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 personal injury

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Runners in Central ParkAmateur athletes have a higher risk of getting injured in the spring than in the middle or the end of the warm season. As the weather is getting really nice in New York, most of us just want to get out of the house and enjoy outdoor activities.  Don’t over do it warn orthopedists and sports medicine specialists who are seeing an increase of patients every year when spring comes. Take it easy when you get back to your favorite activity as your brain might very well remember the moves but your body is still in winter mode.

Runners have a high risk of getting injured in the spring

Runner knee is the most common spring time injury reported by doctors. Runner knee or chondromalacia patellae is a damage to the cartilage under the knee cap. It is mainly caused by over training. People get excited by the nice weather and they start to run again. They haven’t run much during the winter season and they forget that their body needs to adapt again. Doctors recommend runners to take it easy when they start to run again. A gradual increase of the weakly mileage; taking a day of break between each run to let the body rest; adjusting speed and avoiding steep hills will help avoid injuries.Ditching your old worn shoes for new supportive shoes can also help avoid plantar fasciitis which is another injury caused by excessive running. Another common spring injury is Achilles tendinitis. Runners who are doing too much too quickly and middle aged people who played sports such as tennis or basketball on an irregular basis are the most at risk.Ankles sprains from falls or misplaced steps are quite common as well. Those getting back into tennis, baseball or rock climbing after being less active during the winter should beware of rotator cuff injury and tennis elbow.
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couple involved in the car crashA speeding driver lost control of her vehicle causing a huge crash, killing the passenger who was her husband and hurting another road user.

The accident occurred early Tuesday morning in New York. 25 year old Dhanairy Ramirez was driving her Honda at a speed estimated to be 80 to 100 mph Northbound on St. Nicholas Ave. Her husband, 28 year old Eduardo Liranzo was in the passenger seat.  She sideswiped two parked cars near 172nd Street. She didn’t stop and continued to speed on St Nicholas Ave and rear ended a parked MTA truck near 190th Street. The truck driver was inside the cabin at the time of the accident. He suffered back injury.

The couple in the Honda were pinned inside the crumbled car and  firefighters had to cut the vehicles to rescue them. Both of them were rushed to the hospital. The passenger didn’t survive and the driver was critically injured.  According to family members who spoke to the NY Daily News, she is still unconscious and in critical condition. The couple has a newborn son. The young dad also leaves behind another son that he had with another woman.

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cop injured in motorcycle accidentA reckless NYPD officer hurt himself riding a dirt bike. The officer rode the bike without a helmet,  blew a red light and almost collided with a car before loosing control of the motorcycle and crashing into another vehicle. The officer suffered a minor leg injury and was treated at a nearby hospital. Thankfully nobody else was injured in this motorcycle accident, however the incident is under internal review by the NYPD after a video went viral on the internet.

In the video the officer is seen getting on the bike without a helmet, popping a wheelie and then crossing the intersection of  135th Street and Lenox. The cop went right through the red light, not even looking for crossing cars or pedestrians. He almost got hit by a car and completely lost control of the bike as he tried to swerve around it. He then fell on the ground while the bike hit another car. Other police officers ran to the rescue. He was sent to the hospital to be checked.

Previously the officers were trying to arrest a man driving the dirt bike recklessly …

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A 63 year old man injured his foot in a crane accident in New York.  The accident occurred around 10:20 pm on Monday night near Penn Station on 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. As it was lifting material, the arm of the machine collapsed.

The truck mounted crane belonging to the Brooklyn company Lifting Solutions was lifting I-beams for Starr Construction when the hydraulic system failed and the boom crashed on the sidewalk. Pedestrians panicked and ran for cover.  Some of them thought it was an explosion. One person was sent to the emergency room after being injured by the debris.

A  hazardous material team was dispatched by the FDNY to clean up the spill of hydraulic fluid.

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New-York-Slip-and-Fall1Every day 223 older adults visit the emergency room after being injured in a fall in NY State, 140 are hospitalized and 2 die. Fall is the leading cause of unintentional injuries and deaths among older New Yorkers and among older people in the US as well. In the US every 19 minutes an older person dies from injuries related to a fall.

For people over 65 year old, falls often have serious consequences that can affect their global well being, their mobility, their independence and their mental health. 60% of the older New Yorkers who are hospitalized after a fall end up in a nursing home or a rehabilitation center. 11% of them suffer traumatic brain injury and 27% of them suffer from hip fractures.  In most cases falls occur at home. 60% of older adults hospitalized for a fall in New York fell in their own home.

