Construction Worker Falls to His Death at Manhattan Worksite

 A worker was killed in a construction accident after falling down an elevator shaft of a building at 152 East 87th Street on the Upper East Side. According to a news report in TheRealDeal.com, the victim worked for Noble Construction Company. The 30-year-old man was on the third floor of the 19-story condominium project when he fell down the elevator shaft to the basement. He suffered head trauma and was taken to an area hospital where he was declared dead.

Lack of Fall Protection
The New York City Department of Buildings has placed a stop-work order on the site and is investigating the incident. Co-workers told officials that the man was on the third floor and that he was wearing a harness, but wasn’t hooked to a cable. The worker was wearing a helmet, but that didn’t do anything to protect him from the fatal injuries, his co-workers stated. Police confirmed that the unhooked harness caused the accident.
Noble Construction Group had three violations in May following a federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspection at one of its sites in Flushing. The company was fined $3,500 for not meeting fall protection standards. Last week, a 59-year-old construction worker fell to his death while working on part of the Domino Sugar redevelopment project, also in Brooklyn.
Workers and Elevator Shafts
According to the Electronic Library of Construction Occupational Safety and Health (eLCOSH), incidents involving elevators and escalators kill about 30 people and seriously injure about 17,000 people each year in the U.S. Elevators cause almost 90 percent of the deaths and 60 percent of the injuries. Injuries to people working on or near elevators, including those installing, repairing and maintaining elevators, and construction workers who are working in or near elevator shafts, account for almost half of the annual deaths. It is also worth noting that half of the deaths of workers who are operating near or in elevator shafts were due to falls into the shaft.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) states that 49 percent of deaths during work on or near elevators resulted from lack of fall protection. Adequate fall protection such as scaffolding, guardrails in front of open shafts, or personal fall protection systems, etc. can help prevent these deaths. Under federal and state laws, proper fall protection must always be used if there is a fall hazard (4 feet for general industry and 6 feet for construction).
When using personal fall protection systems such as harnesses, workers must be anchored to the structure at all times. Temporary structures on which workers are standing must be stable and strong enough to take the weight of the worker and should meet OSHA standards for scaffolds. A fall into an open shaft lacking adequate guardrails was an important factor, according to BLS, for a majority of construction worker fatalities involving falls into elevator shafts.
Protecting Your Rights
If you have been injured on the job, it is important that you take several steps to protect your rights. Report the incident to a supervisor right away. Make sure it is recorded and get a copy of the report for your records. Get medical attention, treatment and care for your injuries. Try to get as much evidence as possible from the accident scene including contact information for eyewitnesses. If any equipment was involved in your accident, be sure to preserve it. Your construction accident lawyer can also help preserve evidence that may prove crucial to your case.
Injured workers may be eligible to receive workers’ compensation benefits, which mostly cover medical expenses and a portion of lost wages. In addition, the victim may be eligible to file a third-party claim against a negligent party other than the employer or a co-employee for significant monetary damages and have two sources of compensation available for his or her losses. Examples of third parties include, but are not limited to, general contractors, construction companies, sub-contractors, building owners, managing agents etc.
If you or a loved one has been injured in a construction accident, the experienced New York personal injury attorneys at the Law Offices of Kenneth A. Wilhelm can help you better understand your legal rights and options, and also fight hard to recover just compensation for you. Our law firm recovered $3,375,576 for a construction worker (an undocumented immigrant) who was injured on the job – one of the highest construction case settlements in New York that year.
Please contact us TOLL FREE 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1-800-WORK-4-YOU (1-800-967-5496). WE CAN EVEN COME TO YOU. There is no attorneys’ fee unless we recover money for you. We can also help with personal injury cases in New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, or Florida. If you have been seriously injured in any of the 50 U.S. states, please call us and we will try to help you with your case.
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1-800-RADIO-LAW, 1-888-WYPADEK, OR 1-800-LAS-LEYES
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Source: http://therealdeal.com/2016/12/23/construction-worker-falls-to-his-death-at-19-story-ues-condo-project/