Widow of NYC crane collapse victim to sue the city for $600M
NEW YORK -- The widow of the man killed when a massive construction crane plummeted onto a lower Manhattan street in February will sue the city for $600 million, according to a notice of claim filed with the Comptroller's Office.
Rebecca Wichs' notice of claim says she plans to sue New York City for conscious pain and suffering, economic damages and the wrongful death of her Harvard-educated husband David Wichs.
David Wichs was killed Feb. 5 when a crane crashed in the area of Hudson and Worth Street, striking him, injuring three others, and crushing multiple parked cars.
Rebecca Wichs is seeking a total of $600 million, compromising of $550 million for wrongful death, $25 million for conscious pain and suffering, and $25 million for the loss of services.
"The Comptroller's Office has determined that this claim cannot be settled pre-litigation," said Eric Sumberg, spokesperson for NYC Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, to CBS News.
David Wichs worked at a computerized trading firm, his family previously said. He was born in Prague, and had immigrated to the United States as a teenager.
The notice of claim cites a failure to safely supervise the construction site where the crane was located, allowing the crane to operate in inclement weather conditions including snow and high winds, and failure to resuscitate and provide David Wichs with proper medical care at the scene of the incident -- among others.
"The fact is this is a very, very sad incident," Mayor Bill de Blasio said in February. "We've lost a life, but if you go out there on the street as I did and see what happened here, thank God it was not worse."
In February, de Blasio had also said that as the crane was being lowered, a construction crew was directing people away from the area.
"So that crew -- those construction workers, who, in the normal course of their work, as they were lowering the crane, were in fact keeping people away from the site and keeping traffic from proceeding down West Broadway," de Blasio said.
But the notice of claim filed by Rebecca Wichs says that workers failed to timely, appropriately and properly, close any and all pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic on Worth Street, when it was known or should have been known the crane was putting people in imminent danger.
After the collapse, CBS News reported that Bay Crane Services, the company that owns the crane, had been cited four times for safety violations since 2011.
In March, a man who was injured in the crane collapse filed a $30 million claim against the city, CBS New York reported.