Plaintiff Denied Summary Judgment on Labor Law § 240(1) Claim

In Degen v. Uniondale Union Free School District, the Appellate Division, Second Department recently affirmed the denial of plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment on his Labor Law § 240(1) claim.

“In order to establish liability under Labor Law § 240(1), there must be a violation of the statute, and the violation must be a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury.” The court clarified, however, that “not every fall from a ladder establishes that the ladder did not provide proper protection.”

In this case, “plaintiffs’ own submissions demonstrated the existence of triable issues of fact, inter alia, as to how the injured plaintiff’s accident occurred, including whether he fell because he merely lost his balance.”

The court agreed with defendants that plaintiff’s summary judgment motion was premature, since further discovery may lead to relevant evidence.

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