Wingate, Russotti & Shapiro in the News

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Builder may face slay rap in hardhat death

BY SCOTT SHIFREL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, June 11th 2008, 12:45 AM

A building contractor is facing possible murder charges on Wednesday for a Brooklyn construction accident that killed a worker and injured another in March when a foundation wall collapsed.

"I think maybe it will be manslaughter," contractor William Lattarulo said Tuesday as he prepared to surrender to prosecutors this morning.

Lattarulo, 63, blamed heavy rains and said he tried to warn workers in the March 12 collapse in East New York that killed worker Louro Ortega of Queens.

Authorities fined Lattarulo and indicated shoddy construction caused the collapse, which occurred just three days before the E. 51st St. crane crash that killed seven people in Manhattan.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes' office has been investigating Lattarulo, and today's charges against the builder are noteworthy at a time when a construction boom has led to a spate of accidents across the city.

"They're just looking for someone to blame for all this," he said, referring to the other accidents. "They're going to make me pay." He described the 30-year-old Ortega, a married father of two, as "a nice kid."

"I don't think I killed that kid," he said. "If I thought I did something wrong, I wouldn't fight it."

Lattarulo, of Malverne, L.I., owns both the house next to the 795 Glenmore Ave. site and five adjacent lots. He has been cited for numerous code violations, authorities said, including working with an expired permit.

Lattarulo was planning to build a commercial laundry at the site, according to Ortega family lawyer Kenneth Halperin, who is preparing for a possible lawsuit.

"They failed to make sure the foundation wall was stable," Halperin said.

"No one checked it, no one did anything," he said. "This never should have happened, there's no reason someone should have died."

Ortega had been on the job just two days and was partially buried by rubble in the collapse.

Prosecutors, who are expected to announce the charges this afternoon, declined to comment and buildings officials said the investigation is ongoing.

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Construction Worker Deaths Spike
Building Boom, Cheap Labor Leads to Surge in Laborer Deaths

By Susan Donaldson James
January 16th, 2008
ABCnews.com

Construction has increasingly become a deadly business -- especially in New York, where laborers routinely dangle from skyscrapers, all part of a building boom that has defied the national slowdown...

..."The regulations are there," said Philip Russotti, a New York lawyer who represents workers -- many of them in scaffolding accidents.

"Safety costs money," he said. "If you are motivated by profit, you are motivated to push people to move quickly and cut corners with safety. But you're playing with people's lives."

Russotti's firm obtained an $18 million award for a construction worker who fell from a ladder and suffered a brain injury. Another verdict awarded $11.1 million to a 53-year-old man who fell 10 feet on his head and suffered dementia and a permanent mood disorder.

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Plastic Surgeon to the Scars-
Brad Jacobs went from shaping Playboy bunnies to defending himself against charges of butchery

by Chris Thompson
August 28th, 2007

Jacobs may have wanted to take things to another level, but there was the little matter of 26 malpractice cases that ended in judgments against him or in settlements over the years. According to Jacobs, plastic surgeons deal with such settlements constantly, and his track record is better than some. "No names mentioned, but you look at other plastic surgeons—some of these surgeons have that in a year," he says. But according to the health-care ratings company HealthGrades, more patients have filed malpractice actions against Jacobs than any other plastic surgeon in the state; in fact, Jacobs's malpractice rate is 10 times the state average. According to Ken Halperin, a malpractice attorney with the firm Wingate, Russotti, and Shapiro, that's an extraordinary figure. "It's extremely unusual," he says. "I'd be shocked if there were more than 10 doctors in the state of New York that had 25 malpractice cases, let alone had settlements against them. . . . The amazing thing is that he still has his license."

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Falling Construction Tool Injures at Least Two at Deutsche Bank

Aug. 23, 2007
By EMILY FRIEDMAN and WILLIAM MARRA

Two firefighters and at least one construction worker were rushed to a local hospital today after a piece of debris fell on them at the Deutsche Bank building in downtown Manhattan, a New York City Fire Department spokesperson told ABC News.

City officials told ABC News' affiliate WABC-TV that the debris was actually a contruction tool, suspected to be a construction jack.

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Contractor admits role in death of a worker

Tuesday, February 06, 2007
By FRANK DONNELLY
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In an apparent precedent on Staten Island, a well-regarded North Shore builder pleaded guilty yesterday to criminally negligent homicide stemming from the death of one of his workers, buried three years ago in a trench collapse at a West Brighton job site.

Kenneth Formica's felony plea in state Supreme Court, St. George, in connection with the death of Lorenzo Pavia, 39, on Dec. 15, 2003, marks the first time in recent history that a Staten Island contractor was found criminally liable for the death of a worker, sources said.

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