Paraplegic Construction Worker Recovers $8.225 Million After Scaffolding Fall at Clark Developers Site
Won by Ginarte Gonzalez & Winograd, LLP.
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.
What happened
On November 15, 2013, Jose Criollo, then 46 years old, was working atop a scaffolding tower at a Clark Developers construction site in New Jersey when dust and debris from above struck his eyes. Blinded for a moment, he stepped backward off the open platform and fell to the ground.
The fall fractured his spine at T12 and T13. Surgeons performed emergency surgery to stabilize the damage, and Criollo remained hospitalized for more than a month before transferring to an inpatient rehabilitation facility for four additional months. Physicians confirmed a complete spinal cord injury at the thoracic level, a permanent condition. He had worked in the construction trades since arriving in the United States and would not walk again.
Site inspection exposed three overlapping scaffolding failures. The platform was not fully planked, leaving gaps along the walking surface. There were no guardrails along open edges. There was no access ladder attached to the tower. New Jersey's construction safety regulations and federal OSHA scaffolding standards impose explicit planking and guardrail requirements for elevated work platforms, and the site satisfied none of them. Ratkowitz described the accident publicly as one that could have been prevented.
Criollo was employed by Empire Home Improvements, a subcontractor operating under Clark Developers as general contractor. Empire initially denied workers' compensation coverage, which forced Criollo and his family into civil litigation to recover anything toward his medical expenses, home modification costs, lost earning capacity, and permanent disability. Attorneys Michael A. Gallardo and John Ratkowitz of Ginarte Gallardo Gonzalez & Winograd filed suit in Essex County Superior Court naming Clark Developers and Empire as co-defendants.
Settlement was reached on January 22, 2018. Clark Developers agreed to pay $7.275 million; Empire Home Improvements contributed $950,000, for a combined total of $8.225 million. TopVerdict ranked the result among the top 10 work accident settlements in the United States for 2018 and the 10th-largest civil settlement in New Jersey that year.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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