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.

Articles Tagged with New York Construction Accident

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Qualified and competent OSHA inspector OSHA construction site safety inspectors play a very important role in preventing  workers from being injured or dying on construction sites. Unfortunately with the recent boom in the construction business in New York City, these inspectors are very hard to find and their rates have been increasing significantly.

Certified Site safety inspectors have taken a safety course with OSHA and must meet specific criteria before receiving a OSHA certification. However these last years many  unscrupulous workers just blew off the classes and presented falsified OSHA cards to contractors in order to become site safety inspectors.

Since the beginning of the year the City has been cracking down on these workers.

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FullSizeRender (1)The recent construction boom in New York has lead to a significant increase of hard hats dying on construction sites. These deaths could have been prevented if safety measures were proprely implemented and workers better protected.  Among the workers who died this year, 9 fell because they weren’t proprely secured and several of them were crushed by improperly braced walls.

Unfortunately while the number of new construction sites has expanded significantly,  the number of available site-safety inspectors has dropped.  According to a Daily News investigation, there were 1,171 available inspectors in NYC in 2011 compared to 1,105 in 2014, a decrease of almost 6%.  During that same period of time building permits increased by 18% from 121,000 in 2011 to 142,000 in 2014.

According to the NY Daily News, the rarity of site-safety inspectors has led to a tremendous increase of their rates. Some of them are routinely jumping to better-paying jobs in the middle of ongoing projects to snag higher pay creating dangerous conditions because there is no continuity. Retired inspectors are also coming back on the market because of the high rates but they are often too old for the job and sit behind a desk instead of actively inspecting the construction site. In some cases, contractors used fake safety inspectors. Last year the city busted two contractors who had hired a cook, a hotel bellhop and a hairdresser to sign off on safety reports.

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Three people suffered personal injury in New York after a pane of glass fell from the 17th floor of a building.  A 33 year old woman, a 23 year old woman and a 25 year old man were walking on the street near a building on Fifth Ave and East 28th Street when a pane of glass fell next to them and shattered. Construction work at the building dislodged the glass from the window. Read more in the NY Daily News

This is not the first time that non construction workers were injured or died near construction sites this year. Last June 8 people were injured after a crane dropped a giant AC unit in the street. In April  two tenants died in a suspicious explosion in an apartment building where plumbers were working on gas lines. In March a pedestrian died after being hit by flying debris from a construction site in Manhattan.

Fifth Ave and 28th Street

The intersection of Fifth Ave and East 28th Street where the accident happened, picture: courtesy of Google

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Tenants at many building in New York City and particularly rent-stabilized tenants are being endangered and harassed by negligent property owners that are allowed to start construction work after they asserted that their building was empty when filing with the NYC Department of Buildings.

Despite Mayor de Blasio’s blue print to improve the efficiency of the NYC DOB, and pledge to preserve and create rent stabilized apartment, tenants and some elected officials are complaining that the lack of enforcement has created a climate of lawlessness. A recent article in the New York Times explains  how unscrupulous  landlords and developers are defrauding the DOB with false fillings, endangering the life and safety of tenants and harassing them into leaving their apartments. The author, Mireya Navarro is providing numerous examples of cases where residents complaints were ignored or handled lightly by the Department of Buildings and owners were allowed to continue their work.

The Department of Buildings is aware of the false filling problem and has been working on upgrading their technology.  Among the improvements, the DOB announced that it was about to launch Inspection Ready, a new online tool that is supposed to  dramatically simplify compliance and reduce wait times when scheduling appointments for inspections. The system will include the ability to request and cancel appointments online, as well as view inspection results and documentation.

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 Two construction workers were injured after they fell from a building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan yesterday afternoon. The construction workers where  working on the $50 million renovation of the World Diamond   Tower  building  on Fifth Avenue  and W. 47th St.   They fell from the second floor mezzanine inside the building.  The FDNY has asked the City Department of Buildings to investigate whether a partial collapse of the mezzanine led to the fall. Read more in  The New York Daily News 

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 The construction accident happened in a famous building of the Diamond District.  Picture courtesy of Google map 

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A construction worker died after he fell down an elevator shaft in New York. The accident happened yesterday at the beginning of the afternoon at the construction site of a future hotel located at 577 9th Avenue near 41st Street in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan.

According to DNA Info the construction worker  was not wearing a harness at the time of the accident. He was working on the fourth floor near the elevator shaft which, at the time, was just a hole that extended all the way to the ground. He fell in and landed on his back. The man who was 30 years old was transported to the hospital in critical condition. He later died.

A few months ago the general contractor for the construction site, BRF Construction Corp, was fined for failing to secure the site after a construction worker was spotted on a 15 to 20 foot wall without a harness. BRF employed non union workers.

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Last April, 22 year old Carlos Moncayo died in a construction accident in New York because two construction managers put profit over safety.  According to the NY Daily News, on April 6th, Christian Ofusu, an independent engineer assigned to oversee the work on a Ninth Ave site in the Meatpacking district warned Alfonso Prestia, the construction site superintendent, that the site was too dangerous and that it should be shut down. Prestia ignored the engineer’s warning so Ofusu went to voice his concerns to foreman Wilmer Cueva who also refused to stop the work. Moments later, as Ofusu was trying to convince the project manager, Mohamad Sharif to shut down the site, a wall collapsed and crushed Carlos Moncaya to death. Cuevas who works for Sky Materials Corp and Prestia who works for Hartco Consultants Corp have both been indicted on charges of criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter and reckless endangerment.

Yesterday another wall collapsed on a construction site in Nolita, downtown Manhattan, injuring two construction workers (see NY Daily News) and the day before a construction worker was seriously injured after falling two-stories at a construction site in Hudson Yards on the west side of Manhattan (see previous blog).

 

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A worker was injured in a construction accident Friday in New York City. The accident happened at the Red Hook East Houses on Henry Street in Brooklyn, NYC. The worker was standing on scaffolding on the second floor when an AC Unit fell on him. The cooling unit was being removed from the sixth floor by other workers when it fell. The construction worker was transported to the hospital. He suffered non life threatening trauma and was hospitalized in stable condition. Read more in the NY Daily News

Red Hook East Houses

Red Hook East Houses, picture: Google Maps

 

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Christian GinelliChristian Genesi, a 25 year old construction worker, fell 24 stories to his death at the beginning of May  as he was riding a temporary hoist to get to the top of a hotel that was being built on 8th Ave.  The city building inspectors who have been investigating the case found out that the hoist temporarily lost power that day and that the electrical system that powered it was installed without a permit. The elevator relied on “unapproved, unsafe, unsuitable electrical equipment” that shouldn’t have been in use, documents show.New York Wrongful Death Lawyer Howard Hershenhorn

Howard Hershenhorn was quoted in the NY Daily News stating “It’s obvious that this is an enormous tragedy, which could have absolutely been prevented had basic safety measures been put in place,” he also added Ginesi wouldn’t have died “had there been safety netting, had there been safety harness and had there been a working electrical system.” “There’s blatant violations of multiple laws in the State of New York, which caused this senseless death,” he also said.

Read the complete article here

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Two construction workers as well as several pedestrians and car passengers suffered personal injury in a crane accident in New York yesterday morning. The crane was hauling an air conditioning unit of the size of a shipping container to the top floor of a 30-story building at 261 Madison Avenue, N.Y.C. when a rigging strap broke. The unit first crashed into the side of the building before landing on Madison Avenue between 38th and 39th streets. 10 people were injured by the falling debris. The crane operating company, Skylift, had a similar accident in 2010 during which no one was injured and received two serious OSHA violations.

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