NY Accident Lawyers Blog

The New York Times reported today that New York City Transit let the brick ceiling of one of the city’s oldest subway stations hang over riders’ heads — on the brink of collapse — for 10 years without taking necessary action.

Typical of the disastrous way the Transit Authority manages mass transport in the city, it’s no surpise.

According to the report, no one had stepped up and said we’ve got to get repairs done quickly.  One phrase that one of the managers used was, they lost track of it.

So forget about cost savings now that subway and bus schedules have been cut back, further increasing commuter misery in the city.  All of the suspected savings will be eventually be eaten up by personal injury law suits that result from the incompetence transit authority management, as was the case here.

That collapse, on Aug. 16, 2009, at the 181st Street Station  on the No. 1 line, is one of three that the inspector general cited in saying that a recent audit showed systemic weaknesses in the adequacy of N.Y.C. Transit’s station inspection programs.

The Times quoted a spokesman in the inspector general’s office who said the collapse was a failure to communicate between several divisions in New York City Transit that are separately responsible for construction and maintenance at subway stations.

During a rehabilitation project in 1999, a team of workers with New York City Transit’s department of capital program management identified weaknesses in the ceiling and ordered the installation of temporary wooden scaffolding to protect commuters. The division was also supposed to hire a consultant  to repair the ceiling permanently. That did not happen.

In 2006, attention returned to the damaged ceiling: some transit agency employees worried that the wooden structure might catch fire. When an inspector climbed onto the scaffolding, he discovered that more of the ceiling had deteriorated. Repeated requests to repair the ceiling permanently did not receive approval until June 2009. The work was scheduled to begin in October 2009, but it was not in time.

The inspector general’s audit also led to the discovery of two other collapses, a ceiling collapse at the Bowling Green station of the No. 4 and 5 lines, and a platform collapse at the 18th Avenue station of the F line.

They did it with cigarettes.  Why not another known killer?  The $63 billion salty food (aka specialty food) industry.

The New York Daily News reported today that recent warnings by Mayor Bloomberg and the AMA didn’t seem to worry many of the 2,400 exhibitors at the Javits Center exhibition, since salt is as vital to chips, dips, cakes and cheeses as bats are to baseball.

So, how do the companies try to lose the bad effects of sodium while keeping the flavor?

Some are gambling on substitutes – like bacon salt.  And, “baconnaise” and bacon-flavored lip balm.   But salt is the big seller.

Others say the solution is healthier salt.

The AMA and the mayor are saying what is bad for you is refined salt.

According to industry mouth pieces, people see articles on the effect of too much sodium and they think, ‘Oh, salt will kill you. ”No, salt won’t, said an industry flack.  ”Pure, unrefined salt is good for you.”

Once again, as with tobacco products, nothing will be done until top trial lawyers get involved on behalf of clients sickened, or worse, by the salty food industry

Taking the bus to Atlantic City might be the gamble of your life.

The New York Daily News reported today that two dozen people were injured, three of them critically, after a crowded bus crashed on its way from Chinatown to Atlantic City.

The driver of the Brooklyn-based Sun Lee Bus was also hurt after crashing into a car on Route 40 in southern New Jersey.

He and two others were listed in critical condition in the trauma unit at Atlantic City Medical Center after the 11:45 a.m. wreck.

A total of 24 people aboard the bus were injured.  Look for personal injury law suits on the behalf of the injured passengers to be filed in the next 24 hours.

Another 25 uninjured passengers were taken to the Tropicana Casino and Resort. Love said the bus was apparently headed to the casinos from Chinatown.

Summer is here and with it comes the pleasures and perils of bathing in the Atlantic Ocean.

The second fatality of the year occured tragically yesterday according to The New York Daily News when a 12-year-old girl, swimming at a Long Island beach with no lifeguards, was swept to her death by a rip tide as a her Harlem school’s summer field trip ended in tragedy.

