When it rains it pours. And this week a storm of motorcycle accidents moved into Western New York State.
Case in point: A Cattaraugus man was killed Saturday night after he struck a ditch and was thrown from the bike. He was air-lifted by Mercy Flight to Erie County Medical Center, but died there from his injuries.
Earlier that same day, a motorcycle crashed in the 900 block of Sweeney Street in Buffalo killing the driver and injuring a passenger.
I read in the Syracuse Post Standard today that a 10-year-old skateboarder was hit by a car, and ended up pinned under it, at the intersection of Jasper Street and Highland Street in Syracuse. Firefighters had to jack up the car to free the unfortunate boarder. Fortunately, he suffered only a broken arm and some scrapes, which were treated at Upstate University Hospital. The experience must have been horrific, though. Imagine being stuck under a car!
As a Syracuse New York automobile accident lawyer, I have represented the parents of child-pedestrians with far worse injuries, including death. Nothing is harder for me than representing grieving or worried parents whose kids have been hurt or killed.
This recent Syracuse car-on-pedestrian (after all, a skateboarder is just a pedestrian on wheels!) collision should serve as a reminder to all motorists that “school’s out for summer” and this means more kids, all day long, running, biking and skate-boarding around on our City streets. During the school year, car-on-child pedestrian accidents are “clustered” between 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., but during the summer months children are struck by cars all day long, even into the long, light-enhanced evenings.
My hometown paper, the Geneva Finger Lakes Times, reports today on a boating accident that happened in Seneca Lake this past weekend. A 16-year-old Penn Yan girl was out on the Lake tubing when her hands got entangled in the ski rope that tethered the tube to the back of the boat. She suffered serious injuries to both hands. Surgeons at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester were unable to save one of her thumbs, despite several surgeries.
As the father of a teenager, I feel terrible for this kid, and her family.
You may think this accident was a “fluke”, but I don’t. Ski ropes can kill, main or severely injure, if they are not properly tied, secured or stored. Just a few years ago the Finger Lakes boating accident lawyers of Michaels Bersani Kalabanka handled a case where a ski rope that was partially in the water, but mostly coiled up on the boat deck, got wound up in the boat’s propeller, caught our client’s leg, and dragged her from the boat, into the water, and into the propeller. The doctors had to amputate her leg below the knee. We were able to get her a $1.5 million dollar settlement (but the money’s never enough!) from the insurance carrier for the boat owner who had failed to properly secure the rope.
I blogged just the other day about the Syracuse construction workers, employed by Apple Roofing, who were injured when a scaffold collapsed, bringing them down with it, at Binghamton University dormitory under construction. I talked about how New York’s special “Scaffold Law” (Labor Law 240) makes the Owner of the construction site (New York State and perhaps the New York Dormitory Authority) and the general contractor (LeChase Construction)on the job automatically liable for the fall and injuries.
Here I want to talk about how a smart New York construction accident lawyer would handle this case. He or she would get this case to a judge ASAP to rule that the Scaffold Law applies, and that the defendants are therefore automatically liable for the injuries! (You can do this through a procedure known as a “summary judgment motion”). Why the rush? Because once you establish, under New York law, that these guys are liable, 9% annual interest starts running on the money the injured construction workers are owed for their injuries. Now that’s a lot of interest in today’s weak economy. Try getting that on Wall Street today!
After “liability” is established on “summary judgment”, which is a no-brainer in this case, and interest starts running, getting the case to a jury on the remaining issues of medical expenses, lost income, and pain and suffering compensation, will take some time. In fact, you have to wait to see how well the injured worker heals before you even know how much to ask a jury for. But now at least you have interest running. The money is in the bank, and is cooking up 9% interest a year!
Scaffolding has only one purpose: To hold workers up safely while they work. And when it doesn’t do that, very bad things happen. I’m talking big injuries, or even death. That’s why, for generations, New York State has recognized the importance of having an iron-tight law to protect construction workers from the severe injuries, or death, caused by falls from scaffolds.
The Binghamton New York scaffold collapse, which injured six construction workers yesterday, is a prime example of how important New York’s “scaffold law” (Labor Law 240) is. The scaffolding had been erected at Binghamton University on the side of a dormitory under construction. It had not been up even 24 hours when it collapsed, taking six construction workers down with it. I can guaranty you that workers’ compensation will never be enough to fully compensate these injured construction workers. That’s why Labor Law 240, the “Scaffold Law”, is so handy for New York construction and scaffolding accident lawyers like me. This Statute makes it easy to get full and fair compensation for the victims of collapsing scaffolds.
The “Scaffold Law” says that the owner and general contractor (and sometimes others) of the construction project are AUTOMATICALLY liable (New York scaffold lawyers say “strictly liable”) to injured construction workers who fall from scaffolds. If the scaffold failed to do its job of holding the workers up safely, then they are liable, period. No excuses. No stories. No shifting the blame to others. (Well, there are a few exceptions, but I can’t see any that would be applicable on the facts of this case).
