The local paper for the Upper er East Side S OL’ BLUE EYES T TURNS 100 < CIT CITYARTS, P.12
JUDGE SIDES WITH FAMILY IN DERSHOWITZ TRAFFIC-DEATH CASE
2015
THE SAD END OF THE COOPER STOCK CASE
Husband of woman who died in bike crash lashes out at D.A. Vance BY KYLE POPE
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16-22 In Brief
NEWS
A Manhattan federal-court judge has sided with the family of a woman killed in a high-profile traffic-death case, provoking sharp criticism of District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. from the woman’s husband. Marilyn Dershowitz, the sister-inlaw of famed trial lawyer Alan Dershowitz, was struck and killed by a postal service truck in 2011 while riding her bike in Chelsea with her husband, Nathan. Vance’s office pursued a criminal case against the truck driver, for leaving the scene of the accident, but lost that case in 2012 after less than a day of jury deliberation. Nathan Dershowitz then filed a civil wrongful-death case against the U.S. government – because the truck driver was a federal employee – and sought $17 million in damages. Last week, Judge Sarah Netburn ruled in favor of Marilyn Dershowitz’s family, saying the driver, Ian Clement, “was negligent in his operation of his vehicle, causing the accident and her death.” The judge rejected government claims that Ms. Dershowitz’s handling of her bicycle was partly to blame for the accident. “The Court
WEEK OF APRIL
Ruppert Park, on Second Avenue between 91st and 92nd streets . Photo by Daniel Fitzsimmons
OF RATS, DOGS AND PEOPLE IN RUPPERT PARK Effort to rehabilitate UES park faces obstacles, funding among them BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS
Nancy Ploeger was walking to the gym one morning when a rat skittered across her path. She was passing Ruppert Park at the time, a scrubby but promising one-acre park on Second Avenue between 91st and 92nd streets, as she does most early mornings before embarking on
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her day as president of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a great park, it has a lot of trees and there have been efforts in the past to do some plantings,” Ploeger said. “But there are many, many, many colonies of rats living there. It finally just got to me and I said something has to be done.” The park slopes uphill to the west, at the top of which, in the southwestern corner, is a children’s playground.
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Mothers with strollers sit on benches while toddlers clamber over the jungle gym. The park is divided into four quadrants of open space hemmed in by fences about 3 feet high, which line the walkways that bend up and around to the various sitting areas and entrances. Patchy tufts of grass compete for sunlight with thirsty-looking shrubs beneath bare trees that will soon grow leaves.
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So now we know: the penalty for killing a 9-year-old boy holding his father’s hand on the streets of Manhattan is ... a traffic ticket. This week’s criminal-court decision in the case of Cooper Stock, who was struck by a taxi on the Upper West Side last year, is but the latest in a string of injustices when it comes to traffic deaths in the city. Time and again, drivers who are clearly at fault are let off with little or no penalty, even when their actions result in the death of someone else. Even though the court determined that the Stocks clearly had the right of way, the judge, Erika Edwards, determined it was “not a crime.” “It goes without saying that what happened here today does not even begin to bring justice in the death of my son, Cooper Stock,” Dr. Richard Stock and his wife, Dana Lerner, said in a joint statement read at the hearing. “Is a life worth nothing more than a traffic ticket?” Lerner, in an amazing show of courage, has spent the year since her son’s death campaigning for a change in the law, and for a shift in how prosecutors handle such cases. She also has pressed for better oversight of taxi drivers. And the taxi driver who killed her son? He, for the moment, is suspended and has to pay a $500 fine. And, he now, after all of this, has been ordered to complete a driver safety course. Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday April 17– 7:19 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com.
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