Queens Jury's $62 Million Fall Verdict Settles for $6 Million During Appeal
After trial: Reduced by settlement. Hutch Realty Partners appealed, and the case settled for $6,000,000 before the appeal was resolved, according to a defense-firm case summary.
Won by Morelli Law Firm PLLC.
A Queens County jury awarded Zeng Guang Lin, an immigrant construction worker who was 20 when he fell 20 feet from a roof at a Bronx job site, $62,060,086.27 on December 17, 2014 after finding property owner Hutch Realty Partners LLC and contractor Gamut Consulting Inc. liable under New York Labor Law for failing to provide him fall protection. Lin suffered a traumatic brain injury along with spinal fractures, rib fractures, a lacerated spleen, a renal hematoma, and lung contusions. Hutch Realty filed post-trial motions and appealed, and while both were pending the case settled for $6,000,000, against a judgment the defense firm on the appeal puts at $68 million. Benedict Morelli tried the case for Lin; trade-press coverage at the time identified his firm as the Morelli, Alters and Ratner Law Firm, the practice known today as Morelli Law Firm PLLC.
What happened
On May 8, 2008, Zeng Guang Lin, a 20-year-old construction worker who had recently immigrated from China, fell 20 feet from a roof at a job site in the Bronx while installing metal siding for Gamut Consulting Inc. The property was owned by Hutch Realty Partners LLC. Lin was working without a harness, guardrail, or any other fall protection required under New York's Labor Law.
The fall left Lin with a traumatic brain injury, multiple spinal fractures, multiple rib fractures, a lacerated spleen, a renal hematoma, and lung contusions. A verdict summary of the damages trial records fractures at L1 through L5 and to his scapula, and encephalomalacia, softening of the brain tissue, leaving permanent cognitive deficits.
Lin sued Hutch Realty and Gamut Consulting in Supreme Court, Queens County, under index number 24253/08. The liability phase of the trial ran two and a half months, and the jury found that both defendants had violated Labor Law section 240(1) by failing to equip Lin with proper safety devices, holding them fully responsible for his injuries.
Because the liability trial had run so long, a separate jury heard the damages phase over an additional three months. Lin's attorneys showed the jurors his CAT scans and MRIs and called about twenty witnesses on the missing safety equipment. On Wednesday, December 17, 2014, that jury returned a unanimous verdict of $62,060,086.27: $20 million for past pain and suffering, $42 million for future pain and suffering, and $60,086.27 for past medical expenses. It was believed at the time to be the largest personal injury verdict for a single plaintiff in Queens County Supreme Court history. Benedict Morelli tried the case for Lin with Adam E. Deutsch and David T. Sirotkin; contemporaneous trade-press coverage named the plaintiff's firm as the Morelli, Alters and Ratner Law Firm, the practice known today as Morelli Law Firm PLLC.
Hutch Realty moved to set aside the verdict and separately appealed to the Appellate Division. While the post-trial motions and the appeal were both still pending, the case settled for $6,000,000, according to a case summary published by Kahana Feld, the defense firm on the appeal, which puts the judgment at $68 million at that stage. That settlement, not the jury's headline figure, is what Lin actually recovered.
OSHA had no record of any citations against Hutch Realty Partners. Gamut Consulting had one substantiated case on record from 2007, five serious citations for excavation hazards, according to agency records cited in trade press coverage of the verdict.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.PaintSquare News, Dec. 22, 2014, "Worker Wins $62M in Fall Case"·Archived copy
- 2.Wayback Machine snapshot (Aug. 25, 2019) of the same PaintSquare News report, retrieved because the live page now blocks automated retrieval
- 3.Kahana Feld, Significant Reported Decisions (accessed 2026-09-17)·Archived copy
- 4.Kreisman Law Offices case summary·Archived copy
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