Luck Rivals Worst of Sick Jokes: ‘There’s Hope,’ New Yorker Says

Jolted, jilted, hammered in a car crash and robbed, Lawrence Hanratty was named Friday as the unluckiest man in New York.

Nearly electrocuted in a construction site accident in 1984 that put him in a coma for weeks, Hanratty lost the lawyers fighting for his disability claim--one was disbarred, two died--and his wife ran off with her lawyer.

Hanratty, who has spent years fighting heart and liver disease, had his car wrecked in a crash last year. When police left the scene of the accident, he was held up and robbed.

“I say to myself, ‘How much more am I going to be tested in life to see how much I can endure?’ ” Hanratty told the New York Daily News in a description of more than 10 years of agony that runs under the Page One headline: “Think You Got It Bad? Meet . . . Luckless Larry.”

As if he hasn’t tolerated enough hardship, 38-year-old Hanratty of Mt. Vernon, N.Y., said an insurance company now wants to cut off his workers’ compensation benefits and his landlord has threatened to kick him out of his apartment.

Depressed and suffering from agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces, Hanratty uses a canister of oxygen and takes 42 pills a day for his heart and liver ailments. But with help from neighbors and a New York state assemblyman, he is not giving up yet.

“There’s always hope,” he said.