If you are injured on a construction site in New York, the first thing you need to understand is that the law does not limit you to workers’ compensation.
Workers’ comp covers your medical bills and replaces part of your wages, but it does not compensate you for pain and suffering, and it does not hold anyone accountable for the conditions that caused your injury. The claims that do those things — claims under New York Labor Law Sections 240, 241(6), and 200 — are brought against the property owner and the general contractor, or another subcontractor on your job-site, not your employer.
Your employer is protected by the exclusive remedy doctrine. The property owner and other contractors are not. The duties the law imposes on them are non-delegable, which means they cannot avoid liability by pointing at your employer or anyone else on the site. These are among the strongest worker protections in the country, and they exist because construction work is inherently dangerous and the parties who profit from the project should bear responsibility for the safety of the workers performing it.
Labor Law Section 240 — New York’s gravity protection statute
Section 240 is commonly called the “Scaffold Law,” but the name is misleading. It is really a gravity protection statute, and it covers far more than scaffolding. Section 240 applies any time a worker is injured by the effects of gravity that should have been guarded against — and that includes situations most people would never associate with scaffolds.
The obvious cases are falls from heights: a worker falls from a scaffold that lacked guardrails, from a ladder that was not properly secured, from a roof edge without fall protection, or through a floor opening that was left unguarded. Those are classic Section 240 claims. But the statute’s reach is broader than that. It also applies when gravity acts on an object and injures a worker who never left the ground.
A bundle of rebar that slides off an improperly secured stack and strikes a worker.
A steel beam that shifts during placement and drops onto a worker’s leg.
A tool that falls from a co-worker’s hand two floors above and hits a worker standing at grade.
A section of pipe that rolls off a pile because it was not chocked.
None of these involve the injured worker climbing or working at a height. All of them involve gravity acting on an object in a way that adequate safety measures should have prevented. The common denominator is not height — it is gravity. And when the property owner or general contractor fails to provide adequate protection against a gravity-related hazard, Section 240 imposes absolute liability.
Absolute liability means exactly what it sounds like. If the safety device was absent, inadequate, or failed, someone on the job-site is responsible. They cannot argue that the worker was partially at fault. Comparative negligence is not a defense. They cannot argue that the subcontractor was responsible for safety in that area. The duty is non-delegable. This is why Section 240 claims are the most valuable construction injury claims in the state — and why property owners and general contractors fight them aggressively.
Labor Law Section 241(6) — when a specific safety rule was broken
Section 241(6) works differently from Section 240, but it is equally powerful in the right circumstances. Where Section 240 asks whether adequate protection against a gravity hazard was provided, Section 241(6) asks whether a specific safety regulation was violated. The regulations are codified in the New York Industrial Code — Title 12, Chapter 23 of the Codes, Rules and Regulations — and they cover virtually every aspect of construction site safety.
Inadequate guardrails on an elevated surface.
Failure to cap exposed rebar. Unsafe scaffolding conditions.
Insufficient lighting in a work area.
Failure to protect workers from falling objects.
Non-standard traffic safety devices on a roadway construction site.
Improper trenching without shoring.
Each of these is governed by a specific Industrial Code provision, and a violation of that provision gives the injured worker a cause of action under Section 241(6).
Like Section 240, the duty under 241(6) is non-delegable. The general contractor cannot escape liability by arguing that safety in that area was the subcontractor’s responsibility. The general contractor owed the duty directly to every worker on the site. If the duty was breached and a worker was injured, the general contractor bears the liability regardless of who actually controlled the day-to-day work in that area.
Labor Law Section 200 — the general duty of care
Section 200 is the broadest of the three statutes but also the hardest to prove. It codifies the common-law duty of property owners and general contractors to provide a reasonably safe workplace. Unlike Sections 240 and 241(6), a Section 200 claim requires proof that the defendant had the authority to control the work that caused the injury and either created the dangerous condition or knew about it and failed to correct it.
On a large construction project with dozens of subcontractors, the question of who controlled the area where the injury occurred is fact-specific and often contested. If the general contractor’s site safety team conducted inspections, directed means and methods, or had authority over the conditions that led to the injury, Section 200 liability applies. If the condition was entirely within a subcontractor’s control and the general contractor had no notice of it, the Section 200 claim is weaker. But even when Section 200 is difficult to prove, Sections 240 and 241(6) may still apply — because those duties do not depend on control or notice. They are absolute and non-delegable.
How all of these claims work together
A single construction site injury can give rise to claims under all three Labor Law sections simultaneously, plus a workers’ compensation claim against your employer. You collect workers’ compensation benefits — medical care and partial wage replacement — while the third-party lawsuit against the property owner and general contractor proceeds on a separate track.
If the third-party case settles or results in a verdict, you receive full damages: pain and suffering, full lost wages past and future, and loss of enjoyment of life. These are damages that workers’ compensation does not provide.
The workers’ compensation carrier has a statutory lien on the third-party recovery for the benefits it paid. That lien is reduced by the carrier’s proportionate share of your attorney’s fees and costs. After the lien, the remaining recovery is yours. The combined recovery from both the workers’ comp claim and the third-party lawsuit almost always exceeds what either one would have provided alone — which is why identifying the third-party claim early is so important.
The deadlines that matter
The statute of limitations for a construction injury lawsuit under the Labor Law is three years from the date of the injury. If a government entity is involved as the property owner or general contractor, a notice of claim must be filed within 90 days and the lawsuit commenced within one year and 90 days. These deadlines run independently from workers’ compensation filing deadlines, and missing them means losing the third-party claim permanently — regardless of how strong it is.
The evidence also has a deadline, even if the law does not put a number on it.
Photograph the site, the equipment, and the conditions on the day of the injury.
Get the names of witnesses.
Identify who controlled the area.
A construction site changes every day. The scaffolding that was missing guardrails today will be corrected or dismantled tomorrow. The conditions that caused your injury may not exist a week later. Preserve the evidence while it exists.
How Schwartzapfel Holbrook handles construction site injury cases
At Schwartzapfel Holbrook, construction site injury cases are a core part of our practice. We evaluate every case for the full range of claims: workers' compensation against the employer, Section 240 for gravity-related hazards, Section 241(6) for Industrial Code violations, and Section 200 for general negligence. We identify every potentially responsible party — the property owner, the general contractor, and any other entities in the chain — and we pursue every available avenue of recovery. We are selective about the cases we accept. When we take a construction injury case, we prepare it with the expectation that it may need to be proven at trial — because that preparation is what drives the outcome, whether the case settles or not.
The defendants in construction injury cases are sophisticated, well-funded, and represented by experienced defense counsel. They will argue that the statute does not apply, that the subcontractor was responsible, and that the worker caused the accident.
Our job is to represent your interests and prove your case — with evidence from the site, medical documentation of the injuries, and a thorough understanding of the Labor Law framework that protects construction workers in New York.
Schwartzapfel Holbrook / Fighting For You