At 830 Brickell Plaza, home of the future second tallest building in Miami (57 floors and 724 feet tall), a horrific incident occurred at the construction site. Reports relay that six construction workers were injured when a crane carrying a heavy load of rebar malfunctioned and crash to the ground. The steel bars were being transferred from a flatbed of an 18-wheel truck when the crane gave way. This resulted in several worked becoming trapped under the rubble, and at least two of them were impaled by the steel bars.
For every construction site incident, OSHA is in charge of the official investigation and will have “final say” in determining the causes or contributing factors. In parallel, every single company working at the side will also launch their own private investigation, which undoubtedly will point to additional or different results. Such is the reality of construction cases when you have layer upon layer of different subcontractors.
Ultimately, we will all come to an understanding as to what happened and how it happened. Incredibly however, within hours of the incident, Miami Fire Rescue Lt. Pete Sanchez declared that “something malfunctioned and it came loose”. While we all understand this statement is hardly buttressed by any physical evidence, it is solely based on second- or third-hand knowledge, likely to have come from a company statement, either the general contractor, or the subcontractor who employs the crane operator. It is important to stress upon the reader that construction site incidents take years to fully investigate and that rushing to make an out-of-bounds statement, when the dust has not even settled, is irresponsible at best.
Our firm, concentrating on personal injury and wrongful death cases over the past 46 years, has always been six lawyers or less. The flexibility smaller firms enjoy has never been more important. The COVID crisis requires thinking and re-thinking our business plans.
It has now been two months since the horrific death of 9-month old Zachary Jackson. In the afternoon of July 17, 2018, Zachary was found unresponsive inside the home of Joseph and Debbie Dodd. Earlier that day, Zachary’s mom had dropped her infant at the Dodd Family Daycare, in Clermont, Florida. That was the last time she saw him alive. At 4:22 p.m., when Zachary was discovered, he was in a car seat, blue, and unresponsive.
Take for example a case our law firm recently resolved involving a negligently maintained bathtub surface at a Days Inn hotel. Our client turned on the water, took one step onto the tub surface, and slipped immediately, resulting in a significant hip fracture. Our client reported to us that the shower surface was so slippery it felt like she stepped onto ice. She explained that the anti-slip coating on the surface appeared to be excessively worn and neglected. By the time the client contacted us, weeks had already passed, and the bathtub surface remained in service for other guests. Under the law, we would not be able to arrange an expert inspection of the tub until a lawsuit was filed. Accordingly, we refused to delay by trying to resolve the case without litigation. We immediately filed our lawsuit and, with the lawsuit, served on the hotel a Notice of Inspection for the earliest possible date the rules of procedure allowed. Later, when the hotel’s attorneys asked to postpone the unilaterally scheduled inspection, we respectfully declined in the interest of our client. The inspection proceeded just weeks after we were retained, and our expert engineer confirmed the hotel’s failure to comply with industry standards for slip resistance. The most crucial evidence in the case was preserved, and the hotel ultimately settled with our client for $675,000. Had we not aggressively pursued an immediate inspection, the hotel would have had a valid argument that a later inspection would not be representative of the conditions at the time of our client’s fall due to “months and months” of continued wear and tear by continued use, scrubbing, cleaning solutions, and so on.