New elevator company where ad exec died faces lawsuit from similar incident

PS Marcato, the new elevator operation company that took over Transel Elevator in the wake of Young & Rubicam executive Suzanne Hart’s December death, now faces a lawsuit for a similar accident that occurred in July 2010 in another building, DNAinfo reported. The suit alleges that PS Marcato did not properly maintain, inspect and repair a freight elevator at 711 Amsterdam Avenue between 94th and 95th streets, which fell on a worker and left him paraplegic.

The worker was in the elevator shaft retrieving a lodged piece of wood that obstructed the elevator in its path, according to DNAinfo , when the elevator suddenly fell on top of him from five feet above. The accident was attributed to a faulty drum and cable switch, which serves to keep an elevator from moving by preventing a slack of the elevator’s cable.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

Several months before the accident, an inspection determined that the mechanism needed repair, DNAinfo said. PS Marcato repaired it, but the worker’s lawyer, Rosemarie Arnold, told DNAinfo that “it was not properly repaired or inspected afterwards.”

Stuart Schwartz, a lawyer representing PS Marcato that everything was in proper working order. “Maintenance had nothing to do with why the accident happened, Schwartz said. [DNAinfo]