New York Construction Accident Lawyer

You went to work. Someone else decided the plank did not need to be tied off, or that the hoist could run one more day, and now a claims examiner is telling you what your week is worth.

The Law Offices of Omrani & Taub, P.C. represent injured construction workers across Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Westchester. Here is what most workers are never told: after a job site injury in this state, you usually have two separate claims, not one.

Workers’ compensation runs through your employer. A second case runs against the property owner and the general contractor. A New York construction accident lawyer spends most of the first week finding every party who is not your employer, because that second case is where the real recovery sits.

Call our Elmhurst office at (718) 714-1515. Consultations are free, and these cases are handled on contingency, so there is nothing to pay out of pocket.

Why does workers’ compensation feel so small?

Because it is capped by statute, and the cap has nothing to do with how badly you were hurt.

New York workers’ compensation pays two-thirds of your average weekly wage, up to a state ceiling. For injuries on or after July 1, 2026, that ceiling is $1,281.50 per week, per the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board schedule. The rate locks to the date of your injury and does not rise later, even if the maximum goes up the following July.

Then there is everything comp does not pay for at all. Not the pain. Not the second surgery you will need in six years. Not the fact that you cannot carry your kid up the stairs anymore. Not your spouse’s loss. Comp was built as a wage-replacement and medical system, and it does that job and stops.

That right-hand column is the whole reason this page exists.

Who can you sue after a construction accident in New York?

You generally cannot sue your direct employer, but you can sue almost everyone else on that site. New York law puts the duty to keep a job site safe on the property owner and the general contractor, and that duty does not transfer just because they hired your boss.

The parties worth investigating in the first ten days:

The property owner and the general contractor

These two carry non-delegable duties under the Labor Law. They are the defendants in most job site cases, and their liability does not depend on whether they were personally careless.

Other subcontractors on the site

The electrical sub who left the conduit across the walkway, the demo crew who removed the guardrail, the concrete outfit whose rebar was left uncapped. Each carries its own policy.

Equipment owners, lessors and manufacturers

Scissor lifts, hoists, aerial buckets and saws are usually rented. A defective machine or a bad maintenance record opens a products or a negligent-maintenance claim against a company with separate coverage.

Drivers and delivery outfits

Struck by a backing dump truck or a delivery van at the gate? That is a motor vehicle claim layered on top of the Labor Law claim.

Engineers, architects and site safety firms

Where a design or an inspection failure caused the condition, the professional’s carrier comes into the case.

This is not a technicality. Each defendant brings its own insurance policy, and policy limits, not the severity of your injury, are often what caps a recovery. Finding a fourth defendant can matter more than any argument made later in the case. Where the third party ends up paying, a third-party claim against the owner and general contractor proceeds on a separate track while your workers’ compensation claim runs in parallel.

Not sure who owned the site you were working on? We can pull that in a day. Call +1 (718) 714-1515 for a free review of your case.

What does New York Labor Law 240 actually cover?

Labor Law 240, the section people call the Scaffold Law, applies when gravity caused your injury: you fell, or something fell on you. When it applies, owners and contractors are held to absolute liability, which means they cannot blame you to escape responsibility.

The statutory text requires owners and contractors to furnish scaffolding, hoists, stays, ladders, slings, hangers, blocks, pulleys, braces, irons and ropes “so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection,” according to New York Labor Law § 240. Two categories of accident fall inside it:

Falls from a height. An unsecured extension ladder that kicks out. A scaffold plank with no guardrail. An unprotected floor opening or shaftway. A collapsing form or deck.

Falling objects. A load that slips from a hoist. Masonry that comes off a parapet. Debris dropped from a floor above onto the deck where you were standing.

The phrase that matters is absolute liability. In an ordinary negligence case, the defense argues you were partly at fault and chips away at your recovery. Under section 240, if the safety device was missing or inadequate and that failure caused the fall, your own carelessness is not a defense. Labor Law 240 imposes absolute liability for gravity-related injuries, and the practical effect is that these cases are often resolved on liability before trial, which changes the negotiation entirely.

There is a narrow exception for owners of one- and two-family homes who hire a contractor but do not direct or control the work. Almost no commercial site in New York City fits that carve-out.

When does Labor Law 241(6) apply instead?

Section 241(6) applies when your injury did not involve a fall or a falling object, but a specific state safety regulation was broken.

Labor Law § 241(6) requires construction, excavation and demolition areas to be “constructed, shored, equipped, guarded, arranged, operated and conducted as to provide reasonable and adequate protection.” The rules it enforces live in the New York Industrial Code, Part 23, and the claim only works if a concrete, specific rule was violated. Examples that come up constantly on city jobs:

• Debris and tripping hazards left in passageways
• No hard hat or eye protection provided where required
• Unguarded saws, grinders and power tools
• Trenches and excavations left unshored
• Slippery footing from accumulated water, ice or oil
• Inadequate lighting in a stair or a cellar

Unlike section 240, comparative fault still applies here, so your share of the blame reduces the award rather than eliminating it. Most serious job site cases plead 240 and 241(6) together and let the facts sort out which one carries the day.

What is a Labor Law 200 claim?

Section 200 is the ordinary negligence rule written into the Labor Law. It applies when an owner or contractor created a dangerous condition, or knew about it and left it alone, and had authority to control the work.

It is the fallback when the injury does not fit the gravity rule and no Industrial Code provision is squarely on point. A general contractor whose superintendent walked past an exposed live wire for three days is a section 200 case. Proving it takes the same evidence as any negligence claim: who knew, when they knew, and what they did about it.

