Court Opinion

ID: 9821102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 07:49:21.345588+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:48.012649
License: Public Domain

Tom, J.R,
concurs in a separate memorandum as follows: While I disagree with the majority’s ruling and find there is a question of fact preventing the award of partial summary judgment on plaintiff’s Labor Law § 240 (1) claim, I am constrained, based on this Court’s precedent, to concur with the court’s final disposition. In Vukovich v 1345 Fee, LLC (61 AD3d 533 [1st Dept 2009]), we awarded summary judgment as to liability to a pipe fitter who fell from a ladder after receiving an electric shock, reasoning that “[t]he ladder provided to plaintiff was inadequate to prevent him from falling . . . and was a proximate cause of his injuries” (id. at 534). In Caban v Maria Estela Houses I Assoc., L.P (63 AD3d 639, 639 [1st Dept 2009]), we upheld the award of summary judgment to an electrician *511who similarly sustained injury when he fell from a ladder as the result of an electric shock while “repairing malfunctioning exterior floodlights,” rejecting the defendants’ contention that the work was mere routine maintenance not covered by the statute. We previously held that the activity in which plaintiff was engaged at the time of injury — replacing ballasts in lighting fixtures — constitutes the repair of a building or structure within the contemplation of the statute (Piccione v 1165 Park Ave., 258 AD2d 357 [1st Dept 1999], lv dismissed 93 NY2d 957 [1999]).
Relying on Vukovich and Caban, plaintiff postulates that because he fell from a ladder after receiving an electric shock from an exposed wire, it is axiomatic that the ladder on which he was standing failed to afford him with the necessary protection required by Labor Law § 240 (1). Plaintiff concedes in his brief that the ladder furnished to him was not defective and that the several accounts he gave of the manner in which he sustained injury are inconsistent. Nevertheless, he asserts that “[d] espite there being no apparent defects in the A-frame ladder from which plaintiff fell, and despite plaintiffs various and conflicting explanations on [sic] what caused him to fall, the fact that the ladder failed to protect him from falling was sufficient to establish liability in his favor under Labor Law § 240 (1).” While defendants devoted the bulk of their moving papers to the matter of indemnification, third-party defendant Knight Electrical Services Corp. did take issue with plaintiffs contention, expressly stating that defendants cannot be held statutorily liable if the ladder was not shown to be defective.
This Court has held that recovery under Labor Law § 240 (1) is available where “[t]he record establishes that the ladder provided to plaintiff was inadequate to the task of preventing his fall when he came into contact with the exposed wire and was a proximate cause of his injury” (DelRosario v United Nations Fed. Credit Union, 104 AD3d 515, 515 [1st Dept 2013]). Thus, our precedent supports plaintiff’s stated basis for summary judgment as to liability. That said, this Court’s precedent cannot be reconciled with that of the Court of Appeals, which has made clear that merely because a worker falls from a safety device does not mean that, under a principle of strict liability, recovery under the statute is available. In Blake v Neighborhood Hous. Servs. of N.Y. City (1 NY3d 280, 288 [2003]), the Court of Appeals cautioned against “the mistaken belief that a fall from a scaffold or ladder, in and of itself, results in an award of damages to the injured party” (see also Beesimer v Albany Ave./Rte. 9 Realty, 216 AD2d 853, 854 [3d Dept 1995]). *512This pronouncement is clearly inimical to plaintiff’s chief contention that the failure of the ladder to prevent his fall is sufficient to establish defendants’ liability. To the contrary, as the majority here recognizes, the Court of Appeals instructs that in the absence of a statutory violation and any demonstration that the violation was a contributing cause of the fall, no prima facie violation of Labor Law § 240 (1) is made out (Blake, 1 NY3d at 289); and in the absence of a prima facie case, plaintiff is not entitled to summary judgment irrespective of the strength of defendants’ opposition (CPLR 3212 [b]; Ayotte v Gervasio, 81 NY2d 1062, 1063 [1993]).
The majority correctly notes that a worker injured by a fall from an elevated height is not necessarily required to show that the safety device provided was defective, and must instead show that the absence of adequate safety devices or the inadequacy of the devices provided was a proximate cause of his or her injuries. Yet the majority holds defendants liable under Labor Law § 240 (1) absent any proof that the safety device provided was a proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries.
While failure to supply any safety device whatsoever constitutes a violation of the statute, record evidence is required to establish the need for such protective device, a point made plain in Izrailev v Ficarra Furniture of Long Is. (70 NY2d 813, 815 [1987]), in which the trial record contained “unrebutted proof” that the plaintiff’s decedent should have been provided with various items necessary to perform electrical work on a malfunctioning sign. Likewise, in Quackenbush v Gar-Ben Assoc. (2 AD3d 824, 825 [2d Dept 2003]), “unrebutted evidence” established that defendants failed to provide the plaintiff with proper protection to prevent a fall after sustaining an electric shock. Here, the record on appeal contains no such unrebutted evidence, prompting plaintiff’s resort to the conclusory assertion that the mere fact he fell from a ladder establishes that the safety devices furnished to him were inadequate to provide proper protection, the very proposition rejected in Blake (1 NY3d at 288-289), which the majority concedes. Indeed, to recover under the statute, “a worker must demonstrate the existence of an elevation-related hazard contemplated by the statute and a failure to provide the worker with an adequate safety device” (Berg v Albany Ladder Co., Inc., 10 NY3d 902, 904 [2008]).
