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Construction Accidents

By its very nature, construction is a dangerous job. Rappaport, Glass, Greene and Levine have established their desire for safe working conditions at construction sites by strongly advocating New York’s scaffolding law. We’ve also represented workers who have suffered from injuries due to construction accidents, including brain, back and neck injuries, disfigurement, paraplegia, quadriplegia, amputation, disfigurement and other permanent disabilities. Construction workers offer their employers their very best under dangerous conditions. If the time comes for your employers to reciprocate, and you feel that you aren’t getting what you deserve, call Rappaport, Glass, Greene and Levine today. Se habla espanol.

Construction Injury Attorneys for New York City, Long Island, and the Greater New York Area

The personal injury law firm of Rappaport Glass Greene & Levine LLP has always held a deep respect for the work ethic of construction workers and an admiration for the many risks to life and limb that they accept every day in order to get the job done. Our firm has always been a strong advocate of protecting and promoting laws that provide safer working conditions for New York’s construction workers, and offering the best legal representation available when a construction worker suffers serious injury or death on the job.

Through the years, our firm has won awards and settlements for many injured construction workers in New York. Those injuries have been wide ranging, and have included brain injuries, back injuries, neck injuries, quadriplegia, paraplegia, amputation, disfigurement, emotional injury, and other significant disabilities. Because construction workers often perform demolition work and excavation on older buildings, they are also the most common victims of toxic exposure to dangerous substances, such as asbestos. These types of life-lasting injuries and illnesses aren’t adequately covered by New York’s workers’ compensation laws, and a worker has a right to have an experienced attorney investigate an accident in an effort to understand every possible cause of his or her injury.

Accidents can happen anywhere and at any time on a construction site. Many of our past clients have suffered injuries in accidents resulting from:

Falls from or through roofs of buildings
Being run over and crushed by construction equipment
Falls from structures other than roofs, such as scaffoldings, ladders or windows
Collisions with motor vehicles
Mechanical defects in lifting and operational equipment
Fires and explosions involving severe burns
Trench collapses that bury workers in soil

New York’s Scaffold Law: A Legal Safety Net for New York’s Construction Workers

As home to many of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, New York has had a remarkably low injury and mortality rate among construction workers during its history when compared to other cities in the United States. A big reason for this is New York’s Scaffold Law, created in 1885, which has saved countless lives during the past 120 years. An important excerpt from the Scaffold Law reads as follows:

“A person employing or directing another to perform labor of any kind in the erection, repairing, altering, painting, cleaning or pointing of a building or structure shall furnish or erect, or cause to be furnished or erected for the performance of such labor, scaffolding, hoists, stays, ladders, slings, hangers, blocks, pulleys, braces, irons, ropes and other mechanical contrivances which shall be so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person so employed or directed…” (1921 amendment)

What the Scaffold Law essentially does is require contractors and owners of construction sites to provide harnesses and other safety equipment to construction workers laboring at high elevations, and to enforce the use of this equipment among site workers. When falls from high elevations result in injury or death to a construction worker, and it is found that the contractor and/or owner failed to provide the necessary safety equipment, or did not enforce its use, then the contractor and/or owner is legally liable for the injuries or deaths caused in such falls.

Despite the obvious safety benefits that the Scaffold Law creates for New York’s construction sites, large construction companies and contractors have financed several attempts to overturn it over the years, usually arguing that the law is antiquated and has no place in the modern construction landscape. Today more than ever, contractors and construction companies believe the Scaffold Law should be removed, and that construction workers laboring hundreds of feet off the ground should do so at their own risk.

At RGG&L, we strongly disagree. The Scaffold Law is as important today as it has ever been. Many of New York’s construction workers are day laborers and immigrants from Latin America or Asia, with little to no understanding of English, let alone the laws that protect them. Construction companies hire them because they work hard and do dangerous tasks, often for far less money than they deserve. Construction companies also know that they don’t question authority, and that taking away one of the few rights they have for their safety will meet little resistance from these hard working men and women.

It is up to concerned attorneys knowledgeable about the many hazards of construction work to help preserve the rights to safer working conditions for construction workers. The law firm of RGG&L counts itself among these attorneys. As members of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, many of our attorneys took part in drafting the NYSTLA’s position paper, New York’s ‘Scaffold Law’: An Essential Protection for Immigrant Construction Workers. We encourage you to read that document for more information about the importance of preserving the Scaffold Law.

Library for Construction Accidents:

The Same Injuries Over and Over Again
Description: Construction accidents seem to be happening for the same reasons over and over again.
Site Manager Confessions: How Some Construction Companies Bypass Workers' Comp
Description: An interview with a construction site manager reveals that some construction companies feel the same way about insurance companies as the rest of us do.