Despite the fact that lead causes brain damage in children and that this area is full of old houses with peeling lead paint, Poloncarz’s remediation plan is on hold because the Republican-aligned Legislature majority demands that he first cut vacant jobs in the budget to offset the eight new hires.
Buffalo is promising a more aggressive and coordinated approach to the city’s lead paint problem, putting a greater onus on landlords to ensure that houses are safe while also promising more lead testing, screening and remediation by government agencies
Topics include: Experienced Trial Team Handles Automobile Accident Cases; Judge Awards $5.6 Million to Former Durez Employee; Asbestos Deaths are Higher than State and National Averages in WNY; Local Judge Recognizes Depth of Mesothelioma Victim's Pain and Suffering; Lipsitz & Ponterio Represents Individuals Injured by Home Waxing Kits; and more...
County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz said he wants to nearly double the number of environmental health inspections and buy new equipment to advance Erie County’s effort to curb lead poisoning.
And Buffalo is going to start taking a larger role in getting city houses tested for lead.
For those who harbor doubts about regulation of business, this is where government oversight starts and why it is necessary: Insurance companies on the hook for millions of dollars in judgments owed to suffering individuals made backdoor deals allowing them to avoid liability.
And then, in 2014, at the age of 56, his career as a project manager flourishing, Joseph L. Muir learned that he had mesothelioma. He died a year later but lived long enough to see a jury in Buffalo attribute his illness to asbestos exposure and his two summers 40 years ago working at Durez.
It’s no surprise that young children in Western New York suffer from the highest rate of lead poisoning in upstate New York. Eighty-seven percent of the homes in Erie County were built before 1978, the year the federal government banned toxic lead-based paint from use in residential structures.
After learning that 14 percent of children in Erie County – 1 out of every 7 – tested positive for lead poisoning, New York’s attorney general is earmarking $346,825 in lawsuit settlement money toward local lead prevention and remediation.
Young children in Western New York suffer from the highest rate of lead poisoning in the upstate region – a rate that’s more than three times higher than that in Flint, Mich., where a cost-driven switch to an alternate water system left 4 percent of children tested with signs of lead exposure.
The court, in a ruling that came just weeks after the case was heard, upheld the company’s criminal convictions and dismissed its suggestion that the lower court overstepped its bounds in ordering it to pay for the public health study.
The appeals court also upheld a $12.5 million fine against the company.
A national environmental group whose goal is to outlaw the use of asbestos said Thursday that asbestos-related deaths in three Western New York counties are far above the national average.
Before taking on several cases for former Durez Plastics workers exposed to asbestos, attorney Michael Ponterio had never seen this type of ploy by an insurance company in these matters.
Michael Anthony Ponterio, of Lipsitz & Ponterio LLC, has been selected to the 2015 list as a member of the Nation’s Top One Percent by the National Association of Distinguished Counsel. NADC is an organization dedicated to promoting the highest standards of legal excellence.
In March of last year, a federal judge called Tonawanda Coke’s environmental record “singularly inexcusable” and fined the company $24 million.
The jury in Justice Deborah Chimes’ courtroom determined that the John Crane Inc. caused the death of 65-year-old William R. Voelker, who died on Christmas Day in 2013 – just four months after he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos-related cancer.