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Welcome to the official law blog of Caesar, Napoli & Spivak, premier injury lawyers. In this article, we will discuss a groundbreaking case involving a construction worker who suffered life-changing injuries due to a preventable fall while on the job. The worker was recently awarded a staggering $53.5 million in damages after a Brooklyn jury found the contracting company liable for their failure to provide adequate safety measures.

The Incident: On August 8, 2017, tragedy struck when a construction worker was working on a Brooklyn construction project for a contracting company. He was tasked with installing an air conditioner condenser on a rooftop when he fell from a height of 10 feet, landing on the rooftop below. The fall caused severe fractures to his spine, necessitating immediate emergency surgery. Tragically, the worker’s spinal cord was damaged in the fall, resulting in permanent paralysis from the waist down. His life was forever altered, and he now requires constant medical care and assistance with everyday activities.

The Verdict: After a comprehensive trial, a Brooklyn jury delivered a landmark verdict on April 21. The jury unanimously found the defendant responsible for failing to ensure the worker’s safety at the time of the incident. As a result of this negligence, they awarded the worker an unprecedented $53.5 million in damages. This substantial compensation aims to address the worker’s extensive medical expenses, loss of earnings, pain and suffering, and the significant impact the accident has had on his quality of life.

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A large crane on a high-rise building caught fire and partially collapsed in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, July 26, 2023; resulting in multiple injuries and caused debris to plummet to the ground. With numerous construction sites spanning across New York City, it is important to know all the legal remedies available, if you ever find yourself injured as a result of a construction accident.

The unfortunate accident of this morning is very sad, but it is not a new one. At Caesar, Napoli & Spivak PLLC, we have seen events like this a multitude of times throughout our over 30 years of practice. When contractors ignore repeated warnings of dangers and put the lives of workers and pedestrians at risk. As a worker on a construction site, you have the right to a safe and secured workplace. If you are injured while working at a construction site, you have a right to claim workers’ compensation from your employer which will pay for medical coverage regardless of fault and lost wages. Section 240 of New York’s labor law enables construction workers to recover compensation for injuries suffered in falls from scaffolds, ladders and other elevated positions. The law makes several parties potentially liable for damages should an accident occur, including the property owner, construction company and scaffold owner.

Our team of construction accident lawyers have represented seriously injured victims for decades, and we are familiar with how certain injuries affect one’s abilities to work and function on a day-to-day basis. When a worker is injured on a construction site, they may be able to pursue a claim for damages, in order to help recover lost wages, obtain compensation for medical costs, pain and suffering, and other losses.

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Between 1999 and 2016, Ford Motor Company made a lot of money selling defective Super Duty trucks. Over 5.2 MILLION of the defective trucks were sold during the time period. The roofs on the trucks were dangerously weak and prone to collapse in the event of a rollover. This put vehicle occupants at risk of serious injury or death. Though Ford Motor Company knew about these risks, the defects remained concealed from the general public. As reports of injuries and fatalities mounted, Ford Motor Company continued to sell the defective trucks. No safety recall was issued.

In April 2014, two unknowing victims, 62-year-old Voncile Hill and her husband, 74-year-old Melvin Hill, were driving their 2002 Super Duty F-250 on a highway in Georgia when one of their truck’s tires blew out. The truck overturned, the roof caved in, and the elderly couple was crushed and killed.

In the negligence and wrongful death lawsuit that followed, attorneys for the couple’s estate sought out to prove that the couple would have survived the wreck if the truck’s roof had not been defectively designed and manufactured. At trial, the personal injury attorneys presented evidence of nearly 80 similar occasions where accident victims were either killed or seriously injured due to roofs on the defective trucks caving in during rollover accidents.

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$12,500,000 RECOVERY – PLAINTIFF PEDESTRIAN STRUCK BY BUS TURNING LEFT FROM BEHIND HIM AS PLAINTIFF WAS IN CROSSWALK – NYCTA’s INVESTIGATION TEAM CONCLUDED THAT PLAINTIFF WALKED INTO SIDE OF BUS SOME 70 FEET FROM CROSSWALK – PLAINTIFF OBTAINED TRANSCRIPT OF INITIAL CALL BETWEEN DRIVER AND NYCTA THROUGH STATE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW, IN WHICH DRIVER INDICATED THAT INCIDENT OCCURRED AS BUS WAS TURNING – PLAINTIFF WOULD HAVE ALSO POINTED TO OBSERVATIONS OF INDEPENDENT EYEWITNESS WHO WAS NOT REFERENCED IN NYCTA REPORT

Queens County, NY

The plaintiff pedestrian, 40 at the time, contended that as he was crossing in the crosswalk, the defendant driver of a NYCTA bus made a left turn from behind him without making adequate observations, striking him with the left front of the bus and rolling over him. The plaintiff maintained that he suffered severe crush injuries to the lower half of his body and that the injuries included a severe wound to the groin , and the need for a hemipelvectomy in which the leg was amputated at the hip. The defendant sent out a “rapid response investigative team” who concluded that the incident occurred approximately 70 feet from the intersection, after the defendant had completed her left turn and that the plaintiff had walked into the side of the bus. The police report was largely consistent with the NYCTA position.

