Paralyzed Electrical Apprentice Reaches $21 Million Settlement Over Newark Arena Fall
After trial: The $21 million is the September 2021 settlement with Mehl Electric only, and it is final. A jury later found total damages of $20,080,976 against the remaining defendants on March 14, 2025, for a further $7,229,151 recovery from Phelps.
Won by Nagel Rice, LLP.
Nicholas Dephillips, a 21-year-old apprentice electrician, fell about 15 feet through a drop ceiling while installing wiring for a helipad atop Newark's Prudential Center in January 2019, fracturing his cervical spine and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. He sued his employer, Mehl Electric, general contractor Phelps Construction Group, and the arena in Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County. In September 2021, before trial, he settled with Mehl Electric and its insurance carriers for $21 million, a figure his attorney called the largest construction site accident settlement in New Jersey at the time. His claims against Phelps went to trial in 2025, where a jury apportioned Phelps 36 percent of the liability, adding to his overall recovery from the incident.
What happened
Nicholas Dephillips was 21 years old and working as an apprentice electrician for Mehl Electric when he was sent to install wiring for a helipad being built atop Newark's Prudential Center. In January 2019, he was pulling wire above a drop ceiling on the arena's upper concourse when the ceiling gave way and he fell about 15 feet to the ground below.
The fall fractured his spine in multiple places: a C6 burst fracture with retropulsion, a C7 compression fracture, a T4 endplate fracture, and a posterior ligamentous disruption at C6-7, along with fractures to his left scapula, left sacrum, and ribs. Surgeons performed a C6 corpectomy with decompression, a fusion of C5 through C7, a posterior cervical fusion with instrumentation, and a laminectomy. Dephillips was left paralyzed from the chest down, retaining use of his arms but only limited use of his hands.
Dephillips sued in Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County, naming his employer, Mehl Electric; the general contractor, Phelps Construction Group; and the Prudential Center. He was represented by Bruce Nagel and Greg Kohn of Nagel Rice.
In September 2021, before the case reached trial, Dephillips settled with Mehl Electric and its insurance carriers for $21 million. Nagel said that, to his knowledge, it was the largest construction site accident settlement in New Jersey up to that point. At the time, the claims against Phelps and the arena remained unresolved.
Those claims went to trial in early 2025. After a month-long trial before Judge Annette Scoca in Essex County Superior Court, a jury returned a total damages figure of $20,080,976 on March 14, 2025. Jurors apportioned 56 percent of the liability to Mehl Electric (already out of the case on account of its settlement), 36 percent to Phelps, and 8 percent to Dephillips. Because Mehl had already settled, Phelps was responsible only for its own share, $7,229,151, bringing Dephillips' combined recovery from the settlement and the verdict to roughly $28.3 million.
At trial, Phelps argued that responsibility for site safety rested with Mehl and with Dephillips himself. Kohn told jurors that Phelps' own safety manual gave its site superintendent control over safety across the job site, and that the superintendent had never spoken with Mehl's crew before they began working near the unsecured ceiling. Nagel said he intends to appeal the judge's refusal to instruct the jury that a general contractor holds a nondelegable duty to enforce safety precautions on its jobsite.
Dephillips needs help from a nurse at home but is able to drive a car and to attend college classes, Kohn said.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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