New York Labor Law §240: the strongest fall claim in the country

In an ordinary negligence case you prove the defendant was careless, and any carelessness of your own reduces what you recover. §240 removes both halves of that.

Owners and general contractors are liable regardless of whether they were careless, regardless of whether they controlled the work, and regardless of whether they were even present. The duty is non-delegable — they cannot push it onto the subcontractor who actually employed you.

And critically: comparative negligence is not a defense. Under ordinary law, a worker found 40% at fault loses 40% of the recovery. Under §240, once the statute is violated, your own carelessness generally does not reduce anything. That difference alone can be worth six figures on the same facts.

§241(6) imposes liability for violations of specific Industrial Code regulations — debris, slippery surfaces, inadequate lighting, unguarded openings. It requires a concrete rule violation rather than a general safety complaint, and unlike §240 comparative fault does apply. But it's still a statutory claim against owners and GCs without proving they personally did anything.

§200 is the codification of ordinary common-law negligence and requires showing the defendant supervised or controlled the work, or created the condition. It's the weakest of the three and the fallback.

Most New York construction cases plead all three and let the facts sort out which survives.

The single-family homeowner exemption: owners of one- and two-family dwellings who do not direct or control the work are exempt from §240 and §241. So a fall doing residential reroofing for a homeowner who simply hired a contractor and stayed out of it may not have a scaffold law claim — while the same fall on a commercial building does.

The sole proximate cause defense: if adequate safety devices were available, you knew you were expected to use them, and you chose not to for no good reason, a defendant can argue your own conduct was the sole cause. It is a narrow defense and courts apply it strictly — a device that was available somewhere on a large site is not the same as one available to you at that location — but it is the argument that gets made.

But if the property is owned by New York City, a municipality, a public authority, a school district, or the state, a notice of claim generally must be filed within 90 days of the incident, before any lawsuit is possible. Public construction is a large share of the work in the state, and this deadline is missed constantly.

If there is any chance the job was public — a school, a housing authority building, a transit project, a municipal facility — treat this as a 90-day problem rather than a three-year one.