Elevator Captive Now Free To Sue (NY Daily News) 

Emily Gest and Alice McQuillan

A magazine editor stuck in a midtown elevator for 40 hours has contacted the law firm representing another New Yorker with an elevator horror story a woman who nearly drowned when hers filled with water.

BusinessWeek makeup editor Nicholas White is expected to meet this week with attorneys who filed suit for the woman and the lawyers say White has a rock-solid case.

"Serious psychological trauma can develop from being trapped in an elevator for as long as he was," said attorney Jonathan Damashek. "Elevators in New York City are turning out to be dangerous to your health."

Damashek represents Suzana Piamenta, whose jammed elevator in her E. 86th St. high-rise filled with ice-cold water in March 1998. She is suing the building's owners, management company, plumber and sprinkler firm for $23 million in a civil suit that heads for trial next year.

As White was mulling his legal options, people who work in the McGraw-Hill Building, where White was trapped for nearly two days, were outraged over his ordeal and nervous about taking the elevators.

"Were it I, I'd be looking at vacation property," quipped a BusinessWeek staffer.

"There'd be a huge settlement," the staffer said. "The messengers read about it in the paper and were afraid to use the elevators. There's a vague sense of unease and nervous laughter about it happening again." Workers said messengers were balking at taking the elevators.

White could not be reached for comment. He was trapped from 11:24 p.m. Friday until 3:24 p.m. Sunday. Nobody heard him for all those hours, even though he screamed for help, pressed alarm bells, banged on the doors and pried open the elevator doors.

"I'm gonna be a little nervous the next couple of weeks," said Jeff Jowdy, a BusinessWeek events planner. "I might make sure I'm out on time around 5 or 6 p.m. on Friday. We've gotten out as late as 10 or 11 p.m., and that's when it happened. I'm gonna be out by 4:45 p.m. this Friday."

All the building elevators have security cameras, but it's not clear whether they were taping White and, if so, why nobody was watching the video. Building officials said they still don't know whether human error or mechanical problems were to blame.

A Con Edison voltage dip that lasted a tenth of a second at 11:21 p.m. Friday was blamed by the building for knocking out power to the elevator initially. The dip, however, doesn't explain why the security system failed to detect White.

Con Ed spokesman Joseph Petta said nobody else complained about the short power blip, which affected all of New York City.

"That's the heart of it, what we're trying to determine, what happened after the triggering event, the power dip," said Sandy Manley, a spokeswoman for Rockefeller Group Inc., the building's co-owner.