The woman who witnessed her co-worker crushed to death in a freakishly horrifying elevator accident last month plans to file a lawsuit, according to court papers obtained by the Daily News. Kathleen Mullahy, a Queens resident who has worked as an executive assistant at ad firm Y&R (formerly Young & Rubicam) for 12 years, had just entered the elevator at 10 a.m. on the morning of December 14th when everything went horribly wrong. As Y&R exec Suzanne Hart was stepping inside, the elevator violently shot up, and Hart was fatally crushed, with half her body still inside the lift. Suffice it to say, Mullahy is still traumatized.
Mullahy and another unidentified man were trapped inside the elevator with Hart for over an hour before first responders could extricate them. One Y&R employee previously told the Daily News "it looked like a grenade went off in there." According to legal documents, Mullahy has since been unable to enter an elevator "out of fear of bodily injury and/or death." She's going to sue Y&R and the elevator company Transel, which was working on the elevator before the accident and is under investigation by the NYPD.
Mullahy is also asking a judge to preserve the site of the accident so that her forensic and legal team can examine it. The elevator has not been repaired since the incident, and it wasn't until today that offices reopened, with employees using one set of elevators. UPDATE: A Y&R employee tells us Y&R tells us the company has temporarily moved to 125 Park Avenue, which is owned by SL Green, the landlord of the new office Y&R will move into next year. "All elevators have attendants from the building," the employee tells us.
The force of the accident was so severe that engineers were concerned that it may have caused structural damage to the building, and that particular elevator remains out of service. "We have taken every precaution, and it’s as safe as any building there is," Y&R CEO David Sable tells the Post, adding that he believes Hart would have told her colleagues: "All right guys, let’s get on with it."
