Man injured in crane collapse to sue city for $30M

A man injured in February’s fatal Tribeca crane collapse said he now plans to sue the city for $30 million.

Thomas O’Brien, 73, of North Easton, Massachusetts, suffered fractures to his spine and skull when the crane that collapsed Feb. 5 partly landed on his parked car while he was in it, the New York Daily News has reported.

A legal complaint filed Friday by O’Brien claimed the Department of Buildings acted with “negligence, recklessness and carelessness” regarding its construction-monitoring duties at the crane site on Worth Street, the Daily News added.

“The city knew for several days that the wind gusts were going to reach 40 mph prior to the accident, and they could have acted sooner,” Gothamist quoted O’Brien’s attorney Jonathan Damashek, who added that officials should have heeded earlier weather reports of high winds for that day.

“This was not an act of nature. They forecast it for days. This wasn’t a tornado that came out of nowhere,” Damashek added in the Daily News article.

Damashek told Gothamist that, besides the Department of Buildings, O’Brien also intended to file suit against crane owner Bay Crane, contractor Glasso Transportation and Logistics and the owners of 60 Hudson, where the crane was set up.

A Law Department spokesman told the Daily News that the claim will be reviewed and that the cause of the crane collapse remained under active investigation.