Hard Hats & Justice Episode 2

The Eleven Million Dollar Ladder: Lewis's Fight After a Defective A Frame

In today's episode of Hard Hats and Justice, Chris Gorayeb walks through the case of Lewis, a carpenter who climbed an A frame ladder in Brooklyn that had been placed on unsecured sheets of plywood over an uneven surface. As he operated a chipping hammer, the ladder side loaded, one leg folded, and Lewis fell with both arms outstretched to protect his body. He landed with full force on those arms, sustaining bilateral wrist fractures that required 11 screws in one wrist and 12 in the other, along with neck and back injuries that later demanded spinal fusion surgeries on both his cervical and lumbar regions.

This installment of Hard Hats and Justice details how Gorayeb and Associates investigated and found the ladder was old, in poor condition, and never should have been on the job site, while the plywood beneath it had never been secured. Both conditions violated the New York State Labor Law. At trial, the defense brought in doctors to minimize his injuries and witnesses to blame Lewis for the fall, but a Brooklyn jury rejected that narrative and awarded him approximately 11 million dollars. Chris closes the episode with the story of a 20 year old telecom tower worker struck by a 100 foot cable weighing hundreds of pounds, whose employer refused to call an ambulance and instead had him driven home by Uber the next day, a pattern he warns is common and designed to erase evidence of the accident from the record.

New York Construction Accident Lawyers

If your accident happened on a construction site, a demolition job, a scaffold, a roof, or because an owner, general contractor, or other party failed to keep the site safe, do not wait for paperwork, missing evidence, or an early insurance offer to shape your case.