New York Injury Talk Blog

According to a story published Wednesday in the New York Times, Lloyd Nicholson, a 35 year-old guard at Riker’s Island, was arrested and has been charged with gang assault, assault, and official misconduct by the Bronx district attorney’s office. This transpired after it is alleged that guard Nicholson encouraged one group of inmates to assault another group for his purpose of maintaining order and enforcing prison discipline.

The Times story reported that the charges against Nicholson are a result of his direction to six inmates to beat three other inmates-resulting in one being treated for a collapsed lung. The six inmates were charged last October in the beatings. Apparently Nicholson rewarded the inmates who followed his directions by allowing them to take personal property and telephone privileges from other inmates. It is reported that authorities have indicated that Nicholson personally beat another inmate with a stick. According to the Times article, the motive for Nicholson’s actions was apparently that it freed him up from having to monitor his assigned post during his overnight shift.

Continue reading "JAIL GUARD PROMOTES VIOLENCE" »

In a classic example of the duty that municipal entities have to provide a safe environment for the public at large, a New York Times article reports that New York City has agreed to pay Mr. Shriram Agni a 6.5 million dollar settlement for injuries he suffered in Staten Island. Mr. Agni, 61, was on his way home from work in October 2003 when the Staten Island Ferry rammed into a concrete pier crushing his right leg. Mr. Agni was unable to return to work for a year after he suffered his injury. In addition to Mr. Agni, 11 people died that October day in 2003, and dozens more were injured.

The Times reported that according to the city Law Department approximately two thirds of the 186 claims have been settled, costing the city more than 34 million dollars. Of the $34 million, two of the largest settlements included a man and a woman who lost both legs. Each of them received payments of 9 million dollars.

The settlement comes after federal judge Edward R. Korman of the United States District Court in Brooklyn denied the city’s attempt to cap damages for those families who had family members killed and to those who suffered New York personal injury in the ferry crash. The city made an argument that damages incurred as a result of the crash could be capped under an 1851 law that limited any boat owner’s liability to the value of the boat, minus repair costs. In this case, if that law had applied the damages would have run in the neighborhood of 14 million dollars.

Continue reading "SETTLEMENT REACHED IN STATEN ISLAND FERRY CRASH" »

One of our partners, Kenneth Halperin, was quoted recently in an article about Jessica Hinkmon, the woman who fell into a Manhattan sidewalk grate while walking to work this month.

"It sounds like someone was probably negligent," said Kenneth Halperin, a lawyer at Wingate, Russotti & Shapiro.... "I'm sorry, but you just can't have people falling through the sidewalks in the city of New York."

Con Edison has already begun investigating how the sidewalk grate became so defective that one person’s weight could cause it to collapse.

New York City is full of pedestrians, which means we have more than our fair share of pedestrian accidents. While we think the above article overstates the reasons to be afraid while walking through midtown Manhattan, accidents do happen. We’ve successfully litigated many New York pedestrian accidents, including one in which a man walking his dog was seriously injured by a driver who later pled guilty to a DWI; it settled for $2.5 million. Just because there was no car involved in Ms. Hinkmon’s accident doesn’t mean that she couldn’t recover significant damages, if she chooses to pursue them. In fact, we’re willing to bet that the defective grate was the fault of a government agency or a business, in which case she would be suing an organization with more insurance than many drivers -- as well as a legal duty to anticipate and avoid situations like this.