The scene was horrific, one of unbelievable devastation, unforgettable in New York City history. " The Grammercy Park Steampipe Explosion". When a Con Ed steampipe[the bellows] malfunctioned and exploded the people living in Grammercy Park, the buildings, the park ... were injured , damaged, destroyed.
Immediately a massive joint effort by The City of New York and Con Edison was undertaken to clean up, protect and assist and a Commission was established to find out what went wrong. I was retained the day following the incident by families of ConEd workers. I remember signing the cases up[photographing victims]in the Cornell Med. Center Burn Unit. [Tough stuff].
The next day I retained a "nationally recognized metallurgist " to lead our investigation as to the cause of the explosion and injury. I submitted an order to show cause in Supreme Court, New York County which sought inspection, photographing and videotaping of the "the subject area " , and a further order compelling all the investigation to date and most importantly allowing my expert to perform a metallurgical analysis on the piping and bellows. Guess what? The Court even granted my request for a "temporary restraining order " (TRO) which effectively shut down the investigation, inspection and cleanup by Con Ed and The City of New York until I got "my people " in there.
Right after I served the order[I was all of 29 yrs old] Con Ed's lead counsel called me and invited me down to 4 Irving Place to chat. Amazingly, I was given full cooperation, first to inspect and photograph the scene and then to fly up to the Mass. Institute of Technology [MIT] with my metallurgical expert and a young associate with my firm[she later became Ms. Goldman-yikes] to observe the analysis performed to date on the piping and bellows that had been sent up to MIT and which were being safeguarded there.
We did our work, got everything we could out of it and called it a day. Hit Legal Seafood in Cambridge on the way home...and the rest is history.
Moral of the Story; If you're going to get involved in a "high profile case" with a lot at stake, leave no stone unturned!
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