Obviously as people get older, they loose some of their strength,  they sometimes have physical disabilities, their vision is decreasing and they take more medication which can lead to drowsiness. All these factors increase the risk of fall.

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carbon monoxide danger signNine construction workers were hospitalized after they suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning last week in Manhattan. The construction workers were putting down concrete in a very small confined space in the foundations of a construction site located at 30 E. 29th St. in Manhattan. The site is the future location of a 639-foot-tall luxury residential art Deco-Inspired skyscraper developed by the Rockefeller Group.
A gasoline generator that was also running in the same space to provide electrical power poisoned the workers with carbon monoxide fumes. Gasoline generators that are releasing carbon monoxide are not supposed to be used indoors or in places that are not ventilated. Carbon monoxide can not be smelled but it can kill in minutes.  Warning signs of Carbon monoxide poisoning are similar to flu or cold symptoms and include weakness, fainting, dizziness, headache, nausea and shortness of breath.
The FDNY received a first call for a sick worker around 4:30 pm. The worker was feeling ill and dizzy. When they arrived other workers who had been able to get out of the underground space by themselves were also feeling sick. Two of their colleagues however were so ill that they had to be lifted up by the firefighters. A total of 65 firefighters and paramedics had to be called to the rescue to extricate the workers safely from the confined space.
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Gotham residential construction siteLast June, two construction workers were seriously injured in a mini-crane accident in New York because of the negligence of their contractor, Western Waterproofing Co. Inc from St. Louis (see previous blog).

The accident occurred after two supervisors working for the contractor rented a mini-crane, installed it on the fourth floor of the construction site and instructed an untrained worker to lift heavy curtain wall panels with it. The load was too heavy and the crane tipped and fell four stories down. Two workers, Jorge Delgado and Christopher Jackson were seriously injured during the accident.

Last week, OSHA cited the Missouri contractor for exposing employees to serious injuries and proposed a $155,204 fine against the company.

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the church before the collapseA man was injured in the unexpected collapse of a building that was being demolished by a construction company in Harlem. Last Thursday  a large interior section of the three-story Mount Ararat Baptist Church located on 316 West 135th Street in Harlem unexpectedly collapsed as the building was undergoing what was supposed to be a planned and controlled demolition.

One of the construction workers suffered minor injury. A man on a motorcycle who was driving near the building at the time of the accident was injured after he was hit by debris. The man suffered shoulder injuries ans some cuts but his life is not endangered. According to the firefighter the motorist was lucky to be alive. If he would have driven there half a second earlier he would have been crushed to death.

Read more in the Amsterdam News

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A pedestrian was killed and six other were injured by a reckless driver on Canal Street in Chinatown, New York last week.  A surveillance video of the accident shows 70 year old Henry Herman of Monroe, NY, backing up for at least half a block and then crashing into pedestrians on the busy sidewalk near the intersection of Forsyth and Canal Street. People were in shock as was the driver. He came out of his car, checked on the people he hit and said “My god” according to a witness. It was raining at the time of the accident and it may have affected the driver’s vision. The police believe the driver was accelerating into a parking spot and he might have lost control and jumped the curve. He was arrested and charged with failure to yield to pedestrian and failure to exercise due care.

56 year old Chun Deng Zhang from Queens died in the accident. Two other people were critically injured. Four others suffered non-life threatening injuries.

See video surveillance in the NY Post

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Thankfully nobody was injured in a Manhattan gas explosion. An electrical malfunction in a Con Edison transformer caused a carbon monoxide leak in a building located on 2465 Broadway between 91st and 92nd Street in the Upper West Side. The leak started around 4:00 pm and was discovered when the alarm of the Equinox gym located in the building went on.  90 people including clients at Equinox and three other businesses as well as 15 tenants were swiftly evacuated before an explosion shattered the windows of the building. Witnesses said they saw a big orange flash followed by the explosion. Glass and debris flew across Broadway. People living in the area felt their apartments shake. Animals at next door Petco were all safe as well.

The firefighters thought the alarms had been triggered by a smoking transformer inside the Equinox Gym basement but then they detected high levels of carbon monoxide and found that a carbon monoxide leak from defective ConEd equipment under the sidewalk. The gas and electricity were shut off on the block. Yesterday morning the gas was still turned off as investigators were still figuring out what happened.

It was fortunate that everybody could be evacuated before the explosion occurred. Carbon monoxide gas leak are extremely dangerous and very easy to ignite.  Any spark caused by even a telephone ringing or a light switch being turned on can trigger an explosion.