New York Appellate Court Dismisses Another Construction Site Accident Case

On April 28, New York's Appellate Division, Second Department (whose jurisdiction includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties) issued yet another decision dismissing a construction site accident lawsuit. And in my view, like the case we discussed in Why Some Construction Site Accident Cases Should Never See the Inside of a Courtroom, this lawsuit really never should have been brought.

By way of background, it is important to remember that in order to recover damages for personal injuries under New York's Labor laws, a plaintiff must, generally speaking, prove that the accident was caused by an elevation-related risk (for more on this topic, please see our articles, Construction Site Injuries and New York's Labor Laws and Construction Site Accidents: Why the Number of Successful Cases Are Dwindling). In this case, however, the plantiff was standing on the second floor of a building, and was hurt when he had difficulty unloading drywall from a platform that was stationed outside the building's second floor window. In other words, the plaintiff himself was never subjected to any elevation-related risk, and the platform from which he was attempting to off-load the drywall was at the same level. Thus, applying common sense, the Appellate Division dismissed the action.