New York State Labor Law - Transcript

One of the areas of practice that I have had the honor and privilege of representing many injured people in is an area of the law that’s called the New York State Labor Law. 

In the New York State Labor Law, is a very special and unique statute or law that is designed for one special purpose, and that is to provide added protection, under the law, to construction workers, painters, electricians, roofers, plumbers, the men and women that go out there and build America.  But in doing their job, they are often exposed to very dangerous situations, and particularly when they are required to work at a height, in an elevated worksite.  The New York State Labor Law has been on the books for over a hundred years and it was written and enacted specifically for that purpose, to provide some added protection to workers who go in harm’s way in those situations and the reason I think, and a sound reason the law was enacted was twofold.  First of all, it recognizes the dangerous aspects that can come with that type of work and secondly, it recognizes how often the injuries that are sustained by workers in those trades, in doing those jobs are often catastrophic, falling from heights of fifteen, twenty, twenty five feet, terrible injuries I’ve seen in my many years of experience in representing workers injured in these situations unfortunately and tragically, sometimes often death is associated with these type of injuries. 

Just briefly, what the Labor Law provides is basically this, if you are engaged in a specific type of construction related work, and again it covers the whole gamut of construction work, and you are caused to fall and are injured as a consequence, and if there was a failure to provide the worker with adequate safety devices that would have, if provided, prevented those type of injuries, the law puts kind of an extra application of liability on general contractors who oversee these projects and in some instances, the owners of these commercial properties where this work is going on.