Whenever building codes change, property owners might need to spend thousands of dollars to bring their properties up to code. The most recent changes in New York stem from the damage done by Hurricane Sandy. These changes would require many property owners to add...
Passers-by came to the rescue of two women recently when a construction wall collapsed on them. When a sudden rainstorm tore through Manhattan earlier this month, a gust of wind toppled the plywood and metal fence. The women were trapped under the debris.Witnesses...
As contractors continue to lobby lawmakers in Albany to revise New York's 128-year-old scaffold law, two designers from Brooklyn are discovering just how limiting the law is. Their focus is not safety; rather, these two and their company work to redefine the public...
We are finishing up our discussion of a premises liability lawsuit from Western New York. In our last few posts, we have discussed the duty a business owes to different types of visitors. In this case, the restaurant, Denny's, owed the plaintiff, an invitee, a duty of...
Now that we have established some ground rules for the case, we can talk about the particulars of the fracas at a Western New York Denny's restaurant. The case has not been decided, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September that the case can move...
We are discussing a premises liability lawsuit involving an incident at a Denny's in Western New York. Before we get to the particulars of the case and the various legal arguments, we wanted to go through some premises liability law basics. So far, we have described...
The International Franchise Association released a report recently that got us to thinking about premises liability. We won't retrace the thought, but suffice it to say that the IFA's research shows that by the end of 2013 franchise businesses will have added jobs and...
It is almost October, and that means winter is just around the corner. And who knows how long it will last? For many families, there comes a time when everyone needs a break from the cold and the sloppy streets, but warm weather holidays are often not in the budget....
The tongue-twister "unique New York" could easily have been coined by someone in the construction industry. The state is the last in the union to allow construction workers injured on the job to sue property owners and contractors directly. Other states handle these...
The 100-year-old Saint Mary's Catholic School building in Schenectady could have been a neighborhood gem. The building was slated, tentatively, for redevelopment as office space or even apartments several years ago. The company that purchased the property, though,...