NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, May 1, 2014, 7:10 AM
The city has agreed to pay $ 500,000 to the family of a 17-year-old student who was electrocuted by a light fixture while climbing a chain-link fence to sneak into a Brooklyn school playground, the Daily News has learned.
Luis Rivera was killed instantly on Sept. 13, 2006, after his head brushed against the 126-volt device affixed to the red brick wall of Public School 217. Rivera was with a group of friends who had scaled the fence to leave the locked field, where they had been playing football.
“No amount of monetary compensation can bring this young man back to us. However, given the facts and circumstances of this tragedy, this settlement was fair and reasonable,” Rivera family lawyers Sanford Rubenstein and Scott Rynecki said in a statement.
John Tracy for New York Daily News The 17-year-old was electrocuted while climbing a Brooklyn school playground fence in Sept. 2006.
John Tracy for New York Daily News This light fixture at PS 217 is said to be responsible for Rivera’s death.
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The settlement, which will be paid by the city School Construction Authority and contractor Five Star Electric of Ozone Park, Queens, was reached last Thursday in Brooklyn Supreme Court on the eve of jury selection.
A panel of appellate judges had rejected a motion to dismiss the suit, ruling that the city had failed in its duty to make inspections of the lighting system. The entire light fixture had become electrified due to a short in the splice box and two breaks in wire grounding, court papers state.
The authority had contracted with Five Star to renovate and upgrade the school’s electrical system in 1995.
Rivera was a senior at New Utrecht High School at the time of the freak accident.
A spokeswoman for the authority had no immediate comment.
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