New York's Scaffold Law is the strongest protection any state gives construction workers who work at height. It makes property owners, contractors, and their agents responsible when a worker is hurt in a fall, or struck by a falling object, because the safety equipment the job called for was not provided or was not maintained. The responsibility is absolute, which means the injured worker generally does not have to prove anyone was careless.

Our New York construction accident lawyers build cases on this law regularly. This piece explains what it does, why the state has it, who it covers, and the narrow circumstances in which it does not apply.

What the Scaffold Law Does

The law requires that workers performing certain kinds of construction work be furnished with proper safety devices for work at height, and it holds the owner and the contractor responsible when that does not happen and a worker is injured or killed as a result.

Two features make it different from an ordinary negligence claim.

The responsibility is absolute rather than fault-based. The question is not whether the owner behaved reasonably. The question is whether the required protection was provided and adequate, and whether its absence caused the injury.

The duty is non-delegable. An owner cannot shed it by hiring a general contractor, and a general contractor cannot shed it by hiring a subcontractor. Neither has to have been present, and neither has to have known about the condition.

In a case that qualifies, this changes the entire posture of the claim. An injured worker can move for judgment on liability rather than waiting for a jury to apportion blame, and the case proceeds to the question of damages.

Why New York Has It

The state enacted its first scaffold law in 1885, in response to workers falling and being struck by falling objects at construction sites, particularly in New York City. The law has been amended repeatedly since, but its core has held for well over a century, and the reason it has held is that the underlying problem has not changed.

A dense city grows upward. New York has thousands of high-rise buildings and a continuous pipeline of construction, renovation, and facade work, which means an enormous amount of the city's labor happens above ground level on equipment somebody else erected.

The national numbers explain the rest. Construction accounts for more worker deaths than any other industry, roughly one in five workplace fatalities in the country, and within construction, falls are consistently the leading cause of death. Those are not accidents in the sense of being unforeseeable. They are the predictable result of height plus inadequate protection.

The law exists because the people who control a site decide what protection goes up, and the people exposed to the risk usually have no authority over that decision and real pressure not to question it. Placing the responsibility on the parties who control the site and the budget is the point.

What Accidents Does It Cover?

Two categories: a worker falling from a height, and a worker struck by an object falling from a height.

Despite the name, the law is not limited to scaffolds. It reaches falls from ladders, platforms, hoists, lifts, and unprotected openings, and it reaches injuries from material, tools, and debris coming down from above. The common element is a significant elevation difference and a failure to provide the safety device the work required.

If you fell from a height, or something fell on you from above, because the right protection was missing, the law may apply whether or not a scaffold was involved.

Which Workers Are Covered?

Workers engaged in the covered activities on a building or structure, regardless of who employs them. A subcontractor's employee is protected against the owner and general contractor even though neither is his employer. That is the whole architecture of the statute.

Are Undocumented Workers Protected?

Yes, in nearly all circumstances. Immigration status does not remove a construction worker from the protection of New York's Scaffold Law, and an undocumented worker injured by a fall on a New York site can bring the same claim as anyone else. There are limits on certain categories of lost-wage damages in specific situations, but the right to bring the claim and to recover for the injury is not conditioned on status.

This matters because fear of raising a claim is itself a safety problem. Workers who believe they have no recourse do not report hazards, and sites where hazards go unreported are the sites where people get hurt.

What Work Activities Are Covered?

The law lists the activities it protects. Work on a building or structure that involves:

• Erection
• Demolition
• Repairing
• Altering
• Painting
• Cleaning
• Pointing

This list is where a great many cases are actually fought, because the defense will argue that whatever the worker was doing falls outside it. The most common version is that the work was routine maintenance rather than repair or alteration, since routine maintenance is not covered. Whether a particular task counts turns on the specifics: whether something was broken, whether a component was replaced, whether the work was prompted by a failure, and whether it was part of a larger alteration.

What Safety Devices Must Be Provided?

