Personal Injury Lawyer Calls For Lift Safety Reform

Incidents involving lifts and escalators have led to around 30 falalities and injured over 17,000 more each year. The number of personal injuries to people in lifts has increased by 60% since the beginning of private inspections.

With the recent fatality of a 67-year-old blind man, plunging 25 feet down a lift to his death this month, personal injury lawyers have called for an urgent safety review on lifts.

Not an uplifting story
It has been claimed that the accident occurred, when the man was waiting in his apartment building for the lift doors to open, but when they did open, no lift car was waiting when he stepped inside.

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According to officials at the scene, the man lived in a third floor apartment and was on his way to the shops when the terrifying accident occurred.

David Perecman, an injury lawyer said: "Based on several news reports in my opinion, there appears to be little doubt that the accident and wrongful death is the fault of building management and possibly even the company that services the elevators in the dead man's building."

Neighbours in the building said that the lift in the 10 story brick building had been under repair for three weeks due to defective doors.

Perecman said: "Most elevator accidents issue for the courts, usually comes down to proving that the injury to the plaintiff was a result of negligence on the part of the people responsible for the care and upkeep of the elevator.

"But in this case, should [the victim's] family seek legal redress for wrongful death, there may be no need to prove negligence. The court uses a doctrine known by its Latin name, 'Res ipsa loquitor,' the act speaks for itself, which in this case seems obvious. A blind tenant waiting for an elevator, the elevator doors open, but the elevator cab isn't there and the man falls down the elevator shaft to his death. The act speaks for itself," he stated.

The injury lawyer added that safety measures must be taken, so further accidents do not happen to unsuspecting victims: "When elevators malfunction, elderly and disabled tenants suffer the most. But the city code, which requires proper maintenance of elevators, is the same for the elderly and infirm as it is for any other tenant."

Perecman noted that whilst the courts could reject a compensation claim if the victim had contributed to their injury in some way, it is fairly certain that the 67-year-old did not cause his own death.

He added: "Courts could hold a tenant responsible for their own injury. If the tenant somehow pried open the jammed door, or is found to have tampered with the safe operation of the elevator in some other way. As a result he stated that it was hugely unlikely that the victim tampered with the lift beforehand.

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