DIDN’T EXERCISE ANY SUPERVISION OR CONTROL OVER WORKSITE
After he was injured on a defective aerial lift own and maintained by Ahern Rentals, Inc., D.K. sued the company alleging Labor Law violations and negligence.When the New York County Supreme Court declined to grant Ahearn’s motion to dismiss the claims, an appeal followed.
On its review, the Appellate Division, First Department, noted that since the state's Labor Law only applied to contractors, owners, or agents, it was of the view that the court below had committed reversible error. Since Ahern was neither a contractor nor owner, and since an agent must “supervise and control the worksite and/or plaintiff's work” for liability to attach, the AD1 thought the Labor Law claims against the aerial lift company should have been dismissed.
But because it agreed that a negligence claim had been “sufficiently pleaded,” it thought that cause of action was not dismissible even if a co-worker had “proximately caused the injury,” by spraying D.K. with a power washer. The company was not “absolved of liability,” as "‘there may be more than one proximate cause of an injury.’"
Ahern needed a bit more of a lift there ….
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DECISION