If you were injured on a construction site, a NYC construction accident lawyer can help you recover money for your medical bills, your lost income, and the harm the injury has done to your life. Construction is the most dangerous work in New York City, and when a fall, a falling object, or an unsafe site puts you in the hospital, your rights go well beyond a workers' compensation check.
New York gives construction workers protections that almost no other injured person has. Owners and general contractors carry safety duties they cannot contract away, and those duties apply even when your own employer is the one who cut the corner. Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower represents injured construction workers across the five boroughs, and our construction accident lawyers build every case as if it will be tried in front of a jury.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
You likely have a case if you were hurt on a site because of an unsafe condition, a missing safety measure, or someone else's carelessness. You do not have to prove your employer was at fault, and you do not have to name the individual worker who made the mistake. Three things usually decide whether there is a case worth bringing:
The fastest way to know where you stand is to have the facts reviewed, which our construction accident lawyers do at no cost.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
Most construction cases in this state run on one of three tracks, and the track your case takes decides how hard the defense can fight you. Our construction accident attorneys plead the ones that fit the facts instead of betting everything on a single theory.
New York's Scaffold Law covers injuries tied to a difference in elevation. That includes falls from scaffolds, ladders, roofs, beams, and open floor edges, and it also covers workers struck by objects that fell because they were not hoisted or secured. When it applies, responsibility sits with the owner and the general contractor no matter what the injured worker did, and arguments about your own carelessness do not cut the recovery. It is the strongest protection an injured worker has in this state, and it is the reason so many serious site cases resolve for real numbers.
A separate part of New York's construction law lets an injured worker sue when a specific safety regulation was violated. These are the concrete rules of a job site: guardrails on open edges, overhead protection and netting, hard hats and eye protection, safe access and egress, shoring in a trench, guards on tools, clear passageways free of debris. Proving a violation of a rule made for worker safety shifts the argument away from what you should have noticed and onto what the site was required to have.
The third track is straightforward carelessness by a party that created or knew about the hazard, or that supervised and controlled the work that hurt you. This is the route for equipment left in a walkway, a defective machine, a crane operator's error, or a subcontractor's crew working overhead without warning anyone below. It also reaches product makers when a tool, hoist, harness, or clamp failed the way it was never supposed to.
Often more than one party is responsible, and usually it is not just your employer. On a typical New York City project, our construction accident lawyers look at:
Identifying every responsible party is not paperwork. Each one usually brings its own insurance policy, and finding all of them is what separates a modest settlement from a recovery that actually covers a lifetime of consequences.
Often, yes, and the two claims run side by side rather than against each other.
Workers' compensation covers your authorized medical treatment and part of your lost wages no matter who was at fault. It is the fastest money in the case, and it is the reason you should report the accident and open a claim immediately. What it does not do is pay you a dime for pain and suffering, cover the full value of the earnings you lost, or let you sue your own employer in most situations.
The separate case against everyone else on the job is where the meaningful recovery comes from. It reaches pain and suffering, the full measure of past and future lost earnings, future surgery and care, and the losses your family carries. On a site with an owner, a general contractor, and several trades, that case can be worth many times the value of the comp claim.
When the third party case resolves, the compensation carrier is entitled to be repaid part of what it spent on your treatment and wage benefits. That amount is negotiable, and reducing it is part of the work. A lawyer who ignores the lien until the end of the case can hand back money you should have kept.
Most serious construction injuries in New York City come from a handful of recurring hazards, including:
Each of these has its own proof problems. A ladder case turns on who supplied and secured the ladder, a crane case turns on the rigging and the lift plan, and a trench case turns on shoring and soil inspection. That is why the investigation starts with the specific hazard rather than a generic accident report.
Construction injuries tend to be serious and long lasting. The most common ones our construction accident attorneys see include:
Do not wait out symptoms because you can still walk. Headaches, numbness, dizziness, and back pain that start a few days after the accident are common, and the gap between the date of the accident and the date you first told a doctor is the first thing an insurance company will use against you.
