David's Construction Accident Corner

This long and interesting decision from the appeals court in Brooklyn addresses a few important issues. First, the Court addressed the argument that the Workers’ Compensation law should prevent the injured worker from bringing his claims against the defendants. In New York, if you are injured on the job, you are not allowed to sue your employer and your only remedy against them is Workers’ Compensation. There is also a rule that you cannot sue “alter egos” of your employer. Here, the defendant argued that they were an alter ego of the worker’s employer. To do so, they had to show that they operated as a “single integrated entity” with the worker’s employer and they were not able to do so, even though the companies were “closely related.” The Court noted that the owners of the two companies were careful to keep them separate and distinct: they were not subsidiaries of each other, they were formed for different corporate purposes, they had separate bank accounts and pay their own expenses, and file separate tax forms. The Court went as far as to say that the evidence was strong enough that the Defendant was not allowed to use that Workers’ Compensation defense anymore in this case.

Second, the Court said that the worker was not a special employee of the defendant because he and his coworkers were paid by checks from their employer, not the defendant, and that the ladder and all the equipment they used to work at the defendant’s premises was their employer’s.

The Second Department appellate court affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to the injured painter who fell from a defective ladder that collapsed and rejected the defense’s attempt to use contrary notations in the hospital record as to how the accident happened since the statements were not attributable to plaintiff and not germane to diagnosis or treatment. This is an evidentiary rule that comes up all the time in personal injury cases in New York. Since that hearsay evidence was all the defendant had, it was not enough to prevent the worker from winning.

In this interesting decision, the Brooklyn-based Appellate Court said that the decision of the trial court below was incorrect and the worker’s claims could go forward. The worker was hired by the defendants, homeowners, to cut down a tree branch at their home. While he was on a ladder cutting down the branch, he was struck by something and he fell off the ladder suffering injuries. Owners of one and two-family homes are exempt from the Labor Law, unless they direct the performance of the work. Here, the worker said that the owner of the home was there while the work was going on, told him how to cut down the tree branch, and actually participated in the work. The owner didn’t provide enough evidence to refute this, so the Court allowed to case to proceed. Of note here is a mistake made by the defendants: they failed to argue in time that the Labor Law didn’t apply to the tree cutting activity so the Court couldn’t address that issue.

This is an interesting case from the Manhattan appellate court that has implications outside of the construction accident context. Here, the worker was a resident of Connecticut and sued under the Labor Law for injuries he suffered in a construction accident in Westchester County, New York. The Defendant and other parties involved are residents of Connecticut. The Court said that the case could be heard in New York because the Labor Law is there to protect workers in New York and the courts in New York will have to use New York law for the injured worker’s claims. They said that since the general contractor entered into a contract to perform work in New York, there was no hardship to them.