The New York Daily News reported today that Attorneys for Vantage Properties, a Queens landlord, have been negotiating for more than a month with counterparts representing 21 tenant families that sued the landlord for what they said were abusive business practices. A Vantage spokesman declined comment on the negotiations, citing company policy not to talk about ongoing legal action. The plaintiffs’ attorneys are set to meet Thursday with their clients, who filed the class-action lawsuit in 2009. “Nobody’s going to get rich off of this lawsuit,” the lawyer for the tenants said. He said the main objective has always been to stop the landlord’s abusive business practices. The plaintiffs are seeking a civil penalty of $1,000 to $5,000 for each affected family, court papers show. Vantage reached a $1 million settlement with Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in February after Cuomo’s office announced it intended to sue the landlord for using “underhanded tactics” to push out rent-regulated tenants from their apartments. As part of the settlement, Vantage must use a new system to handle tenant complaints and initiate legal proceedings, and also file reports with Cuomo’s office over the next three years to show it is complying with the agreement. The next scheduled court date is slated for April 13.
You can’t blame this Queens mom for being livid. She says a school principal should pay for letting her kindergartner walk home alone from school last year. She is suing the city and Principal Anne Cohen for dismissing her 4-year-old son Jaylen Bookman from Public School 147 without checking to see if someone was around to pick him up. Jaylen walked two blocks to his Cambria Heights home, where his grandfather spotted him standing outside. Jaylen’s mother says she arrived at the school around 2:15 p.m. on Oct. 9, 2009, to find Jaylen wasn’t there. She searched the school with an assistant principal. “I asked her where he was, and she started to look panicked.” About 15 minutes later, mom got a call from home saying Jaylen was there. “it was really a frightening experience,” she said. The next day, the boy’s mother confronted Cohen and said she was told there aren’t enough teachers to monitor dismissal. “She started talking to me about budget cuts, and I just wasn’t interested in hearing that,” she said. The mothers lawyer says the city Department of Education and officials at the Cambria Heights school were negligent. A lawsuit filed in Queens Supreme Court asks for unspecified damages.
Despite efforts made by the city to open up its streets to pedestrians and bikers, as a former biking enthusiast I think it’s suicidal to ride a bike for pleasure through the streets of Gotham. Just today, a 57-year-old Bronx bicyclist was struck and killed by a city bus. The woman was jolted into the path of a southbound BX17 on Crotona Ave. just before 8:30 a.m. Officials said the bus was coming right behind the lady who swerved to get out of the way of an opened car door. One bus passenger said it happened so fast — everybody got off the bus gasping and crying when they saw her. Paramedics rushed to the scene, but the cyclist was already dead. Her family contemplating a civil law suit against the owner of the car. Residents said the victim rode her bike on Crotona Ave. every afternoon after shopping for groceries. Bikes are fun to ride. It’s a healthy exercise and it cuts down on vehicle exhaust. But New York City is no place for joy riders, not unless the city installs barricades like they have in lower Manhattan near the Hudson River to protect riders from the madness of city streets.
I realize there is very little that can be done to prevent some damage when the metro area is hit by a big storm, like the one that blew in from the northeast over the weekend. But there is something very wrong when tens of thousands of people have to go without heat and hot water for days on end with nothing more to comfort them than a promise of prompt repair from the local power company.
According the The New York Daily News, twenty thousand city households were still without power Monday – and three times that many Westchester homes were dark – as utility workers and the city struggled with the devastation left by the wicked weekend storm.
“It really was one of the worst storms in recent memory,” said Mayor Bloomberg, who promised city workers were going all out to repair the damage.
There is a big gap between the promise of going “all out” and the actual response time of city and utility workers. While many elderly residents sit freezing in their homes, for many there is little more they can do but wait it out.
I would like to see the legislature in Albany pass a bill allowing residents who become ill, or get injured, due to delays in repair service to be able to file a claim against the the city for their pain and suffering. I bet that would speed up response times.
Con Ed, coping with hundreds of downed power poles, said it will take until the end of the week to restore power to all its customers in the city.
Half the 173,000 customers who lost power in Saturday’s storm were back online by Monday morning, but 64,500 houses were still dark in Westchester, 14,000 in Staten Island, 3,500 in the Bronx, 2,900 in Queens and 1,170 in Brooklyn.
Manhattan escaped all but scattered outages because the borough’s power lines are nearly all underground.
The New York Daily News reported today that a little Bronx girl got the scare of her life yesterday when a bedroom ceiling suddenly collapsed and showered her with debris and plaster teeming with water bugs and centipedes. This happened just five days after her family was moved out of another apartment in the same Bronx building because the little girl contracted lead poisoning. The child’s father, who heard the crashing ceiling, said he froze up at first, and then the yell came from his daughter. “I ran inside and she was covered with rubble and debris,” he said. He said that when he looked up, there was a hole in the ceiling the size of a medicine ball and bugs were crawling in the fallen plaster. While the child was only treated for bumps and bruises and suffered no serious physical injuries, the family would certainly be justified hiring a personal injury lawyer and not only suing whoever manages the building, but also the city service responsible for moving homeless families out of city shelters and into private buildings. According to the New’s report, many of the DHS buildings are old and plagued by housing code violations. The Salgados’ building has 65 open housing code violations, city records show. Nearly a third of those were the most hazardous type, including several apartments that tested positive for lead paint.
I was surprised to see an editorial in The New York Times today that took a position against tort reform. I’ve been writing letters to the editor, and op-ed articles arguing in support of an individual’s right to seek compensation for harms done to them by negligent, callous corporate interests. I’ve never even so much have gotten a rejection from letter from the Times. My words seem to have always fallen into some kind of big, black editorial hole.
i wonder what a New York personal injury lawyer could do for the widow of poor Mr. Ryan? The 35-year-old elevator repair man was moving into a new Bronx apartment building and died after he stepped backwards with a mattress into what he thought was an elevator and plunged down an empty shaft. His wife was holding the other side – and could only watch in horror as her husband disappeared down the pitch-black shaft. Police said he pried the building’s freight elevator open to help him with the move. The elevators were last inspected in January and no problem were found.