Extell’s One57 facing 19 lawsuits

Extell’s One57, the condominium tower that shattered sales records with a $90 million penthouse sale, has also become the target of a whopping 19 civil lawsuits.

Job-site injury claims are cited in 10 of them, while a wrongful-death case and alleged $27 million debt to a contractor are also in the mix.

“Nineteen cases stickers me as a high number,” Eric Dinnocenzo, a New York-based construction-litigation expert who is not involved in any of the suits, told the New York Post. “Certainly, 10 injuries is a high number. You don’t usually see that many.”

As many as 15 of the cases are currently pending in Manhattan Supreme Court, including New Jersey resident Maria Caminiti’s suit over the 2012 death of her electrician husband, who was fatally injured by a falling object on the construction site. The project’s electrical contractor, who filed the $27 million suit, blamed Extell’s alleged “failure to provide an adequate and complete design for the project” for work that was frequently “suspended, delayed and disrupted.”

Four of the suits are related to the collapse of a construction crane after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Post reported.

Extell, meanwhile, chalked the number of suits up to the tremendous size of the project itself.

“Given the size of the project, the length of time construction has been ongoing, and the current state of litigation in New York, the number of suits is not surprising,” an Extell spokesperson told the Post. [NYP] — Julie Strickland