Personal Injury Lawyers in New York

The United States government has recently seen an increase in the number of reports of toys containing toxic levels of lead paint; subsequently, many toys have been recalled due to lead paint. Now there are new concerns about products containing the toxic paint. New efforts by health and safety officials are looking at potential lead hazards in imported ceramic dishes and cookware made in China and Mexico, as well as lead in lunchboxes and vinyl baby bibs.

This growing concern over lead in household products comes after several recent recalls involving children's toys that were made in China. Lead is a huge concern because of its potential to cause serious health problems, especially in children. If ingested, lead can cause learning disabilities, behavioral problems, growth retardation, hearing problems, and more. In adults, lead poisoning can cause abdominal pain, reproductive problems, high blood pressure and heart and kidney failure.

The greatest lead hazard in the home comes from peeling or chipping lead paint.

If you or a loved one has suffered from lead poisoning in Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, or anywhere in Manhattan, please contact the Lead Poisoning Attorneys at Silberstein, Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

The parents of two high school seniors who died in a car crash allege their sons were left along the side of the road for several hours after police overlooked them while investigating the accident. Brandon Smith and Dominique Green, both 18, were killed in the single-vehicle accident this weekend in Gary, Indiana, and two other occupants survived the crash and told emergency workers over and over that two of their friends were still at the crash site.

Brandon's father, Arthur Smith, said the police refused to listen to the two surviving boys and did not even look for his son and Green. Mr. Smith found the boys' bodies himself when he went to the scene of the accident. Mr. Smith: "It took me all of five minutes to find the boys dead…they were right there…I just saw my son…I saw my baby."

Gary Police Department Commander Samuel Roberts told the Post-Tribune that the officer who responded to the accident did not deviate from departmental procedures. He could not explain why the two teens were left along the roadside and said he did not yet know all the details of the case.

Jacquelyn Green said she is not blaming anyone for her son's death. But she said that if Arthur Smith was able to find the boys in a matter of minutes, police should easily have been able to find them much sooner. Mourners held a vigil at the accident scene late Saturday, with some saying that the boys may not have died if police found them sooner.

If you or a loved one has been injured or killed in an automobile accident in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx or anywhere in Manhattan, please contact the Auto Accident Attorneys at Silberstein Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

An 86-year-old Rhode Island man died three weeks after a surgeon operated on the wrong side of his head, and state health authorities are investigating whether the mistake contributed to his death. The state medical examiner is in the process of determining the exact cause of the man's death.

The man underwent emergency surgery at Rhode Island Hospital on July 30, 2007 to treat bleeding in his brain. A nurse practitioner for Dr. Frederick Harrington did not record which side of the man's brain required surgery. When another nurse pointed out the missing information, Harrington allegedly relied on his without consulting a CT chart and began operating on the wrong side. Upon realizing his error during surgery, the surgeon began operating on the correct side.

The hospital has suspended Harrington's surgical privileges, and he has agreed to stop performing surgery until an evaluation is complete. This incident was the third wrong-side surgery error in the hospital's neurosurgery unit in six years. Dr. Harrington also operated on the wrong side of a patient's head during a surgery in another hospital in September 2006.

If you or a loved one has suffered or died due to medical malpractice in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, or anywhere in Manhattan, please contact the Medical Malpractice Law Offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan recently declined to file criminal charges against a local nursing home for the death of 19 elderly residents during post-Hurricane Katrina flooding. During the hurricane, nuns from the Sisters of the Holy Family, who operated the Lafon Nursing Home, decided evacuation posed a greater risk to patients than remaining in the home. Elderly nuns living in the facility and all of the nuns in the nearby motherhouse were evacuated; none of the first-floor patients were moved. Jordan said that an investigation revealed no criminal conduct.

The decision came just days after a Louisiana state jury found owners of another New Orleans nursing home not guilty of 35 charges of negligent homicide and 64 charges of cruelty. Thirty-five residents at St. Rita's Nursing Home were killed due to flooding that overtook the one-story nursing home in less than 20 minutes. The owners pleaded not guilty, maintaining that they did what they thought would keep the residents safe by keeping the residents at the home with food, water, and generators.

If you or a loved one has died while in a nursing home or assisted living facility in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens or anywhere in Manhattan, please contact the Nursing Home Negligence Law Offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos to schedule an initial consultation.

An Illinois woman has been awarded more than $1.3 million in a negligence lawsuit against a hospital but her attorney will appeal for more. Wendy Gossett was awarded the large sum for pain and suffering she endured after a sponge was left in her body after undergoing a partial hysterectomy in June 2000 at Sherman Hospital in Elgin, Illinois.

Gossett's attorney said that even though the jurors awarded a record amount in cases involving surgical instruments, he would appeal for even more money to cover future lost earnings and medical expenses. Of the $1.3 million verdict, a little over $200,000 was awarded for past medical expenses, and nothing was awarded for medical upkeep and future lost wages. The attorney does not understand why Gossett was not awarded anything for the future.

Gossett was only 27 when she underwent surgery to relieve pain from endometriosis. After having post-surgery pain, Gossett returned to her doctor, but it wasn't until a trip to an emergency room in August 2000 that a test revealed a sponge was left behind during the hysterectomy. Gossett then underwent a second surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes and to remove an abscess that had formed and caused a serious infection.

