A woman was listed in stable condition after she fell down an elevator shaft at the Grant Hyatt in New York City. The woman fell six feet and suffered injuries as a result of the fall. It is unclear at this time why the elevator shaft was open and why there was no elevator booth there to save the woman from that fall. An investigation into the incident will certainly turn up some answers.
In the meantime, it is clear that something went wrong here. Whether the elevator itself failed or hotel staff failed is yet to be determined, it seems likely that negligence or a mistake occurred that caused the woman to fall down the elevator shaft — and yet, we won’t know for sure until more concrete information comes out about this accident.
What we can say is that the city of New York has many elevators and, as such, we have many elevator accidents. People who suffer injuries in these accidents often suffer horrible, catastrophic, or even fatal injuries. If the victims of an elevator accident are lucky enough to survive, then they will need to consider the legal side of the accident.
A civil lawsuit could earn them the compensation the victim needs to pay for their medical and rehabilitation costs, while also giving them a sense of justice, however small and merely symbolic it may seem. In these cases, there could be numerous parties that are held responsible for the elevator accident, including the building managers or any maintenance workers that inspected the elevator.
Source: New York Post, “Woman falls down elevator shaft at Midtown hotel,” Tina Moore, Nov. 1, 2015