Douglas A. Milch, attorney at WRSMH, recently obtained a $3.15 million settlement in Supreme Court Dutchess County on behalf of a 54-year-old Athens, NY carpenter who fell from a 4th-floor construction site in Poughkeepsie. The case was settled just prior to trial. Prior to trial, the Court granted our motion for summary judgment pursuant to Labor Law § 240 by establishing that one of the defendants had removed a proper balcony safety railing and replaced it with an unsafe, jerry-rigged, temporary wooden railing, which was insufficient to afford workers proper fall protection. We were also able to establish that the owner/general contractor had apparently ignored fall warnings of their own site safety contractor and had knowledge that the original safety railing had been removed and replaced with a non-OSHA-approved single piece of wood.
The plaintiff sustained significant lumbar fractures in the fall, requiring an emergency multi-level fusion surgery. The plaintiff also suffered numerous other significant orthopedic injuries, including wrist/ankle and calcaneus fractures, which required several additional surgeries.