NEW YORK \u2014 The family of a teen killed in a wild June carriage horse crash in Central Park will be filing a $105 million lawsuit against the city \u2014 and names stray voltage in the park as a possible cause of the crash, according to a report.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for Romanch Mahajan’s family have filed a notice of claim \u2014 a precursor to the coming lawsuit \u2014 and have added Con Edison to their list of defendants, claiming that stray voltage may have “caused, precipitated, contributed to and\/or was a substantial factor in” the crash<\/a>, the New York Times reported Saturday.<\/p>\n City Hall, the Departments of Parks and Recreation, Health and Mental Hygiene, Transportation, and Consumer and Worker Protection are also named in the suit.<\/p>\n The fatal crash has led city leaders and animal rights activists to take a new look at ridding New York of carriage horses. A majority of City Council members \u2014 28 of the 51 \u2014 have signed on as co-sponsors to a bill that would end the industry in New York City by 2028.<\/p>\n The bill is currently under environmental review to study its environmental impact, since it will end an entire industry.<\/p>\n The Transport Workers Union, which represents 150 carriage horse workers, said the mention of stray voltage in the upcoming lawsuit is a sign that the carriage horse industry may not be responsible for Mahajan’s death.<\/p>\n “NYC Council Members should now reconsider and reject<\/a> the proposed carriage-horse ban, which would unfairly punish drivers for faulty city and Central Park Conservancy electrical infrastructure,” the union said on X.<\/p>\n In a statement made last month, union officials said that the discovery of stray voltage in the park “raises serious questions about whether the horse was shocked and whether stray voltage triggered t<\/a>he tragic incident.”<\/p>\n “Now that we know there is a utility failure, it would be horrifically unfair to eliminate the jobs of 200 overwhelmingly immigrant workers<\/a> without allowing a full investigation to be conducted,” union vice president Alexander Kemp said.<\/p>\n “Stray voltage” is engineering-speak for the naturally occurring, low-voltage charge between two grounded electrical systems. The term is also commonly used as a catch-all for any electricity found where it shouldn’t be.<\/p>\n A ConEd spokesman confirmed to The New York Daily News<\/a> last month that the utility has detected “stray voltage” in that area of the park in recent weeks, and described the amount of electrical voltage detected as “minimal.”<\/p>\n The horse in question, Samson, bolted from a standstill at Cherry Hill on June 17, after Mahajan and his family, who were visiting from India, had climbed into the carriage after a photo had been taken but before the carriage horse driver was aboard.<\/p>\n As the horse fled, Romanch’s mother was thrown from the carriage.<\/a> Romanch jumped after her, hitting his head as he tried to help his mother. He died from his injuries in his mother’s arms<\/a> a short time later.<\/p>\n No direct evidence has been put forth linking Samson’s fatal flight to an electrical jolt.<\/p>\n The city Law Department will review the lawsuit once it’s filed, an agency spokesman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 The family of a teen killed in a wild June carriage horse crash in Central…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1003828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,377725,107457,18061,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,401868,98663,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1003827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-carriage-horse","tag-carriage-horses","tag-central-park","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-stray-voltage","tag-transport-workers-union","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117103500080754882","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1003828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}