Elevators were at the center to two ironic stories this week. The first, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson’s two-day visit to Miami to discuss the challenges for public housing. His most immediate challenge was getting out of the elevator at the Courtside Family Apartments in Overtown. In the meantime in England, Australian tourists Browyn and Graham Cowan went to Court after suing over an elevator mishap with the Tower Bridge. They then missed their court date because . . . you guessed it . . . the court elevator trapped them.
The Cowans were in an elevator at the Tower Bridge when it fell 10 feet and crashed at the bottom. Mrs Cowan, 63, fractured both ankles and a big toe and says that she has lasting trauma over the incident. That trauma is allegedly the cause of her becoming “hyper-vigilant of mechanical sounds.”
She went to court to pursue her £300,000 claim against the City of London Corporation, which owns Tower Bridge, and two contractors. However, on the first day of the trial Mrs. Cowan suffered a panic attack when the court elevator became stuck.
Her lawyer asked the court for extra time after explaining that “My client was briefly stuck in the lift and suffered a very unpleasant reaction.”
In Carson’s case, he is the management to complain to about the elevators in public housing. He was
on his way down to meet Miami Heat basketball legend Alonzo Mourning. Mourning created the nonprofit AM Affordable Housing to develop the property. First, however, the Miami-Dade fire rescue team had to free the HUD Secretary.
At least Carson can claim to have skillfully located problems on his walking tour and scheduled improvements.
