StolzenbergCortelli LLP

$8.2M

Personal Injury

In this claim, we represented two individuals who were shot at by an off-duty NYPD officer while they are on their way home from a late-night ice hockey game. The police officer was on his way from training at the NYPD’s training facility on Rodman’s Neck, in the Bronx, New York. After the training (and perhaps during), this officer became extremely intoxicated. He was drinking, while still in uniform and armed, along with his fellow officers and commanding officers. While in a blacked-out state of mind, this police officer approached the plaintiff’s while they were stopped at a red light, and proceeded to unload his Department-issued 9 mm into the plaintiff’s car. Miraculously, the driver was not struck, but his passenger and teammate was. They drove immediately to the neared emergency room and the passenger’s life was saved, though he had been shot at least five times. During the discovery stage of the case, it was discovered that this shooting was but one in a line of alcohol-related shootings by NYPD officers.

$4.9M

Wrongful Death

In this lawsuit, started in the Bronx, our client was injured when he was struck in the head by a large container filled with dry ice. The defendants were delivering the dry ice to a retail facility in the Bronx that sells flavored ices. The defendants were using a forklift to remove the container and bring to the warehouse located on the property. The truck that delivered the dry ice containers was parked on the public road and the defendants were using a forklift to remove the containers using the public sidewalk, which was filled with pedestrians. the forklift driver was not trained and nobody put out any warnings about the unloading activities of the defendants. The sidewalk was not even cordoned off to protect the pedestrians from walking into the dangerous unloading activities. As our client walked along the sidewalk, the container fell from the forklift and struck him in the head, causing a massive head injury. Our client fell into a coma, only briefly regaining consciousness, before finally succumbing to his injuries a few months later.

$4.8M

Construction Accident

Our client was a painter who was hired to do some work on an elevated subway line, painting the steel structure that supported the train tracks. He needed to use a hydraulic lift to reach the area, but the machine they gave him wasn’t working properly from day one. When raising the platform he was standing on, the hydraulics would randomly stall, and he’d have to fiddle with the controls to get it working again. He immediately brought the issue to his supervisors’ attention but was told not to worry about it. Rather than providing him with a new lift, they told him to keep playing around with the controls until they worked. Feeling he had no choice, that’s what our client did - and the results were tragic. One day, the lift stalled. As he was trying to correct the problem, the machine suddenly reactivated and jutted forward. Our client became pinned between the lift and the train trestle. He could have died; thankfully, he managed to free himself and lower down. But his life would never be the same again. Our client required back, neck, shoulder, and hip surgery. Though he was more than 20 years away from retirement age, he has not been able to work since the accident in 2013, and he probably never will work again.

$2.5M

Construction Accident

In this construction accident case, our client, an operating engineer, was injured when the lift he was operating (a lift is a temporary elevator, attached to the outside of a building that hoists workers and supplies to the various floors doing the building’s construction) malfunctioned. The lift, without warning, came to a sudden stop, between two random floors, causing our client to fly into the air and then onto the lift’s floor. Our client sustained injuries to his knees and ankles, although with daily discomfort our client continued working for three more years until he was in so much pain, he had to stop. Defendants argued that, at best, our client suffered a sprained ankle and if he really couldn’t work it was for a variety of reasons, but not from the lift malfunctioning.

$2.5M

Workplace Accident

In this case, our client injured his back when he fell from a truck at a warehouse. Our client was instructed to remove some newspapers from the back of an idling truck. After he did this and was exiting the truck, the truck pulled away, and our client fell from the truck. He suffered a serious injury to his back, which included two surgeries. We sued the owner of the truck. The owner made a number of arguments, including that the worker was to blame for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The defendant also argued that, even if he did fall, it was only a few feet and that it was unlikely that his back injury was from this accident. In litigating the case, we were able to prove that the truck was responsible for the accident because the driver had a duty to inspect the truck before pulling away and that any such inspection would include ensuring that no workers were still on the truck at the time of departure.

$2M

Wrongful Death

In this truly tragic case, the mother of two was struck and killed, while she crossed a roadway. We were able to locate a video capturing the events leading up to the accident by way of a video surveillance system set up across the street in a neighboring commercial establishment. The video, when analyzed by our expert, confirmed our theory of how this otherwise unwitnessed accident occurred and was helpful in resolving the matter and putting the legal part of this horrific tragedy to rest so that the family could start to move forward in their lives.