Manhattan Personal Injury Law Blog

Construction sites present seemingly limitless opportunities injuries. While small sites can be dangerous, very large building sites like many of those in Manhattan see the dangers multiply exponentially. The construction of the new generation of sports stadiums certainly qualifies as large and complex, and the potential dangers present were made manifest in Santa Clara yesterday when a worker in an elevator shaft was killed.

The $1.3 billion stadium construction employs more than a thousand workers from a great variety of trades and many subcontractors. The accident forced a shutdown of the entire construction site while the investigation was ongoing and the workers were sent home. The wife of the worker who died in the construction accident, came to the work site "wracked with grief" according to NBC news, but understandably declined to speak with the media.

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If construction is dangerous work, with large equipment, heavy construction materials, and in cities like New York, the need for cranes and scaffolding, often with much of the work going on at high elevation, then demolition work is even more hazardous. There is no real blueprint for taking a building apart, and one never knows what to expect when taking walls, roofs and support columns down.

In Philadelphia today, it appears the worst nightmare of any demolition site occurred, when a portion of a wall collapsed, bringing down the majority of the structure. According to the Associated Press, 12 people were injured and two were still trapped in this construction accident. Rescue crews were on the site and attempting to extricate those trapped.

We have written on this blog about how family members who are concerned that their relatives are the victims of nursing home abuse will often stop at nothing to make sure that they are being taken care of. In one case that we wrote about earlier this year, a woman who feared that staff members were being abusive concealed a camera at her grandmother's nursing home in the Bronx; evidence captured on video was used to arrest and charge a nurse's aide with assault.

While the woman's hunch proved to be correct, it may not always be the best course of action to take matters into one's own hands when it comes to trying to catch people in the act of nursing home abuse. It's possible that setting up a hidden video camera might be a violation of privacy -- even if it's done with the best of intentions.

As we have discussed numerous times on this blog, people who are in New York nursing homes are among the most vulnerable in our society. Family members who make the difficult decision to place their loved ones in nursing homes essentially put the well-being of their relatives in the hands of nursing home employees with the expectation that they will act in the best interests of the residents.

However, a disturbing case has come to light regarding several nursing homes on Long Island. A pair of nursing home aides have been accused of taking unauthorized pictures of residents surrounded by unsanitary conditions such as patient areas that were covered in feces and patients' overflowing colostomy bags.