Which job site accidents do we see most in Queens and Manhattan?

The pattern changes with the type of work, and the work is not the same across the river.

In Queens, most of what comes through our door is low-rise and mid-rise: three- and four-story residential infill, gut renovations of older Elmhurst and Corona walk-ups, roofing, facade and sidewalk shed work.

The injuries follow the scale of the job. Extension ladders set on a sloped cellar floor. Homemade scaffolding of planks across pipe frames. Falls through an unprotected joist bay on a second floor that had no deck yet. Small residential jobs are also where safety equipment is thinnest, and where a worker is most likely to be told he is an independent contractor.

Manhattan work skews taller and more tightly regulated, and the injuries change with it: material hoist and buck hoist failures, loads dropped from an upper floor onto a loading dock, elevator shaft and pit falls during installation, and cranes and rigging on tight midblock sites with no room to stage. Interior demolition on occupied commercial floors produces its own category of silica, noise and falling-debris claims.

Both boroughs share one thing. When a site is behind schedule, guardrails come down first and go back up last, and that is when people get hurt.

Does your immigration status affect your construction case?

No. An undocumented worker injured on a New York construction site can bring the same claim, and can recover lost wages, as any other worker.

The New York Court of Appeals settled this in Balbuena v. IDR Realty LLC, 6 N.Y.3d 338 (2006), holding that federal immigration law does not bar an undocumented worker from recovering lost earnings in a Labor Law case. The court’s reasoning was practical: if injured undocumented workers could not recover, employers would have a financial reason to hire them and skip the safety equipment.

There is one wrinkle worth knowing. The Balbuena holding rests on the fact that those workers had not handed over forged documents to get hired. Where false federal work authorization documents were tendered, the lost-wage analysis can change. That is a conversation to have with a lawyer privately, not a reason to stay quiet.

We say this plainly because clients ask it before they ask anything else: your status is not reported to anyone as part of a personal injury case, and it does not reduce what the case is worth.

Does the serious injury threshold apply to construction accidents?

No, and this is one of the most common mistakes we hear on intake calls.

The serious injury threshold comes from New York’s no-fault auto system and applies to motor vehicle cases. It does not gate a Labor Law claim. You do not need a fracture or a permanent consequential limitation to sue the owner and the contractor for a job site fall.

The threshold only enters a construction case when a vehicle was involved: you were struck by a backing truck on site, hurt in a company van between job locations, or hit by a delivery driver at the gate. In those cases the auto claim carries the threshold while the Labor Law claim does not, and the two run side by side.

What evidence decides these cases?

The record that decides a construction case is usually created in the first two weeks, and most of it is not in your possession.

The site’s own paperwork. Daily reports, toolbox talk sign-in sheets, site safety logs and the superintendent’s log frequently contain the admission that matters. Site safety logs and daily reports often prove the violation better than any witness, because they were written before anyone knew there would be a lawsuit.

City records. The New York City Department of Buildings publishes monthly construction-related injury and incident reports and logs incident reports filed under Local Law 78. DOB violations, stop work orders and complaint histories on the address can show a pattern that predates your fall. For context, DOB recorded 638 construction incidents and 482 injuries citywide in 2024, even in what the agency called its safest construction year in a decade.

The equipment. If a ladder, lift or hoist failed, it needs to be preserved before it goes back to the rental yard and gets repaired. A preservation letter sent in week one is often the difference between a products claim and no products claim.

Your own medical record. Tell every provider, from the first ER visit forward, exactly how it happened and every body part that hurts. Gaps and omissions in early records are the first thing a defense doctor reads.

Photographs with a timestamp. A coworker’s phone photo of the missing guardrail, taken that afternoon, outranks a diagram drawn two years later.

Immediate action beats a strong argument later. If your accident was recent, call +1 (718) 714-1515 today and we will start the preservation letters.

How long do you have to file a construction accident claim in New York?

It depends on who you are suing, and the shortest deadline in the group controls your whole case.

A public project changes the math completely. If you were hurt on a school, a housing authority building, a transit contract or a bridge job, the 90-day clock started the day of the accident and it is the deadline that ends cases before they begin.

What happens after you call us?

The first conversation is short and it is free. We want three things: what you were doing, what failed, and who else was on that site.

From there the sequence is usually the same. We confirm the comp claim is filed and running so your treatment is paid for. We identify the owner and the general contractor from City records, not from what your boss told you. We send preservation letters for the equipment, the logs and any site cameras. We get your medical care documented properly. Then we file the third-party case.

You will meet the attorneys handling your file. That is not a policy we invented for a website; it is how this firm has run since 1998, and it is why clients send us their brothers-in-law.

Where we are in Queens

Our two Elmhurst offices sit on Broadway, minutes from the 7 train and the M and R at Elmhurst Avenue, and we see clients from Corona, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Maspeth and Ridgewood every week.

Law Offices of Omrani & Taub, P.C.
80-01 Broadway, Elmhurst, NY 11373
Phone: +1 (718) 714-1515

Law Offices of Omrani & Taub, P.C.
75-26 Broadway, Elmhurst, NY 11373
Phone: +1 (718) 714-1515

We also meet clients at 488 Madison Avenue, 20th Floor in Manhattan, +1 (212) 714-1515, and at 76 S Lexington Avenue in White Plains, +1 (914) 714-1515. Hablamos español.