The company in charge of maintaining the 285 Madison Avenue elevator that killed an advertising executive on December 14 has other legal problems: According to the Post, "There are at least eight active cases against Transel, including a suit brought by a Union Square building super who plunged down an elevator shaft when he stepped through doors that opened before the cab arrived."
The super, John Goldsmith, described his ordeal at 17-19 Union Square West in a deposition, "It’s like going into a black hole ... I was screaming the whole time in agony. When I came down, I landed on my back and my left side, and I hit the ground and heard everything in my body break, all the bones break... I bounced up in the air again and came down and hit again and heard everything break all over again. Then I started screaming."
Goldsmith's lawyer claimed that Transel "bypassed the elevator’s parking device, which would have prevented the doors from opening onto an empty shaft."
Young & Rubicam new business executive Suzanne Hart had been entering an elevator when it suddenly closed on her and ascended, dragging her body up. Transel reportedly had been working on the elevator hours before the accident. Elevator expert Patrick Carrajat told us it is a gruesome way to die, "From what I'm hearing, she was basically cut in half. In many ways it's better to be decapitated because the pain is over immediately."
