Serpe v. Eyris Productions, Inc.

243 A.D.2d 375, 663 N.Y.S.2d 542, 1997 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 10776
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedOctober 28, 1997
StatusPublished
Cited by24 cases

This text of 243 A.D.2d 375 (Serpe v. Eyris Productions, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Serpe v. Eyris Productions, Inc., 243 A.D.2d 375, 663 N.Y.S.2d 542, 1997 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 10776 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1997).

Opinion

—Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Norman Mordue, J.), entered March 27, 1996, which, after a jury trial, and upon the court’s directed verdict against Eyris on the Labor Law § 240 (1) claim, awarded plaintiff $356,588.20 and dismissed the third-party complaint, affirmed, with costs.

Defendant Eyris Productions, Inc. (Eyris) was hired as general contractor for a renovation project at an apartment building located at 140 Thompson Street in Manhattan. Third-party defendant Roth Painting Co., Inc. (Roth) was retained by Eyris as the painting subcontractor, and the plaintiff was employed by Roth as a painter. The project involved renovating two apartments in the building into a duplex. The apartments were on the first and second floors, one immediately above the other, and they were to be joined by a spiral staircase. On June 5, 1987, after working at this location for 21/a weeks, plaintiff was assigned to do touch up painting on the ceiling using an extension pole. While plaintiff was performing this task he stepped back into a large hole in the floor, where the spiral staircase [376]*376was being built, and fell onto the staircase. Plaintiff tumbled down the entire staircase, a distance of approximately 10 feet.

At the time of the accident, the staircase was only partially completed. The staircase handrail and most of the steps had been finished, but the top two steps from the second floor were not mounted, leaving a 1 to IV2 foot drop to the completed stairs. The evidence at trial established that there was no planking over the hole covering the staircase at the time, nor were there any guardrails or ropes surrounding the hole. On prior occasions, the contractor, or the plaintiff himself, had installed planks from the construction site to cover the hole. Also, Eyris’s president testified at his deposition, which testimony was read at the trial, that a rope had previously been installed around the hole.

Plaintiff commenced this action in September 1988, alleging violations of Labor Law §§ 240 and 241. Eyris brought a third-party action against Roth alleging violations of sections 240, 241 (6), 241-a and 200 of the Labor Law. The case proceeded to trial, and at the close of the testimony concerning the issue of liability, the IAS Court directed a verdict in favor of plaintiff as against Eyris, finding, as a matter of law, that Eyris had violated Labor Law § 240 (1). The court rejected Eyris’s argument that Labor Law § 241-a, rather than section 240 (1), applied, and held that the sections were not mutually exclusive. Subsequently, the court dismissed the third-party action against Roth, finding insufficient evidence of Roth’s control and supervision over the painting detail. After the damages phase of the trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for $350,000.

On appeal, Eyris argues that the IAS Court erred in directing a liability verdict on plaintiff’s Labor Law § 240 (1) cause of action. We disagree. Labor Law § 240 (1) provides: “All contractors and owners and their agents * * * in the erection, demolition, repairing, altering, painting, cleaning or pointing of a building or structure shall furnish or erect, or cause to be furnished or erected for the performance of such labor, scaffolding, hoists, stays, ladders, slings, hangers, blocks, pulleys, braces, irons, ropes, and other devices which shall be so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person so employed.” A contractor’s or owner’s failure to fulfill its statutory obligation to furnish adequate safety devices will result in absolute liability where that failure is the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries (Rocovich v Consolidated Edison Co., 78 NY2d 509, 513; Zimmer v Chemung County Performing Arts, 65 NY2d 513, 519).

[377]*377The evidence at trial established that plaintiff was painting the ceiling of the renovated second floor when he fell into a large, unprotected hole. Further, on previous occasions, ropes or planks had been utilized to prevent workers from falling through the hole down to the floor below. For some unknown reason, those precautions were not taken on the date of plaintiffs accident. Thus, no safety devices were “placed and operated as to give proper protection” to the plaintiff (Labor Law § 240 [1]).

Since “Labor Law § 240 (1) was designed to prevent those types of accidents in which the scaffold, hoist, stay, ladder or other protective device proved inadequate to shield the injured worker from harm directly flowing from the application of the force of gravity to an object or person” (Ross v Curtis-Palmer Hydro-Elec. Co., 81 NY2d 494, 501 [emphasis omitted]), the statute is directly applicable here. Plaintiff faced precisely the same type of risk described in Rocovich (supra, at 514), “where protective devices are called for * * * because of a difference between the elevation level of the required work and a lower level.”

Eyris makes the argument, echoed by the dissent, that Labor Law § 240 (1) is inapplicable because the work being performed by the plaintiff in this case did not involve risks related to differences in elevation (see, Groves v Land's End Hous. Co., 80 NY2d 978, 980). We reject this argument, and several of the propositions advanced by the dissent in reaching its conclusion. For example, the dissent asserts that “there is no proof that [plaintiffs] presence in that particular location was required by the task being done.” The dissent further states that “there is no evidence that the plaintiffs work required the use of scaffolding, ladders” or any of the other safety devices enumerated in the statute, and that those devices “would not have prevented the inadvertent misstep [by the plaintiff].” On the contrary, it is self-evident to us that plaintiffs presence was required at the very location he was supposed to be working, and that the work entailed a significant, elevation-related risk that could have been obviated by defendant’s compliance with its statutory obligations.

The dissent’s claim that the second floor upon which plaintiff was working cannot constitute an elevated worksite under Labor Law § 240 (1) is not supportable. Numerous appellate courts have found section 240 (1) applicable where workers have been injured due to falls from elevated levels of buildings under construction (see, Felker v Corning Inc., 90 NY2d 219; Carpio v Tishman Constr. Corp., 240 AD2d 234; Fuller v Catal[378]*378famo, 223 AD2d 850; Clark v Fox Meadow Bldrs., 214 AD2d 882, 883; Orcutt v American Linen Supply Co., 212 AD2d 979; Flansburg v Merritt Meridian Constr. Corp., 191 AD2d 756; Serino v Miller Brewing Co., 167 AD2d 917 [appeal No. 2], lv dismissed 78 NY2d 1008).

For example, in Felker v Corning Inc. (supra), the plaintiff used a ladder to reach over an alcove wall to paint the area over the alcove. In doing so, plaintiff fell over the alcove wall and through a suspended ceiling to the floor below. The Court of Appeals found “two distinct elevation-related risks” associated with plaintiff’s work (supra, at 224). The first was plaintiffs utilization of the ladder to elevate himself. The Court went on to state (at 224): “More importantly, a second risk was created here by plaintiffs need to reach over the eight-foot alcove wall and work over an elevated, open area.

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Bluebook (online)
243 A.D.2d 375, 663 N.Y.S.2d 542, 1997 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 10776, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/serpe-v-eyris-productions-inc-nyappdiv-1997.