$375,000 Settlement: Electrician Fell From Cracked A-Frame Ladder, Ankle Fusion

On February 27, 2017, a 30-year-old electrician was standing on the fifth rung of an eight-foot A-frame ladder at a construction site, pulling cable through the ceiling. When the cable snagged and he pulled harder to free it, the ladder shifted and collapsed. He landed on his right foot. Inspecting the ladder afterward, he found that one side rail had a lengthwise crack, a structural failure that had apparently been noticed before and patched with nothing more than electrical tape. He recorded video of the damage on the spot.

The firm pursued the property owner and general contractor under New York Labor Law, which imposes non-delegable liability on site owners and general contractors for gravity-related injuries. Despite what the firm described as a textbook scaffold-law violation, the trial court denied summary judgment on liability, finding enough disputed facts to send the case to a jury.

The defense also mounted a causation challenge. The client's right ankle carried significant pre-existing pathology: an open reduction with hardware placement in 2008, a second procedure to remove that hardware in 2016, and a treating physician's warning that fusion might eventually be needed if the ankle became symptomatic again. The defense argued the surgery was already on his medical horizon before the fall. Four months after the accident, on June 27, 2017, the client underwent the ankle fusion.

Adam Orlow, the firm's Senior Trial Partner, kept procedural pressure on by filing a notice of appeal while steering the case toward mediation. The video footage from the day of the fall, showing the split rail and the tape repair in plain view, was the center of the liability presentation. The defense's argument, that an active construction worker's pre-existing ankle would have required fusion at precisely this moment regardless of a fall from a broken ladder, faced steep credibility problems before a jury. The case resolved at mediation for $375,000.