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A Brooklyn Supreme Court jury has awarded $11.03 million in damages to a deliveryman who was struck from behind by a car as he carted Mexican food on his electric bike. But because of a “high-low agreement” between the parties, arrived at during a nearly two-week damages trial held this month, he will collect $3 million.

Jun Chen, now 41, was riding on his bike in May 2015, on Broadway in lower Manhattan, when he stopped at a red light, according to his lawyer and court documents. As the light turned green, he slowly gained speed when a 2012 Honda sedan, driven by defendant Allan Cooper, “took off fast” from the light and struck Chen from behind, according to James Napoli, Chen’s lawyer.

Chen, who had a bag of Mexican food over the handlebars, was thrown from the bike and landed hard on his right knee before rolling around the pavement in pain, according to Napoli, founder of Caesar, Napoli & Spivak, a 10-lawyer personal-injury firm in Manhattan.

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A Chinese deliveryman on an electric bike was awarded $11,033,527.64 on Friday , November 16 by a jury after a trial in Kings County (J. Silber) where the plaintiff, a Chinese delivery person, was operating an electric bicycle on Broadway near Fulton Street, in New York, New York, when he was struck by a vehicle owned and operated by Defendant.

Plaintiff moved for summary judgment on the issue of liability under the common law principle that a rear-end collision establishes a prima facie case of negligence on the part of the operator of the rear vehicle. The court granted Plaintiff’s summary judgment motion on the issue of liability. Therefore, the matter proceeded to a damages only trial.

Following the collision, Plaintiff was removed from the scene of the incident to New York Presbyterian Hospital – Lower Manhattan, where he was treated and released.

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The rights of the elderly, particularly those who have suffered abuse, neglect, or assault in a nursing home, may be seriously impacted in the near future. Last year, as President Obama’s final term was winding down, his administration stopped allowing nursing homes that receive federal funding from requiring that their new residents sign a binding arbitration agreement. Binding arbitration agreements prevent plaintiffs — in this case the elderly residents —  from ever taking the nursing homes to court. Instead, the residents would be forced into an out-of-court arbitration conducted by an industry-friendly arbitrator.

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In the wake of the many allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, victims of such misconduct are coming forward in unprecedented numbers. With the “#MeToo” movement trending on social media, a stunning number have shared their stories, revealing a problem endemic to not just the entertainment industry, but also to the world at large. While perpetrators undoubtedly deserve to face criminal charges for their crimes, victims don’t have to rely solely on a jury to find justice: civil recourse can be used to hold abusers accountable.

In 2010, a nursing student and her friend were drugged and raped by a member of a Saudi prince’s entourage at the Plaza Hotel. The unnamed Jane Doe endured a great deal of suffering after the incident, including a suicide attempt and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. She withdrew from nursing school and lost her job, and has been unable to maintain full-time work since the attack.

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Since Labor Day, the city has experienced an uptick in bicycle-related accidents. In mid-September, a female cyclist was fatally struck by a box truck in Tribeca. Several days prior, a Citibike rider was run over in Midtown and suffered injuries to her leg. Earlier this month, a cyclist struck a child near Central Park West. The child was taken to Mt. Sinai St. Luke’s in serious condition.

On November 5th, daylight savings will end, meaning twilight will descend upon the city earlier in the day, and the potential for biking accidents will increase. These accidents don’t just put cyclists at risk; reduced visibility is a hazard for pedestrians, as well. For these reasons, it’s wise for all travelers to review the laws and best practices for biking in the city.

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A new study conducted by researchers at Boston Medical Center has found that one in 12 doctors has received money or other compensation from drug companies that market prescription opioid medications. Researchers discovered that, between 2013 and 2015, these companies made more than $46 million in payments to over 68,000 doctors.

The researchers combed databases from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for details about the payments. This information is available thanks to the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which is included in the Affordable Care Act and mandates that medical product makers report payments or offerings of value made to doctors and teaching hospitals.

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