A Massachusetts man whose spine and skull were fractured when a crane fell onto his parked car in February has notified the city that he plans to file a $30 million lawsuit, claiming gross negligence by the city Department of Buildings.
In a complaint filed Friday with the city controller’s office, Thomas O’Brien, 73, of North Easton, Mass., says the buildings department is guilty of “negligence, recklessness and carelessness” in how it monitored the construction site on Worth Street in lower Manhattan.
One man, David Wichs, 38, died when the boom crushed him as he walked to work. Three were injured, including O’Brien who was sitting in his parked car waiting for his daughter to finish a doctor’s visit when the crane’s boom slammed onto the roof of his vehicle.
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“It’s amazing that he was able to get out of his car alive,” O’Brien’s lawyer, Jonathan Damashek, said Friday.
He said O’Brien’s skull was fractured and he’s still being evaluated for traumatic brain injury, and his spine might need surgery to repair two fractures.
Instead of being a physically fit senior who was an avid dirt bike enthusiast, O’Brien, a retired businessman, has become a senior who needs help walking into doctors’ offices in Boston, Damashek said.
Damashek faulted the city Department of Buildings because it gets regular weather reports and it knew days before the accident that the winds were likely to be fierce on Feb. 5.
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Workers who saw the accident said the crane fell when a sharp gust of wind blew it around as it was being lowered. A city building department crane inspector was on site to monitor the contractors who were lowering the crane because of the weather.
“This was not an act of nature. They forecast it for days. This wasn’t a tornado that came out of nowhere,” Damashek said.
He contended that the contractors and city had an obligation to get that crane lowered before the snowy winds started howling and to clear local streets of pedestrians and motorists before they started to move it.
“We believe the crane was lowered under the supervision of the city because they knew it was getting dangerous. But all those streets should have been shut down,” he said.
Damashek said the claim filed with the comptroller — which is the first step in a lawsuit against the city — is just the beginning of the litigation for his client who also expects to sue the city to get building department records which are currently being denied to him because of an ongoing criminal investigation.
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O’Brien also plans a suit against Bay Crane which owns the equipment, Glasso Transportation and Logistics which was the contractor operating it and the owner of the skyscraper under construction at Worth and Hudson Streets.
A spokesman for the city Law Department said “we will review the claim.”
A DOB spokesman said “the cause of the crane collapse on Worth Street remains under active investigation.”
He said that even though the city already has “the most robust crane and construction regulations and inspection requirements in the country,” the task force investigating the accident is expected to “propose additional best practices and regulations where necessary.”
