Blog de Abogado en la Ciudad de Nueva York

In any construction injury lawsuit, getting a truly successful outcome is about more than a judgment in your favor; it’s also about an award of damages — or a settlement amount — that accurately reflects the harm you suffered and adequately positions you and your family to deal with the challenges that will inevitably lay ahead. That’s especially true if you suffered catastrophic injuries in your construction accident.

A skilled New York City construction accident attorney can help with getting that award or settlement. Your attorney can help you develop the evidence you need to prove your damages. Whether it involves photographic evidence, testimony or expert opinion evidence from medical or industry experts, your attorney can help you decide what proof your case needs. Your attorney can also help you as you make vital choices like whether to accept a settlement or continue litigating.

R.T., a journeyman construction worker, was someone who experienced that kind of catastrophic injury, according to a Daily News report. A co-worker was operating a mobile excavator (a/k/a a wheel excavator) when that machine struck an overhead utility line, with the line becoming snagged. This caused the utility pole attached to the line to fall, the pole to slam into R.T.’s head and that impact to send the man flying down some 15-20 feet, where he landed at the bottom of an excavation trench.

Whether you’re a construction worker, an OSHA investigator, or a New York City construction accident attorney, you will, if you remain in the industry long enough, unfortunately begin to see certain patterns that emerge and certain factual issues that come up over and over. For example, one of the most common causes of fatal construction accident is falls. In many of those fatal fall accidents, the worker either wasn’t wearing a harness or other fall protection or did not have his/her harness tied off properly.

Despite the frequency of these accidents, they continue to occur over and over. Too many times, that’s because those in charge at the site are more worried about time and money than they are worker safety, leading them to cut corners on essential safety needs – like fall protection.

The news articles are numerous. In October, localsyr.com reported on a Utica man who died when he fell off the roof of a four-story building. The worker was wearing neither a harness not any other form of fall protection, according to investigators. In May, the Daily News covered the near-fatal accident of a worker in Brooklyn. The worker, who suffered major head trauma after falling head-first into a shaft, wasn’t wearing a harness, police stated. In April, the Ithaca Voice reported on an OSHA fine handed out against a construction management company overseeing a hotel’s construction in downtown Ithaca. That fine came after a photo was published, drawing widespread shock and condemnation. The picture showed a hardhat working atop a scaffold several stories off the ground. The worker had neither a harness nor any other protection other than his hardhat.

Continuar leyendo ›

The pieces of evidence that end up being the keys to success in your construction accident case can come from a lot of different places. This is one reason, among many, why it is so important to have an experienced New York City construction accident attorney on your side. You might know to obtain photographic evidence or the eyewitness testimony of your nearby co-workers, but there are many other things that you might not think of, either, and those things may be essential to your success.

Take, as an example, the case of A.V., an ironworker injured at a job site in Manhattan. A.V. was working on the eighth floor of the building. Up on the ninth floor, carpenters were setting up a floor. On the morning of A.V.’s injury, a carpenter placing a wooden beam on a truss missed his target. The beam crashed down and hit A.V. on the head.

When you’re injured in an accident like this, there are several “boxes,” so to speak, you have to check. First, you must make sure that the accident that injured you in something that’s covered by the legal claim you use in your lawsuit. For example, if you include a claim under Section 240(1) of the Labor Law, then your accident needs to include a fall, a falling object or some other injured tied to a “elevation-related” risk of harm.

Continuar leyendo ›

To give yourself the best chance of the fairest and fullest possible recovery in your New York construction injury case, it pays to assert as many different claims as possible, and to fight for your right to argue all of them at your trial. Doing that effectively, of course, means knowing how to make the right arguments and give the court the right evidence and other information it needs. In other words, it pays to have a skilled New York City construction injury attorney handling your case and providing the representation you need.

The case of an injured man working in Manhattan provides a useful example. The worker, G.M., was a foreman for a company doing asbestos removal at an elementary school. The work involved getting the materials that contained asbestos out of the building’s ceiling and some of that work was done using a jackhammer. G.M. was reportedly hurt when one of the long light fixtures in a classroom, which was held to the ceiling with thin steel beams, crashed down and hit him.

Clearly, G.M.’s injury would seem to present a potentially winning case under New York’s “Scaffold Law.” That’s because, whether or not you were using a scaffold at the time of your accident, you, as a construction worker, are entitled to proper safety protections to safeguard you from injuries resulting from falls or falling objects. That includes objects like light fixtures hung from ceilings.

Continuar leyendo ›