On February 26, 2016, Terry Sanderson, an optometrist in his late 60s and an experienced skier, was skiing at Deer Valley Resort in Utah when he claims his life changed forever after Gwyneth Paltrow, an Academy Award-winning actress, crashed into him.  In the personal injury lawsuit he filed against Ms. Paltrow and the Deer Valley Resort Company (and which is on trial at the time of this broadcast), Mr. Sanderson is claiming to have suffered a traumatic brain injury, multiple broken ribs and economic loss as a result of the crash. In this episode of The Blame Game, we try to answer the qu ..read more

On October 2, 2022, a 13-year-old girl was walking home from school on Staten Island when she was suddenly and viciously attacked by a group of pit bulls which had escaped from an open window in their owners’ home.  The pit bulls also attacked a 2-year-old girl and a 19-year-old woman.   Sadly, these types of attacks are not isolated incidents, either in New York City or elsewhere.  According to the insurance industry, there were almost 18,000 dog-bite claims filed in the United States in 2021, a small fraction of the 4.5 million dog bites that occur each year.  Between 20 ..read more

On the afternoon of May 14th, Payton Gendron, eighteen years old and a self-proclaimed white supremacist, arrived outside a Tops Supermarket located in Buffalo, New York.  Armed with an AR-15 type rifle, Gendron began firing off rounds in the parking lot, fatally shooting three shoppers.  He then entered the grocery store where his killing spree continued.  When all was said and done, Gendron had murdered 10 people and injured three others.  Almost all of the victims were African-American. Perhaps not surprisingly, Gendron had purchased the assault rifle legally from dealer ..read more

In the late morning hours of Saturday, January 8, 2022, a five-alarm fire broke out in the Twin Parks North West apartment complex in the Tremont neighborhood of the Bronx.  Caused by a malfunctioning electric space heater, smoke from the fire spread throughout the 19-story high-rise after the door to the apartment in which the fire started was left open.  When all was said and done, nineteen residents lost their lives, including nine children, making this New York City’s deadliest fire in more than thirty (30) years.   In this episode of The Blame Game, we try to answer th ..read more

On October 21st, an acclaimed cinematographer, 42-year-old Halyna Hutchins, was fatally shot by Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust.  Just prior to the shooting, the film’s assistant director, Dave Halls, grabbed the gun from among three that the film’s armorer had set up on a nearby tray.  After yelling “Cold Gun!”, film jargon which is supposed to mean that the gun did not contain any live ammunition, Mr. Halls handed the gun to Mr. Baldwin.  Mr. Baldwin was rehearsing a scene which involved “cross drawing” and pointing the gun towards the camera lens when it sudde ..read more

On September 1, 2021, the remnants of Hurricane Ida, which had just pummeled Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane several days earlier, swept through New York City.  In a matter of hours, more than half a foot of rain inundated the five boroughs.  Easily overwhelming the City’s sewer system, Ida turned streets and subways into raging rivers and flooded homes throughout the region.  When all was said and done, more than forty people lost their lives in New York and New Jersey, including eleven victims in Queens.  Of the victims who lost their lives in Queens, most were tenant ..read more

On the morning of June 24, 2021, Champlain Tower South, a 13-story oceanfront condominium in south Florida, collapsed.  So far, rescue crews working around the clock have recovered 97 bodies from the rubble.  At least a dozen residents still remain unaccounted for as recovery efforts continue. In the last episode of The Blame Game, we spoke with an architect to discuss why this unspeakable tragedy occurred and who, if anyone, was to blame, such as the structural engineer who had found major structural damage in the building following an inspection two-and-half years ago, the archite ..read more

In the early morning of June 24, 2021, Champlain Towers South, a 13-story condominium in Surfside Florida, collapsed without warning.   For the past two weeks, rescue crews have been frantically searching through the rubble in search of survivors.  As of this broadcast, 46 residents have been confirmed dead with close to 100 still being reported as missing. Significantly, years before the collapse, a structural engineer had warned the condominium's board that the building was suffering from “major structural damage” and that there was abundant cracking and crumbling of the columns, b ..read more

On Saturday April 17th, 2021, 71-year-old Hing Chung, manager of a Dim Sum restaurant at the corner of West 78th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, was tragically killed after getting struck by an E-bike.   Mr. Chung represented the fourth pedestrian killed by E-bikes since 2014 and is part of a troubling trend so far this year.  Between January 1st and April 28th, there were 41 pedestrian deaths in New York City compared to only 26 deaths last year, an increase of almost sixty percent (60%); and significantly higher than the number of deaths reported in 2018 and 2019. In th ..read more

During the Covid-19 pandemic and due to social distancing restrictions imposed on indoor fitness facilities across the country, millions of Americans stopped going to the gym and began working out in their own homes.  In turn, the sale of health and fitness equipment soared.  One such at-home fitness company, Peloton, saw its sales surge to roughly $1.8 billion dollars in 2020, roughly double its sales from the year before.  The euphoria surrounding Peloton’s success was dampened in March of this year, however, after a child in San Francisco was killed by one of its popular trea ..read more