Construction is the deadliest job in the city. In 2024, 19 construction workers were killed on the job in New York City, and falls were the leading cause, according to the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. Its Deadly Skyline report found that a New York City construction worker is more than six times as likely to be killed on the job as the average city worker, that most workers killed across the state were non-union, and that more than three quarters of the deadly worksites had safety violations on record.
That last number is the one worth sitting with. These are not freak events. They are hazards that were documented, reported, or plainly visible before anyone got hurt.
Get medical care first, then protect the case before the site changes. Sites are cleaned, crews rotate, and video is overwritten, sometimes within a week.
The proof lives on the job site and in paperwork that nobody hands over voluntarily. Our construction accident lawyers move early for site and neighboring building video, daily logs and sign in sheets, the accident and safety reports, inspection records, delivery and rigging tickets, contracts between the owner and the trades, and the equipment itself before it is repaired or scrapped. Public records matter too, including Buildings Department complaints, permits, stop work orders, and OSHA inspection files, all of which can show the hazard was known and left in place.
Coworker testimony is often the difference in a case, and coworkers are hardest to find months later. That is the practical reason to call before your treatment ends rather than after.
It depends on how serious your injury is and how it changes your life, so there is no single number. What you can recover generally falls into these categories:
Construction projects usually carry layered insurance across the owner, the general contractor, and the trades, so the money available is often far greater than it is in an ordinary accident case. No personal injury lawyer can promise you a figure. What our construction accident attorneys can do is build the case so the full weight of your loss is on the table.
In most cases you have three years from the date of the accident to file suit, and two years in a death case. If a city or public agency is involved, you may have as little as ninety days to serve a formal notice first, with a compressed schedule after that. Filing for workers' compensation does not preserve your rights against anyone else, and it is a common and costly assumption. Because the deadline depends on who is responsible, confirm yours early rather than assume you have years.
You can still recover money. New York uses comparative fault, which means your compensation is reduced by your share of the blame but not taken away. On height related cases the law can place responsibility on owners and contractors regardless of what the worker did, so fault arguments that sound damaging often carry far less weight than the adjuster suggests. Expect the insurer to raise your conduct early anyway, because it is the cheapest way to lower the number.
Yes. Your immigration status does not stop you from bringing a construction injury claim in New York, and it does not matter whether you were paid on the books. Injured workers have the right to a safe worksite and to pursue compensation when it fails, regardless of status. Our construction accident attorneys are not immigration authorities and do not report anyone.
Nothing upfront. Our construction accident lawyers handle these cases on a contingency fee basis, which means you pay no attorney's fee unless there is a recovery for you. The first consultation is free, so you can find out where you stand at no cost and no obligation.
Knowing the shape of the process makes the wait easier. A construction case generally moves through these stages:
Serious cases take time, and the reason is usually medical. The value of a case is not clear until your doctors can say what you will be living with permanently, and settling before that point is how injured workers get shortchanged.
A construction accident is any injury that happens because of work on or around a construction site. That covers falls from heights, being struck by falling tools or materials, electrical injuries, machinery and equipment failures, and collapses during demolition or excavation. It reaches renovation and repair work in occupied buildings, roadway and bridge projects, and utility work in the street. It can include workers, and at times pedestrians or visitors hurt by dangerous site conditions.
Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower handles the legal fight so you can focus on getting better. Our construction accident lawyers investigate the site before the evidence disappears, identify every party responsible and every policy that covers the loss, keep your treatment and wage benefits moving, reduce the compensation lien so more of the recovery stays with you, and deal with the insurance companies so you do not have to. Cases get built for their full value and stay ready for a jury if the offer is not fair. There is no fee unless our attorneys recover for you.
Our NYC construction accident lawyers represent injured workers across all five boroughs, including as a Bronx construction accident lawyer, a Queens construction accident lawyer, a Brooklyn construction accident lawyer, a Manhattan construction accident lawyer, and a Staten Island construction accident lawyer. Wherever the site was, our attorneys can help.
A construction injury can put your health, your income, and your family under pressure all at once. The sooner our construction accident lawyers get involved, the more evidence can be preserved and the stronger your case will be. Contact Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower for a free consultation about your NYC construction accident case.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
For more answers to questions please see our construction accident FAQ page.
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