New York Legal Authority
Construction is a dangerous business. While some fields may have higher rates of death or injury, in total number of workers killed on the job, construction leads the list. Large sections of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) regulations govern many of the activities that go on within a construction site. Likewise, New York Labor Law section 242, often known as the Scaffolding Law, is focused on construction work.
All of this regulation is devoted to making the construction workplace safer. Because of the working conditions, high on buildings, deep in trenches, using powerful equipment and moving massive amounts of material, mistakes are deadly, and it typically is not the property owners who die in the construction accidents.
For construction accidents that are not covered by the New York workers’ compensation system, the state uses a pure comparative fault analysis to determine liability. Under such an analysis, the amount of compensation available to an injured worker is dependent on their absolute level of liability.
For instance, if a worker was found to be 15 percent negligent and a contractor was 85 percent negligent, their recovery of compensation would be reduced by their 15 percent level of comparative fault.
In other states that use a modified comparative fault system, if a worker is more than 50 or 51 percent at fault, they are prevented from recovering any compensation for their injuries.
The Scaffolding Law also strongly protects workers, by establishing that if the contractor violates any sections of that law, they are strictly liable for any injuries to workers on the site.
Source: The Huffington Post, “Construction Accident on Your Property: Legal Options,” Kiernan Hopkins, Sept. 10, 2013
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