Construction Site Accident - Trip and Fall
WRSMH attorney Kenneth Halperin obtained a settlement in the amount of $825,000 for a 41-year-old carpenter who tripped and fell on debris while removing materials from a construction site.
The plaintiff was injured during the renovation of a new commercial storefront coffee shop in Manhattan. Plaintiff was employed by a company that provided materials for the store. On the day of the accident, he was removing a countertop and exiting the store when he tripped over an electrical cord left in his pathway by a subcontractor at the site.
We argued that the presence of this debris was a violation of Section 241(6) of the New York State Labor Law. Defendants argued that plaintiff should have seen the debris while he was walking and avoided it. They also tried to argue that the Labor Law did not apply to the plaintiff because he was not actually doing work at the site.
We were able to counter both arguments by establishing that the presence of the electrical cord in a walkway that the plaintiff had to utilize was a violation of the New York State Industrial Code. We also established conclusively that plaintiff was covered by the Labor Law because his work was clearly incidental to the overall construction project. Therefore, he was a "covered" person.
As a result of the accident, plaintiff sustained multiple injuries, the most prominent of which was a crush injury to his pinky finger which required two (2) operative procedures.