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 personal injury

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Daniel-Pollack-1Parental immunity is a doctrine that prevents a minor from suing his or her parents for personal injury. This old doctrine has been completely abrogated by many states or very limited in others.

In a recent article  Daniel Pollack, a professor at the School of Social Work, Yeshiva University, in New York City looks at the case of foster children abused by their biological parents. The children were removed from their biological parents and placed in foster care. Gradually they were allowed to visit their parents. The biological father molested his children during unsupervised visits in plain sight of the mother. Can the children sue their mother for failing to adequately protecting them from personal injury?
Find out in the article.

 

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Falls_Are_Leading_Cause_of_Death_Map_InfographicEvery year more than 200 construction workers die and around 10,000 are seriously injured after falling on the job in the US. Falls are the number one cause of death in construction accidents. Most of them are preventable. Planning ahead, using proper equipment and being trained for the job are key to prevent falls from scaffolds, roofs or ladders.

For the fourth consecutive year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) and the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) Construction Sector Council are joining forces to organize the fourth National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction.

This awareness campaign will take place all over the Country from May 8th to May 12th. Construction companies as well as contractors and their employees are invited to halt regular activities and organize a workshop to develop awareness on safety measures to prevent falls on construction sites. 

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OSHA logoWorkers especially construction workers may have a higher risk of getting injured on the job if the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) decides to definitely stop releasing enforcement news.  According to a recent article in Fair Warning, OSHA hasn’t published any enforcement press releases since Inauguration Day.

Because OSHA doesn’t have enough inspectors to cover all US workplaces, news releases related to penalties and enforcement of workplace safety are a powerful tool to prevent employers from committing safety violations. Usually the agency releases between 30 and 50 of  these type of announcements every month.  It has been a month and half since Trump was installed as the American President and not one single enforcement news has been released by OSHA. The same happened to the Wage and Hour division of the Labor Department which was previously releasing news on back wages paid to employees. Fair Warning contacted both OSHA and “Wage and Hour” to ask them about this six weeks period of silence but none of them replied.  Despite news releases being halted officials at the Labor Department have confirmed that OSHA inspections are still going on. An explanation for this silence may be the still ongoing and longer than usual transition at the Top of  the Labor Department. However looking at the past, never has such an interruption of news releases occurred during a change of presidency at the White House.

The policy of the Trump administration to fail to release enforcement news regarding unsafe work conditions is clear evidence that the Trump administration is not following through on campaign promises to protect the average middle class worker. Additional efforts to scale back or to delay workplace regulations are under way.  For example two days ago,  the Labor Department just proposed to delay a regulation aimed at protecting construction workers from beryllium, a toxic metal. Things are only going to get worse as evidenced by the proposed cuts for the EPA.

 

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New York Personal Injury Lawyer Rachel JacobsWe are proud to announce that only 3 years after graduating from Law School, our associate, New York personal injury lawyer Rachel Jacobs, is already chairing a Continuous Education Seminar (CLE) at Cardozo Law School on Tuesday March 21st at 6:30 pm. Entitled “Hot Issues in Personal Injury,” this seminar will cover the following subjects:

  • tort trends
  • new tort claims
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SKI_PATROL_ATTENDS_AN_INJURED_SKIER._CROSSED_SKIS_INDICATE_AN_INJURY_-_NARA_-_554256 (1)Many children suffer personal injuries during the winter. Many of these injuries are related to skiing, snow boarding and sledding but doctors at emergency rooms in California also said they are seeing a lot of surf injuries around winter time. Overuse injuries are also common especially when winter is warmer than usual. Growing up athletes continue to practice the same sport they usually practice during summer over fall and winter not allowing sufficient time to rest to their bodies.

Children have a much higher risk of getting injured in skiing and snowboarding activities than adults.  Most injuries occur when children are still learning how to ski or how to snowboard.  When a student skier or snowboarder doesn’t have full control of his or her movement, he or she can sometimes be unable to avoid obstacles. Confirmed skiers usually also know how to fall safely. ER doctors note that male children have a higher risk to suffer severe head and neck injuries. These type of injuries often happen when a youth skis or snowboards too fast for his skill level.

It may seem surprising but on the West Coast surf injuries are also pretty common among youth during the winter. The waves are usually bigger during the winter and emergency room doctors are seeing an increase in head injuries, broken bones as well as ankle and knee sprains.