There were no lifeguards on duty when the students went into the water to beat the 81-degree heat on their Long Island day trip.

The question I’m sure on everyone’s mind is what were her teachers and parents thinking?  How grossly irresponsible it was to take a pre-teen class trip to an unguarded beach on the Atlantic Ocean.  How impossibly stupid can these people be?  This is clearly a case of criminal bad judgment on the part of the organizers of this class trip.  The question is who pays for the lost life of this child?  For a change, this tragedy isn’t the fault of the city, which had placed signs all over the beach warning beach goers to stay out of the water when the lifeguards are not on duty.  The young girl was submerged for 90 minutes after classmates noticed she had disappeared.

More than three dozen teachers, firefighters and beach workers launched a frantic hunt for the doomed girl, who came to the beach for the day with about two dozen other students.

One teacher was pulled from the water by rescuers after she nearly drowned while desperately looking for the child. Suriel was rushed to Long Beach Medical Center around noon once she was found in the water.

By the time they found her, it was too late, according to the News report.

There were no lifeguards on duty that day.  According to The Daily News, nobody can remember how many years it’s been since somebody drowned on that beach when the lifeguards are on duty.

A New York construction worker died today while moving a stuffed container filled with at least 90 pounds of train spikes.  He slipped, fell and landed on the third rail, according to a report today in the NY Daily News

The bukky design of the container, and the formidable weight of the load, are among a series of 11 safety complaints raised in the preliminary report on the track workers’ tragic death.

According to the worker’s New York construction accident lawyer, these issues could very well be presented to a jury as to liability or fault for the wrongful death.

The Office of System Safety Report doesn’t place blame or fault. It does identify actions the agency should take to make work sites safe – including providing workers with spike containers with handles so they can be moved more easily and safely and limiting the weight to 51 pounds.

A blaze that killed two young Queens boys – one of them an 8-year-old who dashed back in the fire to find his baby brother – was likely sparked by a light fixture, FDNY officials said Friday.

We read tragic stories like  this every day but this one really hurts.  I’m sure I’m not the only one in the city whose heart is aching for this child and his family.

According to The New York Daily News, fire marshals believe a dangling light landed on combustible materials – possibly a stack of papers – and its heat ignited the Thursday morning blaze.

Eight year old Tyanthony Duckette got separated from his grandmother in the blaze as they tried to flee the burning Springfield Gardens home and ran back inside for 1-year-old brother Daniel Wilson.

He reached his younger sibling but the boys were soon overcome by the choking smoke.

Firefigthers performed CPR on the children on the sidewalk in front of the 182nd St. home and rushed them to Jamaica Hospital but the boys could not be revived.

Investigators were initially exploring whether the children had accidentally sparked the blaze themselves. Fire marshals do not believe the boys were playing with the light fixture.

The home did not have any working smoke detectors, FDNY officials said.

I hope the childrens’ family hire a top NY premises liability lawyer with lots of engineering experience to get to the bottom of this tragedy and see to it that justice is done.

New York personal injury lawyers involved in the case urged sick 9/11 first responders to accept the newest settlement Wednesday night — a nearly $700 million compensation package, according to the New York Daily News.

A town hall-style meeting was set up to offer the roughly 10,000 plaintiffs an opportunity to ask questions about the settlement and get more information from the lawyers behind it.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, to me is a no-brainer,” said Kenneth Feinberg, who runs the 9/11 victim compensation fund and was recently appointed by President Obama  to oversee settlement claims against BP. “I would urge everyone of you who’s waited years too long to finally get something in terms of compensation, something meaningful.”

The pact must be approved by 95% of the plaintiffs and already has the blessing of the federal judge who rejected the last offering as too paltry.

Plaintiffs at last night’s meeting at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square seemed less convinced.

Some litigants were already dead set against the settlement due to the severity of their illnesses.

