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Blizzard Brings City A Second $20 Million Suit

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Claire Reed
And then there were two. Lawyer Sanford Rubenstein plans today to file a second wrongful death lawsuit related to the delayed EMT responses durring the blizzard. Last week he filed a lawsuit on behalf of the family of a 75-year-old woman who died after an ambulance took three hours to get to her. And today he's at it again, telling the Daily News he will file a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Robert Davis, whose 63-year-old wife Claire Reed also died of a heart attack before ambulances could arrive in the blizzard's aftermath.

Davis first called for help for his pained wife around 7:30 a.m. on December 27 but nobody came. He tried again before 8 and again, nobody came. According to an FDNY report, "medics were assigned to the call at 9:07 a.m.—97 minutes after Davis said he first called for help." By the time they finally arrived, at 9:10 a.m., Claire Reed was already dead.

To make an already sad story worse: because of a massive, four-digit backlog of emergency calls, the medical examiner couldn't come and inspect the body for a full day—so Reed's corpse simply lay on the couch. "I slept on the floor right beside my wife," Davis told the News.

As in the first blizzard suit, Davis is seeking $20 million from the city.

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Comments [rss]

  • Rocknrope

    Wait a second, if medics were assigned at 9:07 and arrived at 9:10, it took them three minutes to arrive, which means that the snow couldn't have been that much of a disruption to their route. So this is not at all a result of the ambulance not being able to get to her.

  • Rocknrope

    This is sad and f'd up. I realize that the blizzard was an extraordinary exception in terms of force majeure and acts of god, but you can't help feeling terrible for the guy having to watch his wife die after calling 911 and then having to live with the body for another day.

  • Spirit of 76

    If the allegations of a work slowdown are ever substantiated, heads should roll, and lots of them.

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