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Near Missed event visualized with BMI20% of  the workers who die at work are construction workers but they represent only 4% of the employed workforce in the US. Hard hats are among the workers that have the most risk of being injured or even dying on the job. Sadly, most of these accidents are preventable.

As technology develops, the construction industry has been relying more and more on Building Information Modeling (BIM) to develop its projects. BIM is used throughout the life cycle of a construction project to digitally monitor the design, the plan and the construction itself. BIM can also be used for safety management.

A recent short study published by the Center For Construction Research and Training shows how “near miss accidents” can be visualized in Building Information Modeling.  The authors of the study are Dr Eric Marks and Xu Chen from the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alabama.  Dr Eric Marks recently hosted a free 30 min CPWR Webinar on this subject. The webinar can be seen here.

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Clarence Ditlow, a very influential and effective activist who protected consumers from unsafe vehicles died from colon cancer on November 10. He was 72 years old.

Clarence Ditlow who started as a lawyer for Ralph Nader’s Public Interest Research Group in 1971 had been at the head of the Center for Auto Safety for the last 40 years.  A lawyer and an engineer, Ditlow dedicated his life to improve the safety of anyone driving or riding a car. A workaholic who received only a modest salary, he spent his life going after negligent automakers and complaisant regulators.

Tirelessly assembling evidence about the causes of car accidents and the injuries or deaths resulting from these crashes, he exposed safety defects in millions of motor vehicles. His work lead to massive safety recalls and saved an untold number of consumers from deadly accidents.  He was considered the “guardian angel” of American motorists.

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young hockey playersExtremity injuries and traumatic brain injuries are common in youth hockey according to a Mayo Clinic Study. Most injuries result from intentional contact according to the same study. Over the years, USA Hockey, the regulating body for youth hockey has taken different measures to make the game safer. Body checks which are causing the most dramatic injuries are now forbidden for players under 14 years old. Penalties have also been increased for contact with another player’s head. However if the rules are not enforced injuries will continue to happen.

It is the share responsibility of the coaches, the referees and the parents to make sure that the game is safe for the kids.

Coaches are responsible to develop good sportsmanship among players instead of a culture of intimidation.  A good coach will focus on developing skills and respect for opponents.

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Daniel+Pollack-1When a vulnerable individual is injured or dies because of negligent supervision the term “line of sight” is often used. In a recent article, Daniel Pollack, a professor at the School of Social Work, Yeshiva University, in New York City, looks at the meaning of “line of sight”.

If an individual requires continuous line of sight supervision, what does it mean exactly? Does it mean that a supervisor must constantly have his or her eyes on the individual? Does it mean that a person must have an unobstructed  view of the room where the individual is? Daniel Pollack relied on his previous experience as an attorney for the Ohio Department of Youth Services to explain that the interpretation of “line of sight” varies depending on cases.

The complete article can be downloaded here

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OImage result for hoboken train terminalne person died and around 100 were injured in a train crash in Hoboken, just across the Hudson River from New York City. The train entered the terminal at high speed, crashed into the barriers and jumped onto the platform. The accident occurred yesterday morning during rush hour. Thousands of commuters were crowding the station. The impact was so strong that the concourse inside the terminal was torn apart. The ceiling fell onto the locomotive.

34 year old Fabiola Bittar de Kroon had just dropped her 18 month old child at a day care center and was waiting at the terminal to catch a train. During the accident, she was fatally hit by debris. A little more than 100 people were also injured by flying debris. More than 70 of them had to be transported to the hospital to be treated.  The young woman who was killed was a Brazilian lawyer. She had just moved to the United States a year ago to be with her husband, a businessman who had recently been relocated to New York by his company. De Kroon’s husband, Dann,  was in Pennsylvania for his work when the accident happened. He rushed back to the city to pick up his daughter at the day care center. He was clearly distraught. He asked the owner of the center  “How do you tell an 18-month-old that her mother is gone?”

The terminal was closed to the public Today as federal investors are inspecting the site of the train accident. The National Transportation Safety Board is turning its attention to the train engineere, Thomas Gallager, to better understand what he was doing during the crash.  Gallager who was rescued from his crumbled cabin, is fully cooperating. Gallager has been a train engineer for 29 years. According to his neighbor, Gallager wanted to be a train engineer since he was a kid and was enthusiastic about how much he loved his job.