Ginarte Gonzalez & Winograd, LLP

When improperly installed scaffolding collapsed at a Bordentown, New Jersey construction site and injured four workers, John Ratkowitz of Ginarte Gonzalez and Winograd secured a $19.675 million multi-party settlement that awarded $15 million to Luis Yanza, who sustained a traumatic brain injury leaving him with permanent, severe cognitive deficits.

A federal jury in the Southern District of New York awarded $8.67 million to Daniel Rivera, a construction worker who suffered permanent loss of use of his left arm and vision loss after an unsecured metal ladder at a Yonkers job site contacted a live electrical wire in August 2015.

Jose Criollo, 46, fell from an unguarded scaffolding tower after airborne debris struck his eyes, sustaining a complete spinal cord injury at T12-T13 that left him permanently paraplegic; the case settled for $8.225 million against the general contractor and his employer combined.

After falling from a Sea Girt rooftop without a safety harness on May 4, 2017, and sustaining a complete cervical spinal cord injury that left him permanently quadriplegic, Roberto Carlos Bolanos settled his negligence claim against the general contractor for $4 million.

James Jordan, a 42-year-old longshoreman, was hurt in June 2012 when a section of deck on the MV Ever Decent gave way at the Port of Elizabeth. He herniated a disc at L5-S1 and needed a laminectomy and fusion. After eight days of trial in Hudson County, the vessel owner's insurer settled the case for $2.8 million in March 2015.

A construction worker fell through a failed metal grate inside the Central Railroad of NJ Terminal building at Liberty State Park in 2015, suffering bone fractures and permanent spinal injuries that John Ratkowitz of Ginarte Gonzalez & Winograd resolved for $2 million in 2024.

An Essex County jury awarded $1,800,000 to a plumber who fell from unguarded construction stairs while carrying a bathtub, finding Hutchgrove Enterprises liable as the de facto general contractor on the project.

Marco Moreira, a 38-year-old ironworker, fell 10 feet when a ladder shifted at a partially built Piscataway site in December 2012, fracturing his left elbow and tearing his triceps, Achilles tendon and rotator cuff. The defendants argued weather records ruled out ice. An Essex County jury found the general contractor and property owner liable in August 2017 and awarded $1.565 million.

Jose Raimundo Madeira, a roofer employed by C & L Construction, fell from the top of a building at a development site in Monroe, New York, on June 20, 2001. A federal jury in the Southern District of New York found the site owner and the general contractor liable under Labor Law 240(1) and awarded $638,671.63 in compensatory damages. The Second Circuit affirmed the judgment in all respects in November 2006.