November 2009 Archives

Recently, the NYPD has been getting flak for only opening one door of a subway car keeping the other riders trapped with a murderer and his dead victim for longer than they would have liked.

NBC New York reports that the police, including Commissioner Ray Kelly commend their actions saying that they were following procedure. Sure they caught the guy, but what about the subway car full of petrified passengers?

After the death of Inman Morales, following a police Taser incident, the officer who ordered the subject be Tasered committed suicide. Now, Lt. Michael Pigott's family have hired a New York Personal Injury Attorney to help them in their suit against the city and NYPD.

As reported by the Daily News, Pigott's widow said, "They didn't ever ask for his side of the story...They took his life."

Their attorney, Rodney Lapidus, added, "They made him believe he was going to be prosecuted... they smeared this man's reputation... [and] they threw him to the wolves."

There are two sides in every case, and in this case, there are two cases. Do you follow me? Well, both sides of an incident, the victim and the policeman, are both suing the state of New York in personal injury cases.

First I will discuss the victim's case. Iman Morales, a mentally ill man, fell to his death after receiving a Taser shock when he was ten feet off of the ground. He was standing naked outside of his mother's apartment building swinging an 8-foot-long florescent bulb. When the officers tried to subdue him with the Taser, he fell off of the side of the building and died.

A New York family is suing the city for personal injury after their 12-year-old son, Jared Kopeloff, had his throat cut by a rogue kite wire near Flushing Meadows.

If you have read the national best seller The Kite Runner, you should be fairly familiar with the sport of kite fighting.  In it, the players must try to cut the wire of the opponent's kite in the air with their kite wire. This means that the wire must be very sharp. Traditionally, it would be common to use ground-up glass, which is what the string in question was covered in.

The New York Daily News reports that Stephen Cruz, a senior at Robert F. Kennedy High School, has been awarded $55,000 from the city after a safety agent left him scarred and bleeding in the school bathroom.

Daniel O'Connell, the safety officer referred to as 'Robocop' by the students, kicked in a stall door which struck Cruz on the forehead. In response to what the police initially refered to as an "accident," Cruz said O'Connell told him, "That's life; it will stop bleeding." and left without attempting to assist Cruz or obtain any medical assistance. The lawsuit also states that there was no reason for O'Connell to kick open the stall door.