On March 8, 2010, two individuals and two corporations were indicted on criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter and other charges related to the May 30, 2008 crane collapse in New York City that killed two people and seriously injured a third.  The indictment describes the callous indifference to safety by the defendants who decided, in an effort to lessen the down-time of and lost rental income from a broken crane, to use a cheaper and quicker means of repair from a Chinese company whose qualifications had not been verified.  The collapse of the crane was caused by the failure of a structural weld in the crane’s turntable, a mechanism that enables the upper portions of the crane to swivel.  The weld failure caused the crane’s cab, boom, and other upper sections to break off and fall to the sidewalk and street from an elevation of approximately 200 feet. (more…)

Last month there were two fires in Long Island schools.  Just days before there was a fire in Riverhead Charter School, South Bay Elementary School in West Babylon was destroyed by fire, forcing relocation of its classes to a nearby church. The school was built in the early 1950s. Fire sprinklers were not required at that time. Since then, updated building codes in New York and other states require sprinklers in school spaces of more than 20,000 square feet. But sprinklers are not required in schools built before the code was changed. In addition, the 20,000 square foot rule is commonly skirted by designing schools in sections that are smaller than 20,000 square feet within fire-resistant walls. So where does that leave our children? (more…)

There I was in the train station, reading the newspaper while waiting for my train, when I heard a man in a loud voice say “Representative”. I turned to see a man using a pay phone and empathized with his plight to get a live person on the other end of the line. But then the man stated and spelled his name for the “representative”, said he was going to give his social security number and then did so in its entirety, and finally blurted out his date of birth. Can anybody say “identity theft”? Yet none of it seemed to phase the man, who was just trying to obtain information about how certain stocks were doing in the market that day. (more…)

On July 30, 2002 legislation requiring the installation of carbon monoxide detectors in all new residential construction in New York was signed into law. The law required new construction to contain at least one carbon monoxide detector. But spurred by the tragic death of Amanda Hansen, a 16-year-old West Seneca, NY girl who died January 20, 2009 from carbon monoxide poisoning from a defective boiler while sleeping at a friend’s house, “Amanda’s Law” went into effect on February 22, 2010. It requires essentially all residences, both new and existing, to have a carbon monoxide alarm installed, and new construction to sometimes have more than one. (more…)

One of our negligent security cases, Benson v. Monte Carlo, LLC, (Nassau County, Supreme Court Index # 016489/2007) made the front page of today’s New York Law Journal.  We successfully opposed the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, and an article appears in the newspaper discussing the decision of Hon. Thomas Feinman, dated February 23, 2010, that denied the motion.  Our client was assaulted (stabbed and sustaining a broken ankle requiring surgery) in the courtyard of the building where he resided while trying to protect his wife and son from a group of men who were trespassing and drinking in the courtyard.  We were able to defeat the motion largely in part due to our investigation which revealed that police had been to the premises 188 times in the previous five years.  The Decision and Order is included below. (more…)

When considering the risk of young children choking, thoughts tend to center more upon toys than upon food.   But that can cause the risk of choking on food to be overlooked.  Statistics currently on the website of the Centers for Disease Control state that in 2000, 160 children ages 14 years or younger died from an obstruction of the respiratory tract due to inhaled or ingested foreign bodies. Of these, 41% were caused by food items and 59% by nonfood objects.  For every choking-related death, there are more than 100 visits to U.S. emergency departments.  The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), noting that many of the prevention strategies currently in place to prevent choking on toys have not yet been implemented to prevent choking on food, issued a policy statement yesterday (more…)

It is a long-standing rule in New York that a child does not have a legally cognizable claim for damages against his parent for negligent supervision.  A major impact of this rule upon personal injury practice is that it precludes a defendant in a case brought on behalf of a minor from bringing a claim (by either a counterclaim or a third-party impleader) against the minor’s parent for contribution on the basis of negligent supervision.  It would not be difficult in almost any situation for a defendant to concoct a theory as to how a parent, whether present at the accident scene or not, could have done something that somehow might have prevented the accident from occurring.  One can easily imagine the tension between parent and child in such a circumstance.  In fact, the parent could easily be deterred from pursuing the case on behalf of his or her child at all. (more…)

New York City Buildings Commissioner announced an 84% decrease in fatal construction-related accidents in New York City in 2009 when compared to the previous year. However, the total number of construction-related accidents and injuries rose in 2009. The Department attributes the increase primarily to more accident reporting by industry members. The total number of reported construction accidents rose from 151 in 2008 to 224 in 2009, and the total number of reported injuries rose from 178 in 2008 to 246 in 2009. (more…)

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) directed the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to assess and report to the House and Senate enforcement efforts, difficulties encountered, as well as recommendations for improvement to the lower numerical level limits for lead content of children’s products the CPSIA established. The CPSC issued its report on January 15, 2010, noting that it has continued to find excessive lead levels in children’s toys and products.  Most of the lead content violations were identified by screening children’s products at ports using x-ray fluorescence (XRF) technology. In these cases, the violative products were seized and never entered into the U.S. marketplace.  (more…)

New York City didn’t get the snowstorm forecasted for this past weekend, but the City Department of Buildings issued what’s become its customary and standard warning to contractors to secure construction sites when the forecast calls for severe weather and gusts of high winds. A review of the Buildings Department’s website reveals that it has been routinely issuing such advisories on-line for several years. Yet just 2 weeks ago a 15-block area near City Hall Park was closed to pedestrians and traffic after high winds scattered debris from a nearby construction site where a 77-story tower is being built on Spruce Street.  A piece of metal was found two blocks away at City Hall Park.  (more…)