Plaintiff worked for a company that serviced garage doors and was attempting to repair an overhead steel garage door by using a crow-bar while standing on a tool box that was located inside the bed of the company’s flat-bed truck. While he and his co-worker pulled with the crow-bar, he lost his balance and fell, sustaining a fracture to his skull that required surgery in order to reduce the swelling. Our client’s co-worker testified that he had warned our client not to stand atop the toolbox but we produced a witness who testified that he saw two men standing atop the toolbox and reaching upwards in an awkward fashion. The case proceeded to mediation and was settled for $450,000.

The plaintiff was a 50 year-old electrician who fell from a height of about 20 feet while working from inside a steel “cage” that was atop a fork-lift operated by his co-worker that had lifted him to the roof of a building. The general contractor’s foreman testified at a deposition that the electricians had been told not to use the fork-lift and that it should be operated only by the general contractor’s employees. We argued that by failing to properly secure the cage to the fork-lift or to furnish our client with safety equipment, the owner and general contractor had violated the NYSLabor Law. Our client, who had been earning $25,000 per annum, sustained fractures to his vertebrae, ribs and sternum and required open surgery to his back. The case settled before trial for $835,000.

The plaintiff was a laborer who was struck on the back of the head by a falling cinderblock, while working for a sub-contractor on the construction of a building. As a result, our client sustained soft tissue trauma to the neck and head causing him to have headaches, neck pain and sleep difficulties. We successfully argued that the building owner and general contractor violated the NYS Labor Law in failing to protect workers at ground level from the dangers of falling materials and judgment was entered against the defendants. The case was settled for a total of $958,000 (including $60,000 reduction of the workers’ compensation insurance lien).