To be clear, prior to this Court’s holdings in Vukovich and DelRosario, all four Departments were unanimous in finding that a question of fact exists on the issue of liability under Labor Law § 240 (1) when a plaintiff worker falls from an *513A-frame stepladder as a result of an electrical shock, and where there is no evidence the ladder is defective and no record evidence of the need for another device (see Grogan v Norlite Corp., 282 AD2d 781 [3d Dept 2001]; Donovan v CNY Consol. Contrs., 278 AD2d 881 [4th Dept 2000]; Weber v 1111 Park Ave. Realty Corp., 253 AD2d 376, 378 [1st Dept 1998]; Gange v Tilles Inv. Co., 220 AD2d 556, 558 [2d Dept 1995]).
The reason for this unanimity is obvious: It flows from the Court of Appeals holdings in Blake and Izrailev. As the Third Department remarked in Grogan, “where, as here, there is no evidence that the ladder slipped, collapsed or was otherwise defective, the question of whether the ladder provided proper protection is a factual one and neither the injured worker nor the owner is entitled to summary judgment on a Labor Law § 240 (1) claim” (282 AD2d at 782).
Notably, in Gange, which this Court quoted approvingly in Weber, the Second Department elaborated: the fact that the plaintiff fell off of the ladder only after he sustained an electric shock does not preclude recovery under Labor Law § 240 (1) for injuries sustained as a result of the fall from the ladder (see Izrailev v Ficarra Furniture of Long Is., 70 NY2d 813 [1987]). However, the plaintiff is not entitled to summary judgment under Labor Law § 240 (1) as there are questions of fact as to whether, inter alia, the ladder, which was not shown to be defective in any way, failed to provide proper protection, and whether the plaintiff should have been provided with additional safety devices (220 AD2d at 558).
Thus, this Court’s more recent precedent represents a clear split in appellate authority with both the Court of Appeals and the three other Departments, a fact that the majority, despite its hesitance to do so, must accept.
In short, pursuant to the Court of Appeals holdings and those of the three other Departments, for plaintiff to prevail in this matter he must present evidence — for example from an expert — that he should have béen provided with additional safety devices and that the failure to do so was a contributing cause of the accident. Indeed, this is precisely the type of proof put forward in both Izrailev and Quackenbush.
Moreover, whether a violation of section 240 (1) was a contributing cause of the accident is generally a jury question (Zimmer v Chemung County Performing Arts, 65 NY2d 513, 524 [1985]), and “a directed verdict on the issue of liability is appropriately limited to those cases in which the only inference to be drawn from the evidence is that a failure to provide appropriate protective devices is the proximate cause of the *514plaintiffs injuries” (Weber, 253 AD2d at 377, citing Zimmer at 524). Because more evidence is needed to determine whether plaintiff should have been provided with additional safety devices, it would be inappropriate to draw such an inference from the evidence presented thus far.
Accordingly, the majority’s reliance on cases not involving an electric shock and which focus on unsecured ladders which were clearly inappropriate for the worker’s task are not on point nor particularly helpful (see e.g. Kijak v 330 Madison Ave. Corp., 251 AD2d 152 [1st Dept 1998]).
While the majority notes that in DelRosario the inadequacy of the ladder was found to be a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury, the point is that such holding is contrary to the authority requiring further evidence of the need for additional safety devices (see Izrailev, 70 NY2d 813) or finding that in the absence of such evidence an issue of fact is presented {see Grogan, 282 AD2d 781).
Contrary to the majority’s implication, I am not suggesting that all falls from elevated surfaces following contact with live electricity be carved out of the protections of Labor Law § 240 (1). On the other hand, I am suggesting that the majority’s holding here and our precedents in DelRosario and Vukovich have created a special class of decisions which, contrary to the foundational Court of Appeals holdings in this area, remove a plaintiff’s quintessential burden to establish causation under the Labor Law. Here, the majority grants plaintiff summary judgment under section 240 (1) solely upon plaintiffs fall from a ladder after receiving an electric shock from an exposed wire without proof that the ladder was a contributing cause of plaintiff’s injuries. The purpose of Labor Law § 240 (1) was to protect workers with safety devices working in elevated work sites and not to dispense with a party’s burden of proof.
As a further consideration, in cases where a risk due to an elevation-related hazard is demonstrated, recovery is predicated on the rationale that “one or more devices of the sort listed in section 240 (1) would allegedly have prevented the injury” (Rocovich v Consolidated Edison Co., 78 NY2d 509, 514 [1991]). In this matter, it is “uncontroverted fact that plaintiff’s fall was initially precipitated by a shock from an exposed wire.” Plaintiff concedes that his fall was not the result of any defect in the ladder and, indeed, has identified none. Unaddressed by the parties and not reached in any of the cases dealing with falls involving electric shocks is the question of whether the Legislature intended that a statutory provision designed to protect the worker from the danger posed by the force of grav*515ity (see Ross v Curtis-Palmer Hydro-Elec. Co., 81 NY2d 494, 501 [1993]) should be applied to the danger represented by the force of electricity. Put differently, it is far from clear that the provision of a device enumerated in Labor Law § 240 (1), or any similar safety device, would adequately protect against a force quite capable of knocking a worker from even the best ladder or scaffold, as this matter illustrates. As noted in Narducci v Manhasset Bay Assoc. (96 NY2d 259, 267 [2001], quoting Rocovich, 78 NY2d at 513 [external quotation marks omitted]), even “a violation of [Labor Law § 240 (1)] cannot ‘establish liability if the statute is intended to protect against a particular hazard, and a hazard of a different kind is the occasion of the injury.’ ”