WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS THIS?
After he fell into a hole which had been cut out of a basement’s concrete floor (for purposes of installing an ejector pump), TB filed suit against Old World Quality Corp alleging, among other things, a violation of Labor Law § 240(1) – which is a state law which mandates that owners and contractors ensure that construction areas are safe and that workers are protected from harm when assigned to “elevated work sites.”
When the Appellate Division, Second Department, reviewed the Suffolk County Supreme Court’s dismissal of TB’s Labor Law claim, it agreed that the statute wasn’t intended to protect workers from “all perils” which involve the “application of the force of gravity.” And since the pertinent inquiry was whether the incident arose from an “elevation-related hazard,” and that test was not met here, the AD2 concluded the cause of action had been properly dismissed.
Frankly, we didn't find that elevating, at all.
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DECISION