The question in this case is whether evidence that the plaintiff fell from an unsecured ladder after receiving an electric shock is sufficient to support summary judgment for the plaintiff on a Labor Law § 240(1) claim.
Labor Law § 240(1), often called the “scaffold law,” requires someone who is constructing a building to provide workers on the project with ladders and “other devices which shall be so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person so employed.” In a short memorandum opinion in Nazario v 222 Broadway, LLC, 28 N.Y.3d 1054 (2016), the Court of Appeals held that summary judgment was not appropriate on a Labor Law § 240(1) claim in a case where the plaintiff received an electric shock and fell from a ladder. The Court explained that, in that case, “[q]uestions of fact exist[ed] as to whether the ladder failed to provide proper protection, and whether plaintiff should have been provided with additional safety devices.”
This case implicates the Court’s holding in Nazario. Like the plaintiff in that case, plaintiff here also received an electric shock and fell from a ladder. In summarizing the evidence, the First Department stated that the A-frame ladder that plaintiff was using when he fell could not be opened or locked while he was using it; the closed ladder could only be leaned against the wall. The ladder was not anchored to the floor or wall, and there were no other safety devices provided to plaintiff. On this record, a divided panel of the First Department held that plaintiff was entitled to summary judgment on his Labor Law § 240(1) claim.
Two judges dissented and would have found questions of fact precluding summary judgment on the authority of Nazario. In the dissenters’ view, that decision stood for the proposition that where a worker falls from a ladder due to an electric shock, and there is no evidence that the ladder was defective or another safety device was required, “factual issues pertaining to causation and liability are presented for trial.”
The First Department granted defendants leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals.
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