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Elevator Firm Probed in Suzanne Hart's Death Sued for Another Incident

By DNAinfo Staff on December 19, 2011 7:07am  | Updated on December 19, 2011 8:02am

Anne and Charles Landle in their home in Kew Gardens, Queens on Dec. 16, 2011.
Anne and Charles Landle in their home in Kew Gardens, Queens on Dec. 16, 2011.
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DNAInfo/Ben Fractenberg

MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT —The elevator company being investigated in the death of Young & Rubicam executive Suzanne Hart is being sued after a similar accident allegedly left a 92-year-old woman seriously hurt.

Anne Landle, now 94, says she took a step onto the elevator outside her opthamologist's Park Avenue office in 2009.

The doors snapped shut, and the force threw her and her walking cane to the marble floor. Medical staff rushed to her aid as blood gushed from a four-inch gash on Landle's head, she said last week.

"I was really laying in my own blood," Landle told DNAinfo of the traumatic experience.

Landle and her husband Charles, 91, both retired hairdressers who have lived in Kew Gardens for decades, were shocked to learn Friday that their own fateful elevator incident has ties to last week's horrific death of Hart, 41.

Suzanne Hart, 41, an exec at Young & Rubicam, was killed in an elevator accident at the firm's offices at 285 Madison Ave. on Dec. 13, 2011.
Suzanne Hart, 41, an exec at Young & Rubicam, was killed in an elevator accident at the firm's offices at 285 Madison Ave. on Dec. 13, 2011.
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Facebook/Suzanne Hart

A memorial service for Hart is being held Monday morning.

That accident has put New Yorkers on alarm about elevator safety and forced the city to re-evaluate its inspection practices.

"I hope that something good can come out of [that death]," Charles Landle said.

Transel Elevator, Inc., the elevator repair company that officials say did maintenance on the 285 Madison Avenue elevator that killed Hart on Wednesday, was also responsible for upkeep on the 460 Park Avenue office building where Landle was hurt, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this year on behalf of the Landles.

"Without warning elevator door closed rapidly, striking" Landle at about 10:30 a.m. on Dec. 11, 2009, according to a lawsuit filed by attorneys for the Landles. It does does not specify an amount of compensation sought.

The elderly woman was rushed to a hospital and treated for a broken collar bone. She says she was also badly bruised.

Because of the accident, she lost her ability to walk "unless I hold on to someone or somebody holds me," she told DNAinfo Friday when reached by phone.

"I was black and blue. I was such a mess," Landle remembered. She said she said gets severe headaches that sometimes last for days.

"When an elevator glass door hits you in the neck, around the head, the damage is there forever," she said.

Her husband said the defendants named in the lawsuit, including Transel, management company Jones Lang Lasalle America, and building owner, Hahn Kook Center, a reality firm registered at the Park Avenue address, have not reached a settlement with their lawyer.

The couple said no one has told them what caused the elevator malfunction.

Investigators probing the violent elevator glitch that killed Hart are zeroing in on electrical equipment that was recalibrated hours before the doomed employee arrived at work, DNAinfo reported Friday.

Hart, who was the director of new business and experience at the prominent advertising firm, died immediately. Two people inside the elevator were treated for trauma after witnessing the horror.

Attorneys for the Landles and the attorney of record representing Transel in their case did not return calls for comment on Friday.