Articles Posted in Workplace Accidents

Do you think you might be a safer driver if your traffic convictions and accidents were posted on line and easily searchable so that all your neighbors and friends could look your record up?

If your answer to that question is “yes”, then you’ll like a new rule by the Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) which makes companies’ safety records easily available on a government website.

Why this new rule? The shame factor. OSHA’s thinking is that if companies with a bad safety record know their record will not remain hidden is some dusty notebook in a government basement, but rather see the light of day on the world-wide web, they might think twice about cutting safety corners. In addition, prospective employees will be able to compare, when deciding which job to accept, not only the wages of the employers but also their safety records. As a side benefit, personal injury lawyers like me can build negligence cases against repeat offenders with greater ease.

Imagine a three-way chess game where two players actually play, while a third sits by watching. Let’s call the guy watching “the watcher” (I’m brilliant!). The watcher is going to play you next. But here’s the thing: If you win the game you are now playing, the watcher will actually play you. But if you lose, then the watcher automatically wins his game against you and you automatically lose. No need to actually play that game. In other words, if you lose against your opponent, you lose against both your opponent and the watcher. But if you win, you win only against your opponent, and have to play the watcher to take a second win. In other words still, a loss makes for two losses, but a win makes for only one win.

Sound fair? Of course not! But those are the rules of the game the Court of Appeals has recently signed off on in Auqui v. Seven Thirty One Limited Partnership. And the player with the one-loss-equals-two-losses dilemma is YOU if you are an injured worker with a comp claim against your employer as well as a “third-party action” (personal injury lawsuit) against someone else.

Here’s how it works: Let’s say in both cases (comp claim and personal injury lawsuit) you are claiming you are disabled. Your workers’ comp hearing comes up before your personal injury trial. If the comp judge finds you NOT disabled, the personal injury lawsuit judge will rule you are automatically NOT disabled for the purposes of the personal injury trial, too. But if the comp judge finds you ARE disabled, you can’t use that ruling in your favor at the personal injury trial. You have to prove that all over again to the jury, who will never learn of the prior comp disability finding.

My fellow Syracuse personal injury lawyer, Joseph Cote, who besides being a great lawyer, is a really nice guy, recently won a nearly $3.4 million Rochester NY personal injury verdict for a security guard shot in the face during a robbery at a Wilson Farms convenience store in Rochester.

The jury held the chain-convenience store’s corporate owner 50% responsible and the robber (who was never caught) 50% liable. How could the store be held liable, even half liable, for an armed robber shooting its security guard? Well, Joe argued that the convenience store should have required its employees to move cash from the store to the bank more often. Instead, Wilson Farms became a favorite piggy bank for armed robbers because they knew there was likely to be a big payday inside. In the past decade, armed robbers targeted the Rochester area Wilson Farms stores a grand total of 126 times, which included six shootings and one death.

Joe’s argument reminds me of what Jesse James said when asked why he robbed banks: “Because that’s where the money is”, he quipped.

News reports say a man working on a cell phone tower near Marcy, New York, suffered serious injuries today after falling more than 80 feet. He is reported to have suffered multiple broken bones and was taken to Utica’s St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center.

Falls from a height like that can cripple, maim or kill. We had a similar case (fall from a cell tower) a few years ago, which we brought to a successful conclusion. To win it, we used a special law that helps workers who fall from rooftops, scaffolds and towers. It’s called Labor Law 240, or “the scaffold law”. It allows a fallen worker, under certain circumstances, to sue anyone with an ownership interest in the tower or the land the tower is on, including leaseholders, for compensation above and beyond what the worker will get in workers’ compensation from his employer.

The key to winning this kind of case is to show that the worker was on the tower to “repair” something or to inspect something that was broken or malfunctioning. If his task involved “repair” work, or inspection work in contemplation of repair work, he is generally protected by Labor Law 240. But if he was performing mere “routine maintenance” of the tower, then he cannot prevail under Labor Law 240. He will generally be stuck with just his workers’ compensation benefits, which (as anyone who has been on comp knows) generally isn’t enough to pay the bills. It covers at most only about 2/3 of lost wages.

I get calls from people all the time like this one: “I was injured at work, and I am getting comp, but it’s not enough to pay the bills. Can I sue for more”?

But I need more info. So I start asking questions back. As I listen to how the accident happened, I am trying to see if anyone other than the employer or co-employees was partially at fault. Was some third-party, such as an outside contractor, partially responsible? If not, at least a little bit, then we can’t sue anyone. That’s because the employer and co-workers can’t be sued, even though they were at fault, as long as the injured employee got comp. This is known in colloquial legalese as “the workers’ comp bar”.

Just to make sure we can’t sue anyone, after I have all the facts, I usually ask the caller, “can you think of anyone who was at fault for this accident other than your employer or your co-workers”? If the answer is “no”, then chances are the guy is stuck with just his comp, which sucks, because that pays, at most, 2/3 of his pay. If you are a member of the working class, and you are just barely getting by on full pay, imagine trying to pay those same bills on 2/3 pay. A lawsuit, on the other hand, could result in full payment of lost wages, plus pain and suffering compensation.