Court: Providing materials to build scaffold not good enough
July 13, 2009 by Fred HosierPosted in: Falls, In this week's e-newsletter, Injuries, Latest News & Views, construction safety, cost of safety, new court decision
Expecting an employee to construct a proper scaffold from materials and tools available at a worksite violates state labor law, according to a New York state court.
Employee Noel Collins was injured due to a fall while installing ceiling tile in a movie theater owned by West 13th Street Owners Corp. He sued, claiming he wasn’t provided with an appropriate safety device, in this case a scaffold.
Collins had constructed a makeshift scaffold consisting of one piece of plywood on top of an A-frame ladder with the other end of the plywood resting on a wall that was the same height as the ladder.
The company argued that Collins was the sole cause of his injuries because he didn’t use materials on hand to construct a proper scaffold.
But the court said expecting the employee to build his own scaffold from scratch “improperly shifted the responsibility for creating a proper safety device” from the employer to the employee.
Now a jury will decide on damages.
Cite: Collins v. West 13th Street Owners Corp., Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Dept., NY, 6/30/09.
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Tags: New York state labor law, responsibility for safety, scaffold
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July 13th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
The company owed Collins a duty of care to provide him with proper scaffolding. However, if he didn’t feel what was provided was adequate, he should have asked for a standard scaffold.
July 20th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Often, an employee will not understand his or her rights enough to tell the employer that more help, more information, or better conditions are necessary to perform a task safely and properly. The wmployee will just ‘do the best he/she can’ with the tools, etc. provided by the employer.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
It’s the law to teach employees ‘Right to Know’ and yes employess will take short cuts given the chance. While this is indeed employee stupidity, when it comes ot scaffolding OSHA is quite clear. Anyone erecting it must be professionally trained how to do so, the scaffolding must be inspected every shift, the employee using it, at or above the trigger height, must have fall protection ppe and be professionally trained in it’s proper use. All supervisors on thejob are to make sure all fall protection is properly utilized. If ya catch someone NOT usingproper fall protection, send them home immediately and schedule them for retraining.