Gossett now requires a morphine pump because of permanent nerve damage and can no longer maintain gainful employment.

If you or a loved one has suffered medical malpractice in Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, or anywhere in Manhattan, please contact the medical malpractice law offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

A Manhattan lawyer is suing several parties after a 300-pound drunk man fell on her at a New York Mets game and broke several vertebrae in her back. Apparently, after the fall, the man just got up and left the stadium while the woman lay injured. Two emergency medical technicians sitting right in front of 58-year-old Ellen Massey gave her first aid until an ambulance arrived.

Massey later underwent surgery for spinal injuries and was hospitalized for about two weeks. Doctors had to put rods and screws in her back and will have to perform future surgeries. Massey has named Sterling Mets LP, owner of the baseball team; Aramark Corp., the beer vendor; the Service Employees International Union Local 177, whose members are security guards at Shea Stadium; and "John Doe," the unidentified drunk man who fell on her, as defendants.

The court papers say that Sterling Mets had a duty to provide reasonable safety for stadium patrons, that Aramark should have sold alcohol to spectators who appeared to be already drunk and that the union employees should have prevented unruly behavior.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages for Massey's injuries.

If you or a loved one has been injured on someone else's premises in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx or anywhere in Manhattan, please contact the premises liability law offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

Construction site accidents and project superintendent

In order to increase profits for the employer of the construction project superintendent, usually the general contractor, construction work must proceed quickly. Every minute not spent advancing the construction of the project is lost money and profits to the general contractor. A general contractor has contracted to build the project for a specified contract price, regardless of the problems that may be encountered during the building project. Competing for the project superintendent's attention are the statutory safety responsibilities and the agreed to safety duties contained in the construction contract freely accepted by the general contractor and the duty of the project superintendent during the building project. Constructional worker safety, safety checks, construction safety site meetings, construction site safety equipment checks all involved time and money which not only fails to directly advance the construction, but can actually slowed down completion of the project and result in some loss of profit.

The training in the field of construction site safety is an important quality of any project superintendent. Experience at construction sites the size of the subject project in the list of safety codes, regulations and guidelines that the project superintendent has studied are factors that begin to establish the training of the project superintendent. Formal training received in construction site safety courses, formal seminars taken and the details of informal training a superintendent has received in the field of safety are other factors to be evaluated when reviewing the training and safety experience possessed by a construction site superintendent.

In our legal representation of construction workers injured, all law firm seeks to find out the familiarity of the project superintend with the construction contract between the building owner and the general contractor before that time the worker was injured. Pre-construction safety meetings, establishment of a written safety program, the power to shut down a construction site if dangerous conditions are not remedy, are just some of the areas of inquiry our law firm makes when representing injured construction workers.

Our law firm also routinely examines the project superintendent's own routine on the job. How often is the job site toured, what are the responsibilities on the project, are there regular safety meetings, was the project on schedule, was there a pending time of the inspection regarding completion by the building owner, are typical of the questions we want and sit on behalf of our client

If you or a loved one has construction accident questions in New York, please contact the Law Offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, serving clients in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens,. Staten Island and Westchester County

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For the third time this summer, Mattel toys has issued a major recall warning parents to beware of Chinese-made toys that have excessive amounts of lead in them. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has said the company must recall over 700,000 toys after Mattel discovered the use of lead-based paint as part of an ongoing investigation of the toys it gets from China. Once again, contractors used uncertified paint.

Mattel is recalling 675,000 Barbie accessories including Barbie Dream Puppy House, in which lead paint was found on the dog. The recall also includes almost 9,000 Big Big World 6-1 Bongo Band toys and about 90,000 Geo Trax locomotive toys. These products were sold beginning in September 2006.

All recalled toys contain excessive amounts of lead. Lead poisoning has been linked to behavioral and developmental problems in children. The CPSC bans pain with more than .06% lead.

Mattel has blamed the use of lead-based pain on its Chinese contractors and said consumers should expect more recalls as the company strengthens its safety system and reviews products already on the market. Approximately 65% of Mattel’s toys are manufactured in China.

If you or a loved one has suffered lead poisoning in Long Island, New York City, or anywhere in New York, please contact the law offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.

A security video from an apartment building hallway shows at least 10 witnesses ignored a woman's cries for help for more than an hour as a man beat and sexually assaulted her. The surveillance video clearly showed men and women looking out their apartment doors or starting to walk down the hallway before going back inside as the woman was assaulted for an hour and a half.

Police responded to a call of drunken behavior in the apartment building, and when they arrived, they found Rage Ibrahim, 25, and a woman lying unconscious in the hallway. Her clothing was pulled up and torn, and she had fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh. Ibrahim said he is innocent and that the incident was a "misunderstanding." He was charged with several counts of first degree criminal sexual conduct.

Police were shocked by the behavior of the bystanders and apartment building residents. Minnesota law makes it a petty misdemeanor to not give reasonable help to a person in danger of "grave physical harm." But it is unlikely that the police will pursue charges in this case because authorities would have to prove that witnesses knew the woman was in extreme danger.

If you or a loved one has suffered an assault due to negligent security in an unsafe building in New York, please contact the law offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos today to schedule your initial consultation.