NY Accident Lawyers Blog

Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times wrote another brilliant Op Ed piece today about a Catholic nun who had recently been excommunicated from the church for saving a woman’s life.

My jaw dropped as he described the circumstances surrounding the church’s action.

The good sister works in a hospital in Phoenix, AZ.  She is beloved by the staff for the extraordinary contributions she has made in lives of the both her colleagues, who refer to her as a “saint,” and the patients she cares for.

As a top hospital administrator, she recently sat on a special committee at that was formed to decided whether or not to abort an 11-week-old fetus that, by all accounts, would have killed the mother, who was a patient at the hospital, if it wasn’t removed from her womb.  Her vote was part of the unanimous decision by the team doctors on the committee to operate and end the pregnancy.

Turns out, the local Catholic Bishop heard about the ruling and saw to it that the sister be excommunicated — not just reprimanded — excommunicated from the church for siding with the mother’s life, over the life of the fetus.  In effect, she was thrown out of the church she served with dignity, and strength, and love and selflessness for decades.

The same Catholic Church that has attempted to hide pedophile priests by the hundreds.  Then only took steps to correct the horrible situation because they got caught.  But not one of these perv priests, or their enablers, has been excommunicated like this nun.

Just reading this story made my skin crawl.  My only wish — and I don’t know why this hasn’t happened as yet — is for the victims of this abuse to come forward and sue the Catholic church for negligence, in criminal court, where these cases belong.  And, make these old pampered men pay for their crimes.

Another dirt cheap and dirt-cheaply made product from China has been recalled by the U.S. government, according to a report today by the Associated Press.

This time it’s 44,000 pink baby blankets with a potentially lethal giraffe decoration that poses a choking hazard for infants.

Fortunately, there have been no reported incidences of harm to a child.  But should there be, families should direct their personal injury lawyers to contact the importer who sells them, NY garment district company by the name of Rishta & Rishta.

Rashti & Rashti is recalling the Chinese-made giraffe blankets, which were  sold at Target stores between January and August of 2009. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said that pieces of the giraffe’s horns can fall off.

Rashti & Rashti sells its own and licensed baby products at retailers including Kmart, Target and Babies R Us.

The commission said consumers should call Rashti & Rashti for a refund. The 14-inch-by-14-inch blankets were sold for about $9 each.

For what most New Yorkers is nothing more than a daily slog through the ongoing rumbling disaster we call the subways, there seems to be no cure, no relief and no way to right a chaotic, inept, system.

This time, according to today’s New York Daily News, it’s angry politicians and straphangers who are blasting NYC Transit for taking more than four years to get hundreds of security cameras working properly.

“It defies imagination,” said City Council member James Vacca, who heads the transportation committee.  No it doesn’t Mr. Vacca, not if you’ve been riding these trains for as long as I have. It’s business as usual.

The Daily News reported that 910 cameras installed in 32 stations still aren’t hooked up to recording devices, at an ever-growing cost of $23,000 per camera.

Gov. Patterson called the camera gaffe “a serious problem….For every camera that’s not working, it’s a grim invitation to crime in the subway.”

As in the past,  it is probably going to take someone getting hurt, or killed, because of the faulty cameras before the the transit authority will properly address the problem.  Actually, it will probably take the work of some top flight personal injury lawyers on behalf of those who get injured to hit the MTA where it really hurts, in the pocketbook, before anything gets done.

MTA officials admitted that nearly nine years after 9/11, only 46% of the subway’s 4,100 cameras are wired to recording devices.

Straphangers, increasingly worried about another terror attack, said they’re fed up.

Cameras played a role in helping to nab Faisal Shazad, the Pakistani-born man accused of plotting to blow up a car bomb in Times Square two weeks ago.

The latest incident involving the crash of a Staten Island ferry provides an interesting contrast on how safety measures have changed for the better since 2003, when a ferry smashed into the terminal at full speed and killed 11 people after its captain passed out at the helm.

