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NYC woman’s skull caved in after loose lounge chair flew off 12th floor

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Annabel Sen lawsuit: Woman struck by Union Square chair
Annabel Sen lawsuit: Woman struck by Union Square chair before and after images of damaged skull.
Annabel Sen lawsuit: Woman struck by Union Square chair
Annabel Sen lawsuit: Woman struck by Union Square chair before and after images of damaged skull.

Annabel Sen lawsuit: Woman struck by Union Square chair sues for damages after patio furniture flies off 12th floor penthouse balcony. Owner i’d as GR Realty Holdings LLC. 

A woman who suffered horrific injuries after a wooden lounge chair fell off a 12th story penthouse balcony and struck her as she was walking below along Manhattan’s Union Square is seeking damages from the building co owner and tenant.

The accident happened at around 2.30pm on January 25 as Annabel Sen, 24, an Indian American and Brown University graduate was on her way to lunch with her boyfriend. 

Police said the wooden patio chair was apparently swept off the balcony during a steady rainstorm and hit Sen before crashing into a parked car. 

According to the New York Post, Sen filed a lawsuit against the penthouse owner, GR Realty Holdings LLC, which is owned by Michael Rubin, a Philadelphia 76ers co-owner, whose net worth is about $3.5billion. 

Of note, Rubin also co-owns the New Jersey Devils hockey franchise.

Annabel Sen chair
Pictured, Annabel Sen and the wooden lounge chair that crashed into her head.

Financial, physical, psychological and emotional toll

The suit filed last Thursday identified the address from which the lounge chair fell from the 12th floor as 15 Union Square West Condominium building.

According to the lawsuit, Sen ‘suffered a severe, life-threatening, traumatic brain injury, among other injuries, that required emergency brain surgery’.

Since the incident, Sen has had two more brain surgeries. ‘Sen has been unable to attend to her usual vocation and activities,’ the lawsuit says. 

In addition to having to pay for her medical expenses, she ‘has suffered and will necessarily suffer in the future additional loss of time and earnings from employment’.

Also named in the suit are Brown Harris Stevens Residential Management, LLC and penthouse residents Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi.

Dubugras and Franceschi are both co-founders of finance and tech company Brex, which is valued at $2.6billion.

Sen’s lawyer, Benedict Morelli, told the Post that it was a ‘miracle’ that the chair didn’t kill his client. 

Annabel Sen chair
Pictured Annabel Sen prior to the freak chair accident.

‘Hopefully she will be able to regain enough to have a productive life going forward. We just don’t know yet.’

‘There was really no reason for this to happen. You either bring the furniture in — especially if you’re not going to be there for a long time — or you tie it down. There are a number of people who could and should have done that,’ Morelli said. 

According to Morelli, Sen, who is now 24, had to leave Manhattan and move to Connecticut to live with her parents.

Morelli said Sen, who previously worked for a private equity firm, was supposed to attend Harvard University this fall to obtain her master’s degree.

Morelli said Sen will not be heading to school and will instead try to recuperate as much as possible. The woman and her family have since been forced to deal with ongoing medical expenses in her treatment and rehabilitation. 

‘She has cognitive deficits. This was a young woman who was very gifted before the accident and we are hoping she gets back all of her faculties,’ Morelli told the Post. 

Adding, ‘Hopefully she will be able to regain enough to have a productive life going forward. We just don’t know yet.’

Morelli indicated in the coming months, Sen undergoing testing to see what she has lost physically, psychologically, emotionally and cognitively.

A spokesperson for Rubin told the Post that the billionaire ‘has not lived in that apartment’ because it was being rented to Dubugras and Franceschi at the time of the accident.’ 

All defendants have declined media overtures for comment on the case.

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