The law requires that the devices the work calls for be furnished and placed so as to give proper protection. The devices it names include:

• Scaffolding
• Hoists
• Stays
• Ladders
• Slings
• Hangers
• Blocks
• Pulleys
• Braces
• Irons
• Ropes
• And other devices serving the same purpose

Every one of these exists to do one of two things: keep a worker from falling, or keep an object from falling on a worker. The list is not a checklist to be satisfied formally. A scaffold that was provided but erected without guardrails, a ladder that was provided but was the wrong tool for that height, or a harness that was provided with nothing to tie off to, is a failure to provide proper protection even though equipment was physically present.

Who Is Responsible, and Who Is Exempt?

Property owners, general contractors, and their agents, including construction managers who exercised the authority of a contractor over the work.

The exemption is narrow. Owners of one and two-family homes are exempt when they hire out the work and do not direct or control how it is performed. A homeowner who acts as his own general contractor, directs the means and methods, or controls the work loses the exemption. For the overwhelming majority of New York City job sites, including commercial buildings, apartment buildings, and larger residential properties, the exemption does not apply.

Why Being Partly at Fault Does Not Defeat the Claim

This is the feature of the law that surprises injured workers most, and it is worth stating plainly: once a violation of the statute is established as a cause of the injury, the worker's own comparative fault is not a defense.

In an ordinary negligence case, a finding that the injured person was thirty percent responsible reduces the recovery by thirty percent. Under this law, in a case that qualifies, it does not. A worker who was moving quickly, who was not as careful as he might have been, or who made an ordinary mistake on a scaffold that should have had guardrails and did not, still has the claim.

What Does Defeat a Scaffold Law Claim

The protection is strong but it is not unlimited, and an honest account includes the limits.

A claim fails where the worker's own conduct was the sole cause of the accident. If no statutory violation contributed at all, there is nothing for the law to attach to.

A claim can also fail where adequate safety devices were in fact available, the worker knew they were there and knew he was expected to use them, and chose not to use them for no good reason. That defense is narrower than defendants would like. It requires that the proper device actually be available and adequate, not merely that something was somewhere on the site, and a worker who used what he was given, or who was told to proceed without the device, is not in that category.

The other frequent defense is the activity question discussed above: that the work was routine maintenance, or was not work on a building or structure at all.

What Damages Are Available?

Where liability is established, a jury can consider past and future medical expenses, past and future lost earnings and lost earning capacity, past and future pain and suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life.

Most injured construction workers also have a workers' compensation claim running at the same time. Compensation pays for treatment and part of lost wages regardless of fault, but it does not pay for pain and suffering and does not cover the full value of a lost career. The Scaffold Law claim against the owner and contractor is what reaches those losses. The two tracks interact, the compensation carrier will assert a lien against any recovery, and resolving the injury case without the carrier's consent can put future benefits at risk, so both have to be managed together from the beginning.

Where a worker is killed, the family's claim is a wrongful death case, limited in New York to pecuniary loss, together with a separate claim for what the worker went through before death.

How Long Do I Have To Bring a Claim?

Against a private owner or contractor, generally three years from the date of the accident.

Where a public entity is involved, which covers city agencies, public authorities, and public construction projects, a formal notice of claim is due within 90 days and suit has to be filed within one year and 90 days. Missing the 90 day notice can end the claim entirely. A wrongful death claim runs on its own schedule tied to the appointment of the estate's representative.

There is a practical deadline as well. The scaffold, the ladder, the hoist, and the material come down, get repaired, or get returned within days, and the inspection records, daily logs, and site footage that establish what protection was in place are far easier to obtain early than late.

Talk To Our Attorneys About a Height-Related Construction Injury

If you were hurt in a fall or struck by a falling object on a New York construction site, our attorneys will determine whether the Scaffold Law applies to the work you were doing, identify what protection should have been in place and who was responsible for it, move to preserve the equipment and the records, and tell you plainly what the claim involves.

Contact Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower to speak with our team, or read more about our construction accident practice.