Brooklyn · Kings County Construction Accidents
Brooklyn construction accident lawyer.
From brownstone renovations to waterfront towers.
Brooklyn's building boom runs on small crews and fast schedules: gut renovations in Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, towers in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, the Gowanus buildout, Downtown Brooklyn high-rises. Fast schedules cut corners, and corners are what Labor Law 240 exists for.
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The Brooklyn fact pattern.
Much of Brooklyn's construction is renovation: facade repairs, roof replacements, interior gut jobs in occupied brownstones and walkups. These small sites produce classic Scaffold Law cases. A worker on an unsecured ladder because no scaffold was delivered. An open shaft with no planking. Material dropped from a roof with nothing rigged to catch it. Under Labor Law § 240(1), the building owner and the general contractor answer for the missing protection, and in most cases your own conduct is not a defense.
"The owner says the building is exempt."
New York exempts owners of one and two family homes from §§ 240 and 241 liability, but only when they did not direct or control the work. Brooklyn owners invoke the exemption constantly and often wrongly. It can be lost where the property is really an investment building, where it holds more than two families, or where the owner ran the job. And the exemption never protects the general contractor. Whether it applies is a legal question we investigate, not a statement you should accept.
Paid in cash. No papers. Small crew.
Common on Brooklyn renovation jobs, and none of it bars the case. The Labor Law protects workers regardless of immigration status, and off the books pay does not defeat the claim. It changes how lost wages are proven, which we do through coworkers, foremen, union scales, and industry wage data.
Where the case gets filed.
Brooklyn cases are generally venued in Supreme Court, Kings County, at 360 Adams Street. The deadlines are the same as anywhere in the state: generally three years, and 90 days for a notice of claim where a public entity such as NYCHA owns the site. Renovation sites change fast. The scene should be photographed and the witnesses located now.
Questions people ask us.
I fell renovating a brownstone and the owner claims he is exempt.
Do not take that at face value. The one and two family exemption is narrow: it fails where the owner directed or controlled the work, where the building is an investment property, or where it exceeds two families, and it never shields the general contractor. This is one of the most commonly misclaimed defenses in Brooklyn.
There was no scaffold on the job, only ladders. Is that a case?
Often, yes. The absence of the proper protective device is itself the violation. If the work required a scaffold, hoist, or other device and you were given an unsecured ladder instead, that is precisely what section 240(1) addresses.
I was paid cash off the books. Can I still sue?
Yes. Off the books employment does not bar a Labor Law claim, and immigration status does not either. Lost earnings are proven through testimony and industry wage evidence rather than pay stubs.
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