Feldman, Kronfeld & Beatty Law Blog

Lots of stuff

The New York Post reported that on December 30, 2014, a fire broke out in an operating room and likely burned the patient at NYU Langone Medical Center. Because of a communications failure between the surgeon and anesthesiologist, who wasn’t aware that a certain instrument would be used in the presence of oxygen, somehow the instrument caused a fire.

Fires at surgical sites are rare, but the presence of pure oxygen increases the danger of oxygen fires. On April 7, 2009, Hazel Volke was undergoing surgery when a hair within the surgical field, combined with Chloraprep and the oxygen that Ms.
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A go-kart injury can change your life. According to the U.
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The New York Post reported today about a beauty parlor treatment gone awry. A customer wanted to have his eyelashes tinted. The esthetician, who worked at Benefit Cosmetics Brows-A-Go-Go on Lexington Avenue and East 63rd Street, had never been trained to use the product and should have first tested it on his skin, court papers said. The man noticed the next day that his eyes were read and full of pus, and he noticed what appeared to be a burn mark under his cornea.
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With MMA now on the road to being legal in New York, with legal fights like boxing matches, it's important to realize what the consequences will be for the fighters and their families. In Dublin, a mixed martial arts fight from Portugal died from injuries sustained three days ago, during a fight. The fight authorities stopped the fight, the fighter was assessed by doctors and medical staff at the onsite medical office, and transported to the hospital. Even still, this was not enough.

New York has very stringent rules regarding the ability for individuals who are injured playing in sports to recover in Court for their injuries.
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 Mr. Chin was a bus driver when he was struck broadside by another vehicle. The question put to the jury was only damages. He suffered two lumbar herniations, and a fracture and a ligament tear on his non-dominant hand. He missed approximately eight months on the job, which was a past lost wage claim of $59,000.
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The weather report for this weekend read that gusts of up to 60 miles per hour were to be expected for the New York City area. The Department of Buildings issued a warning for crane operators, contractors, and property owners that the high winds could cause hazardous conditions. High winds this year have caused cranes to collapse, windows to fall of buildings, and sometimes actually caused people to lose balance and fall. People have been injured or killed in these foreseeable accidents. If you, or a family member, have been injured as a result of high winds in the New York City area, please call the experienced personal injury trial lawyers at Feldman, Kronfeld & Beatty at (212) 425-0230 or at info@fkbeatty.
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Two cases are of particular interest, both decided today:

In Chilinski v. LMJ Contracting, Inc.
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On Christmas Eve, Olegario Pabon tripped over a mislevelled elevator in his apartment building. Instead of stopping flush to the floor, the elevator wasn't level and Mr. Pabon tripped over the lip. He fell and hit his head. He crawled from the elevator to an apartment of another tenant, who called 911.
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On January 23, 2005, on 236 East 178th Street, a fire began on the fourth floor. Six firefighters, including Lt. Curtis Meyran, and John Bellow, responded to the call. On the fourth floor, the firefighters became trapped in a warren of rooms caused by two tenants, Caridad Coste and Rafaele Castillo. All six were forced to jump out of a window, and Curtis and John plunged to their deaths. Joseph DiBernardo, another, whose heels and feet were crushed by the impact, died six years later. The other three suffered injuries that will haunt them for the rest of their life.

On Monday, in one of the largest verdicts ever against New York City, a Bronx jury found it and the landlord of the building responsible, and ordered them to pay $183 million. The jury assigned 80% of the blame to the city, which means New York City will have to pay the families of those two firefighters $146 million for its failure to equip the firefighters with personal safety ropes that would have let the men escape from the burning building.

For the second time this year, a terrible accident occurred that could only be explained by the negligence of a building's owner or elevator operator's negligence: a 25-year old man was trapped, half inside, and half outside, an elevator, and squeezed to death.

The building was 131 Broome Street, a tower of Section 8 housing, with elevators that have always had trouble. The elevators occasionally "jumped", the rooftop emergency hatches didn't open, and the tenants association president was stuck between two floors in one of the other towers associated with 131 Broome Street. The Department of Buildings had three unresolved elevator violations.

On New Year's Eve, at approximately 11:45 PM, the elevator door was open when it suddenly started to drop. Stephen Hewett-Brown heroically pushed Erudi Sanchez out of the way of the dropping elevator, saying "Happy New Year," when the elevator dropped further, trapping Mr. Hewett-Brown between the floor and the ceiling of the elevator. The head of the family, and the breadwinner for years, killed by a faulty elevator.

Elevator accidents are uncommon, but they can sometimes cause terribly and long-lasting injuries. Whether it's as minor as misleveling or as major as catching people as they enter or exit, anyone who is the victim of an elevator accident should call an experienced trial lawyer to discuss their rights or possible claims. It should be noted that courts in New York consider misleveling elevators and some other elevator accidents to be so extreme that any injury that comes from such accidents must be the elevator's fault, under the theory of res ipsa loquitur. The elevator accident attorneys at Feldman, Kronfeld & Beatty are available at (212) 425-0230 or at info@fkbeatty.com to discuss with you potential claims you may have if you are injured by an elevator.