Articles Posted in Construction Accidents

Most folks know that when you are hurt on the job you can’t sue your employer.  Instead, you get worker’s compensation, which means the employer’s worker’s compensation insurance (“comp”) pays your medical bills and some of your lost income (the most they pay is about 2/3 of your lost income, but that’s only if you are 100% disabled).

You can’t sue your employer, or your co-workers employed by the same employer, but you can sue others who negligently caused, even partially, your on-the-job injuries. When you sue these non-employer others, that lawsuit is called a “third-party action”.

For example, say you are working on a Syracuse construction site for a plumbing subcontractor.  One of the employees of an electrical subcontractor is working from a ladder and drops a power tool on your head.  Your employer’s insurer pays your worker’s compensation benefits, but you can also sue the electrical subcontractor in a “third-party action”.

I shot the photo above from my bathroom window in Geneva, New York.  The video below shows the same scene but in vivid motion.  Watch it!

Why did I shoot this video?  Because I wanted to show my readers what a law-suit-waiting-to-happen looks like.

If you walk into a Syracuse, New York pub on a Friday at 5:20,  and you happen upon a group of personal injury lawyers having an end-of-the-week beer, you might hear them rant about how unfair some New York personal injury laws are.  For example, unlike most States, New York does not allow the immediate family of a wrongful death victim to receive compensation for their grief and heartache at losing their loved one, even if that loved one is a child.  A millionaire drunk driver ran over your thee year old?  Tough luck, mom.  Was he supporting you economically?  Of course not, so you don’t get economic loss recovery.  So what if he was the most important thing to you in the whole world, and your life has been destroyed by losing him.  No compensation for your grief!  You might settle that case for a few thousand dollars, but not the millions it is really worth. Very unfair!

But New York personal injury law has its upside, too.  For example, unlike any other state, New York has something called “the scaffold law”, also known as Labor Law section 240.  That law allows construction workers and others who fall from heights – and  in some cases upon whom objects fall — to get full compensation for their injuries.  This compensation goes far beyond mere workers’ compensation.  The injured fallen worker can sue the general contractor and owner of the construction project for real money, including pain and suffering compensation.  Usually, the case will involve a ladder or scaffold that failed, but can also involve a worker falling because he was not provided with adequate fall protection, such as a harness or barrier.

But here’s the real kicker, and here’s why New York construction accident lawyers like me just love Labor Law section 240:  The injured worker gets fully compensated even if the fall from the height was partially his own fault, as long as Labor Law section 240 was violated.  And Labor Law section 240 is violated almost anytime a construction worker falls from a height, whether because the ladder or scaffold or harness failed, or because such safety devices were not provided, or because proper barriers were not in place.

Look at this kid! Fernando Vanegas, 19 years old. Same age as my son Sebastian, who just went off to college.  Full of life, of hopes, of dreams, just like Sebastian. Fernando came to Queens, New York from Ecuador only a year ago to reunite with his parents whom he had not seen in 15 years. As an immigrant with almost no English, the best job he could land was in the construction industry. Dangerous work. He would come home at night and tell his parents how frightening his work was; close calls involving retaining walls almost falling on him. Then, last Thursday, he did not come home. A retaining wall collapsed, burying him and two other workers in a heap of cinder blocks. He died.

He should not have died. The warning signs were all there.  The site should have been shut down. Several safety violations had recently been reported, including that the retaining wall was not stable.  The City failed to shut down the work.

Fernando was a canary in a coal mine. Now of course the site is shut down.  Now of course, at least for a while, the City will err on the side of caution, and shut down similar sites.  Shame on his employer, and shame on the City of New York inspectors, for allowing him to die under such conditions, without heeding such obvious warning signs of danger.

Construction is almost the most dangerous job in America, bested only by mining. And like mining, greed often plays a part in accidents. Companies take cost-saving shortcuts at the expense of safety to try to turn a bigger profit.

Case on point.Last Sunday a 12-ton air handling unit snapped loose from a crane and plummeted 30 stories to the street below in Manhattan. Ten people were injured. Obviously they were using a cable of insufficient strength for the job.

As a recent NYT article points out, this is only the most recent dangerous mishap this year in the New York construction industry. In fact, this year is poised to match 2008 – the year two cranes toppled in New York City claiming 19 lives – as the most deadly construction year in New York history.