Demolition worker crushed by scaffolding at Aqueduct racetrack: $1.5 million settlement
Won by The Perecman Firm, P.L.L.C..
A Local 12A demolition worker crushed by collapsing scaffolding during the teardown at Queens' Aqueduct racetrack recovered $1.5 million in a mediated settlement, a result the New York Law Journal ranked among its top 2020 settlements.
What happened
Ricardo Sanclemente worked demolition at the Aqueduct racetrack in South Ozone Park, Queens, part of a crew taking down structures at the thoroughbred racing and casino complex. He belonged to Local 12A, the asbestos workers' union, whose members handle the hazardous teardown that comes before a building is leveled. On the job site, scaffolding came down on him. The New York Law Journal would later record the incident in flat, clinical language: a construction worker crushed by scaffolds.
Demolition ranks among the most dangerous work on any site. Old structures come apart in stages, and the tradesmen doing it move through half-dismantled floors while heavy machinery and temporary platforms crowd around them. A scaffold is meant to be the stable thing in that setting, something to stand on. When one collapses onto the worker it was supposed to hold, there is nowhere to step clear.
The defendants traced the project's chain of responsibility. The New York Racing Association owned the property. Tutor Perini Building Corp. and Navillus Tile handled construction. Genting New York, the casino operator at Aqueduct, along with Manafort Brothers and LVI Demolition Services, were also named, and the case branched into third-party claims against Reliance Restoration and an environmental subcontractor.
The Perecman Firm built the case on New York's scaffold law, Labor Law 240, which makes property owners and contractors responsible when a gravity-related hazard injures a worker and the site lacks the protection the statute requires. A platform that fails and falls on the person standing under it sits squarely inside that rule. David Perecman led the matter, with Adam M. Hurwitz on the file.
Instead of putting liability and damages to a Queens jury, the parties went to mediation. On March 26, 2020, they settled for $1.5 million. Because the case resolved by agreement rather than trial, there was no verdict to challenge and no reduction or remittitur on appeal.
The New York Law Journal included the result in its 2020 Top Verdicts and Settlements issue for the Northeast, naming it to the year's settlement list. It was one of eleven Perecman Firm recoveries named to the publication's New York roundup for that year.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from The Perecman Firm, P.L.L.C.
All The Perecman Firm, P.L.L.C. proven verdicts →A union laborer fell about ten feet from a scaffold to the sidewalk after the owner and general contractor failed to give him a safe way to climb on and off it, and his back and heel injuries produced a $9.9 million settlement that VerdictSearch and the New York Law Journal ranked as the state's second-largest of 2014.
David H. Perecman of The Perecman Firm secured a $6 million settlement for a 45-year-old union operating engineer who slipped descending a tower crane's ladder, fell about 14 feet, and tore his left rotator cuff.
Related workplace injury verdicts
After nearly 30 years of litigation, Markovits Stock and DeMarco secured a $742 million-plus-interest settlement for approximately 23,000 Navistar retirees whose healthcare and life insurance benefits had been repeatedly reduced.
Paul Napoli served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel for nearly 10,000 firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who developed respiratory diseases after working at Ground Zero, securing a settlement worth up to $712.5 million against the city and its contractors.
Jose Valdivia, 25, was building scaffolding at the Phillips 66 refinery in Lake Charles when a co-worker above him lost his grip on a steel scaffold bar. It struck him on the head and spine through a hard hat and full protective equipment. He is in a wheelchair with limited speech. Brock never reported the accident to OSHA.
On September 7, 2019, Ulysses Cruz, a 48-year-old United Airlines ramp worker serving as a wing walker at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, was struck from behind by an Allied Aviation Fueling Company of Houston van whose driver said the morning sun was in his eyes. Cruz was paralyzed from the chest down and suffered a stroke two days later that cost him the use of his dominant right arm. After a two-week trial before Judge Ravi Sandill, a Harris County jury on October 25, 2021 found Allied 70 percent and driver Reginald Willis 30 percent at fault and awarded Cruz, his wife and their two children $352.7 million in compensatory damages. Judge Sandill conditioned denial of a new trial on a $117.5 million remittitur of noneconomic damages, which the family accepted, and an amended judgment of about $235.3 million was signed February 7, 2022. Allied appealed, the parties reached a confidential mediated settlement, and on July 18, 2023 the First Court of Appeals vacated the judgment and dismissed the case at the parties' joint request.