HUDSON YARDS — A Hell’s Kitchen resident is planning to sue the MTA after she was injured in an accident she claims was caused by water dripping from the ceiling of the leak-prone 34th Street-Hudson Yards 7 train station.
Meng He, 29, who lives in an apartment at West 37th Street and Eighth Avenue, was traveling home from Flushing with her mother on Feb. 7 when water started dripping on them as they rode the escalator to exit the newest stop on the 7 train, the Daily News first reported.
When He’s mother moved to avoid getting dripped on, she slipped backwards onto He, who in turn fell and injured herself trying to catch her mother, the report said.
He, who is currently wearing a protective boot as a result of ligament damage she sustained, filed a notice of claim — the prerequisite to filing a lawsuit — on March 23 against the MTA as a result of her injury, her attorney Robert Georges confirmed.
“[It was] the most terrifying thing I can imagine," He told the Daily News. "I was so nervous she was going to break her neck."
News of the impending lawsuit came less than a week after MTA officials acknowledged waterproofing problems at the $2.4 billion station, which opened in September.
Yonkers Contracting Company, hired by the MTA in 2010 to carry out waterproofing, excavating and mining work at the station, will foot an approximately $3 million bill to remedy the issues, MTA Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu confirmed at an MTA meeting last week.
“The fact that we have leaks is evident that the waterproofing system is not performing as intended,” he said at the meeting.
The MTA knew about waterproofing problems at the station as early as 2012, he added.
Georges told the Daily News that “people were tweeting directly at the MTA’s handle since January that there was a problem” with leaks in the station.
“I think that’s one of the things that was most frustrating for Meng and for us,” he told the paper. “This was something that could have been avoided and fixed.”
An MTA spokeswoman on Tuesday said the authority does not comment on pending litigation.
