Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

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The New York City Department of Transportation enjoyed a small victory last week with the announcement that the city has surpassed its goal of constructing 15 miles of fully protected bike lanes in 2016. By the end of this year, 18 miles will be completed.

This achievement has been overshadowed by another statistic, however. With 3 months left in the year, New York has seen 17 cyclist deaths so far in 2016. That is already 2 more deaths than 2015’s tally.

The increase in deaths diminishes hope for the success of Vision Zero, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to eliminate traffic deaths by 2020.
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17 New York City construction workers died last year in work-related incidents. That is, if you ask the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. According to the Department of Buildings, only 12 construction workers lost their lives on the job.

The discrepancy between these two numbers stems from conflicting definitions of a construction-related death, and it is indicative of the absence of clear, consistent data in an industry that has seen both tremendous growth and a surge in preventable deaths over the last 5 years.

The majority of the construction worker fatalities in the last year occurred on non-union sites—the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health identified 15 out of 17 deaths as non-union. However, there is disagreement as to how much of the industry is made up of non-union workers.
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What do BMW, Daimler AG, Fiat, Ford, GM, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Saab, Subaru, Tata Motors, Toyota and Volkswagen have in common?

Aside from comprising some of the most popular and successful automakers in the world, these companies all opted to equip their cars with deadly airbags in order to cut costs.

At least 14 Americans are dead and more than 100 are injured as a result of the defective airbags produced by Japanese automotive supplier Takata Corporation. Over 100 million Takata airbags have been installed in American cars over the last two decades, resulting in what is now the largest auto safety recall in history.
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In the five years between January 2010 and October 2015, roughly 350 patients have undergone gastrointestinal procedures with contaminated scopes produced by the Tokyo-based company Olympus Corp. Dozens have died as a result.

The product, called the duodenoscope, is used in 700,000 procedures every year in America alone. Doctors insert the scope into patients’ throats in order to identify and treat health problems in the digestive tract. A design flaw makes the duodenoscope difficult to clean between procedures, allowing the transfer of bacteria from patient to patient. So far, we have seen outbreaks in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Denver among other American cities.

The worst part about this story is that Olympus has been aware of its design flaw for years. They chose to ignore it.
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Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin was killed on June 19th, crushed by his own 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee after it rolled backwards down his steep driveway. Mr. Yelchin was just 27 years old.

Recent Jeep Grand Cherokee models as well as Dodge Chargers and Chrysler 300s sedans—all owned by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles—have a history of rollaway incidents. The problem was first officially recognized in August 2015, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) initiated a preliminary evaluation of the gear shifter design flaw that has been confusing drivers and causing accidents.
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When prosecutors failed to gather enough evidence to file criminal charges against famed yoga guru Bikram Choudhury for raping and sexually harassing numerous women, it was a civil lawsuit that took Choudhury to task for his actions to the tune of $7.5 million.

Likewise, it was civil lawsuits that dealt significant blows to the Catholic Church in cases of child sex abuse, and to police departments in cases of police brutality where criminal actions provided little to no deterrence.

While a criminal lawsuit punishes the guilty individual by placing him or her behind bars, a civil lawsuit seeks money damages for bad behavior. As a result, civil lawsuits often prove more effective in rendering justice to the victims and more importantly, stopping the bad behavior from continuing.

Can a civil lawsuit have the power to get terrorists off the internet?
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When an ultrasound exposed a fibroid tumor growing in her uterus, Elissa McMahon didn’t take any chances.

Though she is a Massachusetts resident, Elissa scheduled a surgery to remove the fibroid at Lennox Hill, a top hospital in New York, where she would be close to her family. The surgery was a success, and Elissa was relieved when the pathology tests came back negative. She was cancer free, so the hospital said. This was in January 2012.

Two years later, Elissa began to experience severe back pain. She checked into an emergency room, where doctors found a tumor on her spine and metastatic lesions in her liver. Elissa had stage-4 cancer in her uterus, back, and liver.
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Earlier this year, after pleading guilty to conspiring to kill Americans in the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui admitted that his activities were funded in part by members of the Saudi royal family.

This was not the first time the Saudi government has been tied to terrorism in America.

Leaked information from the censored 28 pages of the 9/11 congressional inquiry report show a number of phone calls between the Saudi embassy and hijackers’ handlers leading up the attacks, as well as a transfer of $130,000 from the family of former Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar to the handler of another hijacker.
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Nearly 10,000 Americans died from drunk driving collisions in 2014.

Statistics show that alcohol is a factor in over 30% of driving fatalities. Drunk drivers tend to be young—26 to 29 is the highest risk age range—and male—men arrested for drunk driving outnumber women 3 to 1.

Now, thanks to a survey published by CarInsuranceComparison.com, we know which states have the highest occurrences of drunk driving.

The survey gave each state a ranking that takes into account drunk driving fatalities, DUI arrests and penalties, and the laws in place to deter drunk driving, among other factors.
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“If this f— would just die…”

Those are not the words you’d expect to hear coming out of the mouth of a hospice CEO responsible for the care of hundreds of sick and elderly patients.

According to an FBI warrant for the arrest of Novus Health Services CEO Brad Harris, the 34-year-old hospice exec spoke frequently about prematurely ending his patients’ lives. In at least 3 cases, he actually called for their executions.

According to the Novus website, the company’s mantra is “Focus on Living,” and its mission is to “redefine hospice and palliative care.” For Mr. Harris, redefining care meant ordering his staff to kill patients by increasing their medication by 4 times the prescribed dosage.
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