If you’re like me, you wouldn’t mind being Spiderman. Hey, he’s got a cool way of getting around, shooting spider-gook from his wrists and swinging around town. Beats driving in city traffic.
But every job has its drawbacks, even Spiderman’s. We learned this week that he plummeted 30 feet during Monday night’s performance of the Broadway production, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”. Doctors say he is in serious condition, with broken ribs and internal bleeding.
Little is known about how this accident happened. We do know, however, that somehow the wire he was swinging from failed. (In this Broadway show, he was swinging from wires rather than his spider-gook — go figure!) We do not know whether the wire failed because it snapped or because it became unfastened. Either way, it appears certain that Spiderman was the victim of someone’s negligence (unless it was Green Goblin’s sabotage).
Who could Spiderman sue? If the wire snapped, he may have a New York defective product (product liability) claim against the manufacturer. If stagehands failed to properly fasten the wire, he could have a New York negligence claim against them and their employer. There are all kinds of variations on these possibilities; maybe someone negligently failed to instruct or train the stagehands in the art of wire fastening, or someone neglected to properly inspect the wire before use, or perhaps the manufacture failed to provide proper warnings, or warranted the wire for greater weight than it could hold. A New York accident lawyer should thoroughly investigate all these possibilities so he can catch all possible villains in his legal web.
Is it possible that our superhero was a victim of a mere “accident”? Is it possible that everyone did everything right and that this accident just “happened”? No. That’s not possible. Almost all “accidents” are caused by someone’s carelessness. This one is no different. Someone, somewhere, somehow screwed up. In fact, news sources say that the Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Actors Equity representatives have already recommended new safety measures to prevent a repeat. I wish I Knew what those new measures were, because that would tell me who did what wrong.
But the show must go on. We wish the fallen Spiderman a speedy, full recovery, and we hope the producers and others on the set have learned some valuable safety lessons so as to avoid injuring other spidermen.
Keep safe!
Mike Bersani
Email me at: bersani@mbk-law.com I’d love to hear from you!
Michael G. Bersani, Esq.