When the last hundred Appellate Division Scaffold Law decisions are analyzed, it is seen that over ninety percent of them turn on the same six issues, and add up to the questions of Who am I? What was the Plaintiff doing? What exactly went wrong? Do I have another way out? The issues these cases turned on are these: This course examines the last hundred Scaffold Law decisions handed down by the Appellate Courts, and is organized to provide a framework that can help predict whether or not a case on your desk will result in a finding of liability against your Defendant pursuant to New York’s Scaffold Law. A number of arcane rules and nuanced interpretations have grown up around the Scaffold Law, and decisions frequently rest on some pretty fine splitting of hairs. Given the complexity of modern construction practices and business relationships, it is not surprising that whether or not a Defendant is exposed to finding of liability under the Scaffold Law can be difficult to predict. New York Appellate Courts hand down a hundred or more Scaffold Law decisions a year. THE LAST 100 APPELLATE DIVISION DECISION AND THIS OUTLINE New York Court’s interpret the Scaffold Law’s intent this way “Section 240 is intended to place the ultimate responsibility for building practices on the owner and general contractor in order to protect the workers who are required to be there but who are scarcely in a position to protect themselves from accidents,” it is “to be liberally construed to achieve this purpose”, and it “impos(es) a non-delegable duty upon owners and general contractors to provide safety devices to protect workers from elevation-related risks, with liability attaching where violation of that duty proximately causes injuries.” While New York Labor Law Section 240(1) is informally called the “Scaffold” law, it might as easily be called the “Gravity” law since its stated objective is to protect workers from the risks of falling themselves or of falling objects, risks which the Court’s call “elevation-related risks”. The law operates in practicality as a form of insurance for workers at job sites, (although the Court’s bristle at this characterization). It reads, in pertinent part:Īll contractors and owners and their agents, except owners of one and two-family dwellings who contract for but do not direct or control the work, in the erection, demolition, 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 devices which shall be so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person so employed. Even if the Owner or General Contractor did nothing wrong and had now knowledge of the condition which caused Plaintiff’s injuries, they may be held strictly liable under the Scaffold Law. Under the Scaffold Law, a worker’s own negligence which contributes in part, or nearly entirely, to his accident, counts for nothing. It is unique among Labor Laws in requiring a finding of strict liability against Owners and General contractors who run afoul of its provisions. Section 240(1) of New York’s Labor law is known as its “Scaffold” Law.
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