Wade Clark Mulcahy LLP

Labor Law cases can be very difficult for defendants to beat as many of the specific statutes in it, including the two most common, § 240(1) and 241(6), include vicarious liability for property owners and contractors. In cases with the former, even if a contractor or property owner gives an employee safety equipment sufficient to protect them from an elevation-related danger, if they still get injured due to something else elevation related, they can still suffer liability. This was the case in Oscar Amaro, et al., v. New York City School Construction Authority, et al., where even though the facts might seem like it was Plaintiff’s own fault for not properly taking advantage of the safety equipment provided by the Defendants, on appeal, they were found to be liable for his injuries anyway.

In this case, Plaintiff was injured while working on a scaffold and walking over a wooden plank. Plaintiff was carrying a pipe and a clamp at the time that he was bringing to a coworker. While Plaintiff was wearing a four-foot long lanyard that would prevent him from falling for the twenty-foot walk to his co-worker, he did not unhook and rehook the lanyard due to his hands being full. Approximately five feet from his coworker, Plaintiff stepped on the wooden plank which broke under him and caused his injuries. The lower Court initially denied the Plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment on liability, finding a question of fact existed if he was the sole proximate cause of his injuries by failing to reattach the lanyard and if he was a recalcitrant employee for failing to do so. As a note, while comparative negligence is not a defense to Labor Law § 240(1), it IS a defense to the claim that Plaintiff was the sole proximate cause of his injuries.

On appeal, however, the Second Department of the Appellate Division reversed, finding Plaintiff was entitled to summary judgment. The Appellate Division found that the wooden plank constituted an elevation-related danger which would trigger the statute, even in spite of him failing to rehook the lanyard. They found the Defendants failed to prove Plaintiff was recalcitrant as they found they did not provide any proof that the Plaintiff was instructed to use the lanyard in that way and simply chose not to. As demonstrated here, no matter how much safety equipment is provided to a worker, all it takes is one thing to fail or be missing to open up liability under the scaffold law.