The New York Daily News reported today that while on routine patrol on a residential block of Jamaica, Queens, in broad daylight one afternoon last week, two members of the 103rd Precinct recovered five guns of different calibers after a dozen shots rang out, killing one man.

Duly noted by the officers is the fact that five illegal, operable, loaded guns are not on the street,

There absence, to some, in a city plagued with illegal firearms of every gauge and caliber, is tantamount to the loss of grains of sand on the beach.

Obtaioning handguns and other assault weapons on city streets is no more difficult than finding a slice of pizza.  Most guns are sold illegally.  And there are severe fines and penalties for both the seller and the buyer.

But some guns used to commit serious, deadly crimes in our city are sold by dealers in retail store settings, legally, which doesn’t make the gun that’s been sold any safer and the owner any more trustworthy.

I would like to see the City of New York file a negligence lawsuit against these merchants and enlist the support of the city’s best personal injury lawyers to go after them in court and milk them for all they’re worth.

I’m surprised this step hasn’t already been taken.  It’s long since due, in my opinion.

The New York Daily News reported today that officials announced changes to the rejected compensation package for sickened 9/11 first responders, giving the heroes an additional $125 million.

The new plan comes three months after a Manhattan Federal rejected a proposed settlement between New York City and sick workers in part because lawyers would pocket too much of the money.

I would imagine the judge didn’t take into account the fact that lawyers for the first responders have no doubt been working countless hours for years for no compensation, and have expended countless dollars of their own money in anticipation of the possibility of winning the cases for their clients.  This story in the News doesn’t tell the whole story of the big risk, big reward life of New York personal injury lawyers.

The first proposal gave lawyers who represent 10,000 sick workers $200 million of the roughly $600 million settlement. Most plaintiffs are represented by the Manhattan law firm Worby Groner Edelman & Napoli Bern.

The Daily News first reported in May that lawyers there begrudgingly agreed to cap fees at 25%, reducing their cut of the money by about $50 million.

The News quoted officials as saying, “Under this settlement, those claiming debilitating respiratory illnesses such as severe asthma, contracted by a non-smoker within seven months of exposure at the World Trade Center site and surrounding areas, could receive between $800,000 and $1,050,000.”

“Approximately $1.5 million could go to compensate claims of death determined to be caused by the post 9/11 operations,” the statement said.

The new settlement still needs to be approved by Judge Hellerstein, who will hold a public hearing on June 23 to hear from all parties in the settlement.

Plaintiffs will have until September 30, 2010 to review the settlement. A total of 95% of plaintiffs will have to opt-in for the deal to go through.

Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard bankrolled a federal suit that says the ads produced by the City depicting images of blackened lungs, decaying teeth and a brain addled by a paralyzing stroke with the message Quit Smoking Now – which must be posted near cash registers – are unconstitutional.

The irony is these purveyors of death in a package don’t seem to be too concerned any longer with personal injury and class action suits filed by people who lives have been ruined by big tobacco’s pernicious, deadly product.  Haven’t these murderers seen enough of the inside of a courtroom and the attempts by top personal injury lawyers to win big dollars for their client?

The suit in Manhattan Federal Court says only the feds can mandate warnings on smoking risks.

The “images of diseased body parts” at bodegas and newsstands amount to advocacy – and forcing the shopkeepers to post them violates the First Amendment, according to filing.

The suit was joined by two Queens stores and two retail groups including the state Association of Convenience Stores.

“Our customers are turned off by the signs – disgusted by them, nauseated by them,” said association president Jim Calvin.  Good, I say, that’s exactly what they were designed to do.  And, I hope it works.

“And these aren’t people who came in to buy tobacco. They came to buy milk or lottery tickets and were so turned off, vowed not to come back.”  Why do I not believe this guy for a minute?  Pictures of damages caused by smoking are nothing new.  Such images have been seen in print and on television for years.

A Law Department spokeswoman said city lawyers are confident the posters will be upheld.

Whether they’re effective is a matter of public debate.