Here we go again with another all-too-typical, and tragic, Central New York motorcycle accident caused by motorists’ amazing ability to overlook, fail to see, and otherwise be oblivious to, motorcyclists. The Syracuse Post Standard reports that a Syracuse man died Tuesday in a motorcycle crash in the Town of Sennett, Cayuga County, not far from our main personal injury law office in Auburn, New York. The biker was riding a 2003 Honda westbound. on Grant Avenue, when the car, ignoring the motorcyclist’s right-of-way, turned left onto Grant from County House Road and cut him off. The unfortunate biker was unable to avoid impact with the left side of the car.
You are almost twice as likely to be involved in an accident if you are on a motorcycle as compared to in a car. Why? You guessed it – cars don’t see you and end up cutting you off or hitting you, just like this motorist did to this biker.
The motorcyclist’s family will have a strong wrongful death case against the owner and driver of the car that cut him off. Even though motorists tend to not see motorcycles, the law REQUIRES motorists to see them. The defense, “gee, I just didn’t see that motorcycle coming”, is no defense at all.
I have seen, in my Central New York personal injury law practice, too often and too close-up, horrendous boating injuries suffered because of unsafe boating practices in our otherwise-lovely Finger Lakes. That’s why I feel duty-bound to tell my readers about boating safety classes being offered FOR FREE in Cayuga County this month.
The Cayuga County Sherriff’s office has announced that it is offering 2 boater safety classes, one at the Owasco Fire House, Station 1, at 7174 Owasco Road, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on June 12, and the other from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 19 at the Scipio Fire House, 3550 State Route 34. Again, these safety classes are absolutely FREE, so how can you go wrong? To register, call the Sherriff’s office at 315-294-8145.
I won’t spoil the suspense of these classes, but guess what — driving a boat is NOT like driving a car! The rules are different, as are the safety concerns. Don’t just jump behind the wheel of a boat and assume you know what you are doing because you can drive a car — learn the rules and life-saving safety tips at these classes. And above all, absolutely FORCE young boaters under your control to sign up for this freebee. (Just like with cars, most boating accidents are caused by inexperienced and youthful drivers.)
Workplace injuries are, unfortunately, all too common. Work site fatalities are less common, but even one is one too many!. And when death-at-the-workplace happens to YOUR father, husband, wife or mother, it changes your life forever. That’s why our hearts go out to the family of the Herkimer County man who was killed today in Lincoln, New York at the Madison County landfill. The box of his dump truck had become stuck while he was dumping trash into the landfill. He was trying to dislodge the box when it fell off the truck and crushed him. Co-workers had to use a backhoe to lift the box off him.
As a Syracuse New York work place accident lawyer, I can’t read a story like this without wondering whose fault it was. Who is responsible? Usually accidents don’t just “happen”. Rather,my experience with work site accidents teaches me that almost always someone failed to follow safety rules.
This unfortunate worker was employed by Feher, a waste disposal company that operates in Syracuse, Utica, Watertown and Geneva. Feher has a less-than-perfect safety record. In 2007 a Feher truck ran over a Feher employee while he was collecting trash in Pompey. In 2009, a pedestrian was trapped under the wheel of a Feher truck.
Believe me, New York personal injury lawyers need their stress relief. And for me that means lots of vigorous exercise. Mostly I run and bike. I am training for a few short triathlons (swim-bike-run) this summer. I am participating in the Geneva, New York “Musselman” sprint triathlon as well as the Skaneateles, New York “Skinnyman triathlon race.
I wish I had time to train for the longer, “half-iron” triathlons, but with a wife, two kids, and a very busy personal injury law and medical malpractice New York law practice, I just don’t. I can get out for those 30-mile rides during the week, and for those 40 or 50 mile rides on the weekend (and I slip in a few 6-mile runs a week, and an occasional swim, too), but I just don’t have time for more. My family is important to me, so, gosh, I want to spend time with them, too!
This training has been eating into my blogging time, though. So far, I am happy to report (I think) that none of my readers is experiencing withdrawal symptoms!
O.K., the headline is funny, but the story is very sad. How sad? How about a one- and two- year old who are now motherless.
Today news sources report that the driver of a tractor trailer, who was streaming porn on his laptop while he drove his rig into the back of a disabled car on the New York State Thruway (near Pembroke, about 20 miles east of Buffalo), pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter. The disabled vehicle had run into a deer, and was waiting for a tow truck. Its driver, a mother of the one- and three- year olds, was killed by the impact from the tractor trailer.
Sure, watching porn while driving is what made the headlines. (Sex sells, even when it kills!). But this driver was guilty of other important violations as well. 395.3 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations mandates a driving/rest ratio for “commercial carriers” (essentially, tractor trailer drivers). The hours a commercial driver can drive within periods of time are strictly limited. Here, the driver didn’t get the required rest. He had only 4 hours of sleep in a 27-hour period. Worse still, the driver had “cooked the books” (actually, his driver’s “log”) in an attempt to dupe the authorities into believing he had followed the required rest/drive ratios. The authorities unearthed his lies by looking beyond his self-recorded “log”, and into his E-ZPass records and the GPS tracking for his 18-wheeler.
Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog
