Queens Jury's $62 Million Fall Verdict Settles for $6 Million During Appeal
After trial: Hutch Realty Partners filed post-trial motions and appealed to the Appellate Division. Before either was resolved, the case settled for $6,000,000, per a case summary published by Kahana Feld, the defense firm on the appeal, which describes the judgment as $68 million at that point and also notes that the available insurance coverage on the defense side was limited well below the verdict, context for why a verdict of this size resolved for a fraction of it. We could not locate a published appellate opinion or pin down the exact settlement date. The New York Law Journal case-index page for the appeal (captioned Zeng Guang Lin, Respondent v. Hutch Realty Partners LLC, Appellants) now returns a 404, and a CourtListener search for "Hutch Realty" returned no matching docket, which is expected for a New York state trial-level case. The $6,000,000 settlement, not the $62,060,086.27 verdict, is the figure Lin actually recovered. Sources differ on the verdict date: PaintSquare News, reporting five days later, places it on Wednesday, December 17, 2014, and that is the date used here.
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": staffed trade-press report of the $62,060,086.27 Queens jury verdict returned Dec. 17, 2014 for Zeng Guang Lin against Hutch Realty Partners LLC and Gamut Consulting Inc., the fall and injuries, the Labor Law 240(1) finding, the damages breakdown, the two-and-a-half-month liability phase and three-month damages phase, the CAT scans, MRIs and twenty witnesses, the OSHA records, and attribution of the case to the Morelli, Alters, and Ratner Law Firm
- 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): identifies the case as Zeng Guang Lin v. Hutch Realty Partners LLC, et al., Index No. 24253/08 (Sup. Ct. Queens Co. 2015), names Ben Morelli as opposing counsel, and states the case settled for $6,000,000 during the pendency of simultaneous post-trial motions and an appeal from a $68 million judgment
- 4.Kreisman Law Offices case summary (third-party firm blog, corroboration only): verdict amount and breakdown, the L1-L5 and scapula fractures and encephalomalacia, the expert witnesses at the damages trial, and Benedict Morelli, Adam E. Deutsch and David T. Sirotkin as plaintiff's trial counsel
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