The New York City personal injury lawyers at Block O’Toole & Murphy, LLP, are following the story of a construction worker who tragically died yesterday, April 13, 2014, at 3:30 p.m. after falling from the roof of an office building near Penn Station located at 424 West 33rd Street. The worker plummeted 10 stories and landed on a second floor scaffolding below. As reported by The Daily News, the worker was only 34 years old.
There is a sad familiarity to this story, because this is the second construction worker who has died on the job after falling onto a scaffold just this month in Manhattan. We commented here about the worker who fell to his death on April 2, 2014 while working at the Dream New York hotel on West 55th Street in midtown Manhattan, and also landed on scaffolding. We offer our deepest condolences to all of the family and friends who mourn these fallen workers, and we hope they ultimately find peace and some semblance of justice for what has occurred.
These tragic falls highlight the need to remain vigilant about construction safety, and also to push back against the wealthy insurance and business interests that are fighting to weaken worker safety laws in New York in an effort to increase their own profits. New York Labor Law Section 240(1) is a law that imposes duties upon construction site owners and contractors to insure proper fall protection for their workers. Anyone who follows the news and cares about worker safety knows that weakening or repealing this law is simply not the right thing to do. Workers need and deserve all of the legal protections they can get in order to keep the number of falls to a minimum, and in order to hold the companies that control construction sites fully responsible when serious injuries or deaths do occur on their watch.
Block O’Toole & Murphy, LLP is a New York construction accident law firm that fights for the rights of injured workers every day. We fight in the courtroom, where we have obtained over $750 Million in top personal injury verdicts and settlements for our clients. We also fight in Albany, working to preserve and strengthen the laws that exist to protect construction workers from harm. Our talented and caring team of experienced injury lawyers understands how to prove a construction accident case, whether it involves a scaffold or ladder fall, hoisting accident, falling object, trip or slip and fall, or any other serious injury suffered on the job.
The firm’s website can be visited at: www.blockotoole.com. Anyone can get a free consultation anytime by going to the website or by calling us directly at 212-736-5300.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/nyregion/worker-dies-after-falling-from-building.html?_r=0