New Yorkers might recall the captain of the earlier ferry was found to have high levels of alcohol and painkillers in his blood.  It was this damning finding, among others, that ended up costing the city dearly in civil court as injury victims and the relatives of those who died were awarded damages in the tens-of-millions of dollars.

I have to believe that the lesson learned by the city the last time is, at least in part, thanks to the tireless efforts of some of  New York’s top personal injury lawyers who forced the city to take steps to prevent the same mistakes from happening again, or pay the piper.

According to a report in The New York Daily News today, drug tests showed that all 18 crew members aboard the Andrew J. Barberi ferry were sober during the weekend crash that injured 37 passengers.

The entire crew passed alcohol tests shortly after the ill-fated ferry smashed into the Staten Island terminal on Saturday morning, but results of the drug screenings were not released until Monday.

The New York Times reported today that the City of New York is about to force landlords to make repairs to buildings — most in the poorest sections of the city — that actually are making their tenants sick.

The city hopes to significantly curtail the spread of lung disease, particularly asthma, by forcing landlords at some of the most badly maintained buildings to clean up their premises.

Under legislation to be introduced on Wednesday, the Council would require owners of 175 apartment buildings to take steps to eliminate garbage, mold and vermin — all factors that have been linked to asthma.

I would suggest that in addition to the city’s effort to force the hand of unscrupulous landlords that they also hand to tenants a list of names of some of the top personal injury lawyers in the city and suggest to anyone with a valid health complaint that they contact one of the lawyers and inquire about their civil rights.

By taking this action, the owners of these building may have a lot more to pay for than just the repairs on their filthy, dangerous buildings.

According the the Times, if landlords do not comply, the city would file liens against the properties, effectively billing landlords for the work required.

The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said swift action was needed to stop the public health crisis caused by asthma, which affects more than 400,000 New Yorkers, many of them children.

The Daily News reported today that an overheated electrical junction box caused a deadly seven-alarm fire in Chinatown last month.

Fire marshals said the metal box, which connected the electrical cables that fed power to the building, was fixed into the rear of the first floor at 283 Grand St. on the night of April 11.

The paper said that sparks or heat from the small box ignited a fire, which then quickly spread to apartments on the five floors above. Resident Sing Ho, 87, was killed and 30 firefighters and EMTs were injured.

Three other residents were also injured. More than 200 residents of several buildings on Grand St. had to seek emergency shelter after the blaze tore through an entire city block.

Marshals said the junction box was located in what appeared to be a storage area of a 99-cent store on the first floor of the century-old building.

Fire officials said they determined the cause by conducting several interviews with residents and “a painstaking forensic examination” of the building.

They focused their attention on the junction box after noticing melted copper wire feeding out of it.

Copper wire typically only melts because of a problem, such as a short, within the box and not as the result of an external flame.

I am familiar with a personal injury law firm, Gurfein Douglas, whose lawyers are also engineers and specialize in handling cases when injuries are caused by gadgets that don’t work properly.  I would recommend that the victims of this fire contact that law firm.

The New York Daily News reported today that Starbucks, the coffee guru franchise, has been sued by a customer who allegedly suffered second-degree burns after being served tea that was too hot.

According to the complaint, the plaintiff Zeynep Inanli was served tea that was unreasonably hot, in containers which were not safe, at a Starbucks store at 685 Third Avenue in Manhattan.

As a result of Starbucks’ negligence, the plaintiff suffered great physical pain and mental anguish, according to the News article, including the burns.

A New York personal injury attorney I spoke with about the case said that companies can be held liable for serving beverages that are too hot to handle, particularly if the vessel they are served in isn’t strong enough, or properly insulated to protect the customer from injury.

This case is not unfamiliar.  Retailers periodically face lawsuits for serving beverages at temperatures that customers say are too high.

In one well-known case, a jury in 1994 ordered McDonald’s Corp to pay $2.86 million to Stella Liebeck, an Albuquerque, New Mexico woman who claimed she scalded herself with the restaurant’s coffee.

The parties later settled.