylmercury strict product liability claim against Bumble Bee will proceed. A New York federal Court refused to dismiss claims that the tuna company is strictly liable for and was negligent in failing to warn about the mercury in its products in a lawsuit alleging personal injury from excessive consumption of Bumble Bee’s tuna products which contain methylmercury. Porrazzo v. Bumble Bee Foods, LLC, No. 10-4367 (U.S. Dist. Ct., S.D.N.Y., order entered February 27, 2014).

Read more on Lexology

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21 people died and 3,899 suffered personal injury in a vehicle accident in New York City last January compared to 26 deaths and 4,277 personal injuries the month before and 28 deaths and 3,993 personal injuries the same month a year ago.

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More than 1000 pedestrians suffered personal injury in a vehicle accident last January. The number of pedestrians who died after being struck by a vehicle was of 12 last January compared to 17 in December, 25 in November and 20 the same month a year ago. At this point it is difficult to know if this decrease is already the result of NYPD Vision Zero measures or if the bad weather kept many pedestrians inside.

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Nurse understaffing by negligent hospitals can lead to medical malpractice that affect patients outcome. A recent study compared the 30 day mortality rate of more than 400,000 patients over 50 years old who underwent surgery in 300 hospitals in 9 different European countries to nurse staffing and nurse education for each hospital.

The study found that an increase in a nurses’ workload by one patient increased the likelihood of an inpatient dying within 30 days of admission by 7% , and every 10% increase in bachelor’s degree nurses was associated with a decrease in this likelihood by 7%. These associations imply that patients in hospitals in which 60% of nurses had bachelor’s degrees and nurses cared for an average of six patients would have almost 30% lower mortality than patients in hospitals in which only 30% of nurses had bachelor’s degrees and nurses cared for an average of eight patients.

Download the study

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Nursing Home Neglect may have caused the death of two residents at the Suffolk Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, a Long Island nursing home.

Thomas Bischoff died of sepsis after bedsores grew so large on his body that a human fist could fit inside some of the holes in his skin. Bedsores of that size are a sign of nursing home abuse.

A few months after Thomas died , Raymond Curiale another resident accidentally hanged himself. According to his plan care, Curiale who suffered from dementia was to be checked on every 15 minutes. After the staff forgot to check on him for 57 minutes, he was found slumped against his wheelchair, the seat belt around his neck, strangled.

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GM.jpgAdding to the costs of potential product liability lawsuits and the costs of replacing the defective ignition switch, General Motors is now facing a fine from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The agency announced yesterday that it “opened an investigation into the timeliness of General Motors’ recall of faulty ignition switches to determine whether GM properly followed the legal processes and requirements for reporting recalls”.

Read more on Reuters.com

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A heat map of personal injuries resulting from bicycle accidents in New York City reveals that a significant number of these accidents happen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This situation may be explained by the high number of bicyclists who are commuting everyday over the bridges between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Read more in I Quant NY

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In New York, bicycle accidents happen quickly when bike lane users have to slalom between the delivery trucks that are using the lane as a parking spot. Yesterday, the NYPD took action and started to issue tickets to all delivery trucks parked on the bike lane on Columbus Ave between west 110th and west 77th street. A vitriolic article in the New York Post that implies that trucks have to double park in the middle of the Ave because of the bike lane got blasted by Streetblog that made clear that poor curb policies around the city and not bike lanes are the reason why delivery trucks are double parking everywhere including in streets with no bike lanes.

 

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A recent study analyzed 147 medical malpractice claims related to Electronic Health Record (EHR) issues and identified that incorrect data entry in the EHR, inconsistency between paper and electronic records as well as system failures were contributing factors in close to 60% of the analyzed claims.

The study was released by CRICO, a patient safety and medical malpractice insurer for the Harvard medical community that includes more than 12,000 physicians, 22 hospitals, and 100,000-plus nurses, technicians, and other employees of Harvard-affiliated organizations. Over 30 years CRICO has built a large comparative database and developed specific tools to analyze medical malpractice claims and identified specific vulnerabilities that need to be addressed by hospitasl and physicians to better protect patients from medical errors.

Recently CRICO analyzed a year’s worth of medical malpractice claims and found that 147 were related to Electronic Health Record problems. Half of these incidents of malpractice resulted in in severe personal injury for the patient. The 147 claims cost a total of $61 million in direct payments and legal expenses.