Personal Injury Attorneys - Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and the Bronx

Homeowners have until June 1, 2009 to call 3-1-1 to request an inspection of their retaining walls by a Buildings Inspector without penalty of violation under the New York City Department of Buildings' annual No-Penalty Retaining Wall Inspection Program. Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri launched this years program on March 25, 2009. During the inspection, Building Inspectors will conduct visual examinations of retaining walls and record structural conditions such as bulging, displaced material, or leaning of the wall. If repair is needed or violating conditions that are not immediately unsafe are found on walls, the Buildings Department will defer issuing violations until June 1, 2009 to allow property owners time to take corrective action. If immediately-dangerous conditions are found upon inspection, the Buildings Department will take immediate action to force correction of the unsafe condition. Retaining walls are designed to hold back soil that would move

Last week was the annual construction safety week. The weeks schedule of events included seminars and events that were free of charge and open to the public. The seminars included: Safety Harness Giveaway & Worker Safety Training; How to Identify and Hire a Licensed Contractor; Homeowners' Night: Resolving ECB Violations & Illegal Conversions; Construction, Demolition, & Abatement Operations; How to Obtain the New C-Class Hoisting Operators License; High Risk Construction Study: Cranes - Findings & Recommendations; High Risk Construction Study: Excavations - Findings & Recommendations; High Risk Construction Study: Concrete - Findings & Recommendations; Introduction to the New NYC Construction Codes;

In Ferluckaj v. Goldman Sachs & Co., --- N.E.2d ----, 2009 WL 856304, 2009 N.Y. Slip Op. 02483(decided April 02, 2009), the Court of Appeals declined to apply New Yorks Scaffold Law (Labor Law 240(1)) to a worker who was injured while cleaning an interior window as part of the preparation of new office space leased by Goldman Sachs & Co. The worker fell off a desk on which she was standing while cleaning the inside of an office building window. The Court found that Goldman did not hire plaintiffs employer to clean the window and that Goldman exercised no control over plaintiffs work. Thus the Supreme Court and the Appellate Division erred in denying Goldmans motion for summary judgment. The Court of Appeals noted that Labor Law 240(1) by its terms places a duty on contrac

The New York City Buildings Department and Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri recently announced a series of changes in the way high-risk construction will be regulated and carried out in New York City. These changes are based on 41 recommendations developed during the unprecedented $4 million study of crane, hoist, excavation, and concrete operations launched last year in response to an increase in construction accidents. Crane & Hoist Operations The recommendations related to crane operations and inspections are: 1. Tracking System for Critical Crane Parts. Establish procedures to track critical components of tower cranes, including but not limited to the turntable, a-frame, machine deck, climbing frame, and basi

Oftentimes it seems that when the dust settles, accidents that appeared to come out of the blue were in fact wholly predictable because someone tried to cut a corner or save money in the face of a known danger. Such may have been the case in a construction accident when a crane collapsed last May on East 91st Street in Manhattan. It has recently been reported that 10 months before the accident a Chinese company hired to repair a critical component involved in the fatal crane collapse warned the cranes owner that it was concerned that it did not know the proper welding techniques for the damaged bearing ring. Nevertheless, the owner, New York Crane and Equipment Corp., authorized the Chinese company, RTR Bearings, in July 2007 to make the welds on the tower cranes damaged turntable. Why? Apparently because the Chinese company proposed doing the job for $20,000, compared to an Ohio company, Avon Bearings, which said the job

On January 5, 2009, the master rigger involved in the 200-ft-high tower crane that collapsed at a Midtown high-rise site March 15, 2008, killing six workers and a civilian, was indicted on multiple charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, assault and reckless endangerment. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau also said William Rapetti and his firm Rapetti Rigging Services Inc., Massapequa Park, N.Y., failed to file tax returns for 2006 and 2007. The following day, another contractor official at the troubled Deutsche Bank asbestos-abatement and demolition site near Ground Zero was indicted in connection with a 2007 fire at the Deutsche Bank Building that trapped and killed two city firefighters.

The federal government says that the hazards of falling are the biggest safety problem at New York City construction sites after random inspections during a two-week enhanced enforcement effort this past summer. As part of its New York City construction safety task force, OSHA detailed 12 inspectors to conduct 96 safety inspections at 46 construction sites throughout the city from June 23 to July 3. The sites were randomly selected to encompass a cross-section of high-risk construction activities including tower cranes, high-rise construction, poured-in-place concrete operations, steel erection, gut-rehab and other high-risk construction activities. Citations were issued to 60 contractors for 129 violations with a total of $247,400 in proposed fines after inspecting 46 sites in June and July. The major categories of violations cited included fall hazards (39 - nearly a third of the violations), electrical safety (29), scaffolds (17), cranes and rigging (13), welding/

The safety of New Yorkers working at or living near construction sites has remained paramount following the crane collapses this past March and May that killed a total of 9 people. Stemming partly from corruption allegations that were first disclosed in the summer when the citys acting chief crane inspector was arrested on charges of receiving bribes, the New York City Buildings Department announced on October 6, 2008, that it was overhauling its procedures on how the city issues licenses to some crane operators. The city said that the written and practical tests for lower-level mobile crane operators licenses (called Class C Hoist Machine Operator licenses) will be given by a nationally accredited nonprofit group, the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators, instead of the Buil

The New York City crane collapses of March 15, 2008, and May 30, 2008, and the collapse of a 20-foot crane section in Miami that fell 30 stories, killing two construction workers and injuring five, set off an alarm within the construction community and city dwellers. An in-depth report on U.S. crane fatalities made by The Center for Construction Research and Training in response to these incidents found the number of crane-related deaths among construction workers is significant, with an average of 22 workers killed annually. The reports findings, released this past June, used Bureau of Labor Statistics worker fatality data from 1992 to 2006 on construction workers: the numbers and causes of death, the trades of workers involved, the size of employers, and types of cranes involved. The CPWRs website advises that the report will undergo a revision with new data in the near future. A total of 323 construction worker deaths involving 307 crane incidents were identi

Two firefighters, Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33, died in the fire that broke out from a discarded cigarette butt in the former Deutsche Bank building fire of August 18th, 2007 during the demolition of the building. After the death of a firefighter, the Fire Department always empanels a team to study any problems that might have contributed to the death. A 176-page report written by safety chiefs investigating the blaze was made public this past Thursday, August 21st. A grand jury investigating the blaze is expected to issue indictments next month. Among the findings and recommendations made were the following: FDNY had not been conducting mandatory 15-day inspections of the site which may have lead to firefighters being unaware of the broken standpipe and other safety hazards like sealed stairwells and busted sprinklers. Thre