New York Personal Injury Attorneys Blog

Published on: September 23, 2014

The average 125 minute emergency room wait at Brooklyn’s Interfaith Hospital puts patients at risk of death from life-threatening illnesses such as stroke or heart attacks

A diagnosis delayed by a too long wait time in an emergency room can be medical malpractice and can be deadly. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, patients checking in at the ER of the Brooklyn Interfaith Hospital wait an average of 125 minutes before they can be seen by a doctor. The hospital recently added more staff but it has financial struggles. Most of its ER patients are uninsured.

The Brooklyn Hospital has the worst ER waiting time in New York State and 4 times the national average according to an article in the New York Daily News.

Published on: September 23, 2014

A man drove the wrong way on a New York highway exit ramp and died after his car hit a garbage truck

By GGCRBHS&M

Major%20Deegan.jpg For reasons that are unknown so far, a 63 year old man drove the wrong way on the exit ramp of the Major Deegan Expressway at W. 233rd Street in the Bronx, NYC and was killed after he crashed into a NY Department of Sanitation truck. The man died at the scene of the accident and the truck driver who suffered from back pain was transported to a close-by hospital.

A rookie police officer died and 8 other officers were injured in a crash during which the driver of a NYPD van lost control of the vehicle in a sharp turn on the Bruckner Expressway in the Bronx, NYC

By GGCRBHS&M

Michael%20Williams.jpg A violent crash killed one NYPD officer and injured 8 others early morning Sunday in the Bronx. The police officers from the 47th Precinct in the Bronx were on their way to assignments for the Climate March in Midtown Manhattan when the driver of the van lost control of the vehicle in a sharp turn on the Bruckner Expressway and hit a barrier. 25 year old Michael Williams was ejected from the van onto the highway and died several hours later at the hospital. 8 other police officers suffered non life threatening personal injuries. Investigators looking into the circumstances of the accident will determine at what speed the van was going when it approached the turn and if officers were wearing seat-belts as required.

Read more in the New York Times
Picture: NYPD

Published on: September 22, 2014

A pedestrian died from severe head injury after being hit by a reckless cyclist who crashed into her in Central Park, New York

By GGCRBHS&M

59 year old Jill Tarlov was struck by a cyclist as she was in a crosswalk in Central Park last Thursday.She suffered severe head trauma and was on life support before she passed away this week-end.

According to witnesses the cyclist was riding his bike recklessly and was most probably above the 25 miles-per-hour speed limit. He swerved to avoid a group of pedestrians and hit the woman.

Transportation Alternative, a bicycling and walking advocay group, released a statement asking the NYPD to “investigate the accident including the cyclist’s speed as he approached Ms. Tarlov”.

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Published on: September 22, 2014

Unexpected out of network charges on hospital bills are driving up medical costs

By GGCRBHS&M

Recently more and more hospital patients have been receiving bills with hefty charges from unexpected out of network doctors or other medical service providers such as labs or Radiologists. Services that used to be included in the daily hospital rate now comes as additional costs because they are provided by out of network contractors. Many emergency rooms, for example, are now staffed by out-of-network doctors who bill separately.

Out-of-network doctor charges are not negotiable and can reach phenomenal amounts. For example a patient requiring a skin graft would pay $1,781 to an in-network doctor while an out-of-network doctor would potentially charge $150,500. In a recent article in the New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal exposes this practice.

Published on: September 18, 2014

Lawmakers on Capitol Hills strongly criticize the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for overlooking evidence and failing to identify the deadly defect in General Motors cars

By GGCRBHS&M

David Friedman, the head of the NHTSA who testified Tuesday at a Senate hearing about the NHTSA’s handling of the ignition switch defect in General Motor’s cars faced heavy criticism from both parties. The agency was accused of being irresponsible, of failing to use its full authority over automakers and of failing to discover defects that consumers had alerted the agency to.

Just before his testimony the House Committee on Energy and Commerce also released a Staff Report on the GM Ignition Switch Recall that concluded that the “NHTSA had ample information to identify a potential safety defect as early as 2007.”

Read more in the New York Times and in Automotive-Fleet.com

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Published on: September 18, 2014

Woman killed by bus as she tried to reach underneath it to pick up her cell phone in Brooklyn, NYC

By GGCRBHS&M

A pedestrian died in a tragic bus accident yesterday in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York. The woman had just stepped off the B44 bus when she dropped her cell phone. The phone fell under the bus and the woman reached under the bus to get it. The driver who didn’t see her drove away from the curb at the same time crushing the woman underneath the right rear wheels.
Read more in the NY Daily News

Published on: September 18, 2014

Off-duty NYPD cop was drunk when he drove the wrong way on the NY State Thruway and crashed his car into another vehicle killing himself and the other driver

By GGCRBHS&M

Results of the autopsy show that Richard Christopher, an off duty Bronx cop, had .21% blood alcohol content when he drove the wrong way and killed himself and another man in a car crash on a New York State Highway.

On August 12th, 32 year old Richard Christopher, an 8-year veteran of the NYPD assigned to the 43rd Precint in Parkchester was seen by witnesses first driving North on I-87 then pulling on the side of the road and making a U-turn to start driving south before the deadly car accident happened.

A nurse who committed a medical error and injured a nursing home patient by administrating morphine instead of a muscle relaxant and then tried to cover her error by falsifying documents was indicted by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman

By GGCRBHS&M

A wheelchair-bound resident of a Long Island nursing home suffered serious personal injury after a nurse committed a medical error and injected him with morphine instead of a prescribed muscle relaxant and then attempted to cover up her error by falsifying documents. The nursing home resident overdosed and had to be admitted to a hospital where Narcan, a medication to counter the effects of an opiate overdose was administered. The nurse, Vicki Price, was charged recently with one count of endangering the welfare of a vulnerable elderly person, or an incompetent or physically disabled person, in the second degree, a class E felony; one count of endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person, a class A misdemeanor; one count of willful violation of the public health laws, an unclassified misdemeanor; and two counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a class E felony. She faces up to 1 1/3 to 4 years in prison if convicted.

9 children and two adult injured in school bus accident in Queens, NYC

By GGCRBHS&M

11 people suffered non threatening personal injury after a car struck a school bus that was stopped at a red light at the intersection of Liberty Ave and 183rd Street in Jamaica, Queens, New York on Tuesday.

9 children and two adults were injured and transported to the hospital; two of them suffered serious personal injury.

This school bus accident is the second one since classes started again on September 4th. Last week nearly 30 children were injured when two school buses collided in the Bronx, NYC.

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