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8 TO 12 INCH HEIGHT DIFFERENTIAL NOT ACTIONABLE, LABOR LAW 240 (1) CAUSE OF ACTION SHOULD HAVE BEEN DISMISSED (FIRST DEPT).

The First Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined plaintiff’s Labor Law 240 (1) cause of action should have been dismissed. Plaintiff was injured when a cart he was moving slipped off a makeshift ramp. The height differential was 8 to 12 inches, which did not present an actionable elevation-related risk:

Plaintiff was allegedly injured in the course of rolling a four-wheeled cart filled with about 100 to 200 pounds of materials over an unsecured, makeshift plywood ramp which bridged an approximately five- or six-inch gap between a truck bed to a loading dock, when the ramp slipped out of place and landed on the truck bed, and the cart descended, pulling on plaintiff’s arms and causing injuries. Plaintiff admitted that the vertical distance from the surface of the truck bed to the surface of the dock was about 8 to 12 inches, which under the circumstances, does not constitute a physically significant elevation differential covered by Labor Law § 240(1) … . Plaintiff’s injury was not proximately caused by a failure to protect him from any elevation-related risks posed by the distance of almost four feet from the floor to the surface of the dock, since plaintiff remained on the dock while the cart became wedged in the gap between the truck bed and the dock, and there is no evidence that the gap was large enough to pose a significant risk of any hazardous descent to the floor. Sawczyszyn v New York Univ., 2018 NY Slip Op 01120, First Dept 2-15-18

LABOR LAW-CONSTRUCTION LAW (8 TO 12 INCH HEIGHT DIFFERENTIAL NOT ACTIONABLE, LABOR LAW 240 (1) CAUSE OF ACTION SHOULD HAVE BEEN DISMISSED (FIRST DEPT))/ELEVATION-RELATED RISK (LABOR LAW-CONSTRUCTION LAW, 8 TO 12 INCH HEIGHT DIFFERENTIAL NOT ACTIONABLE, LABOR LAW 240 (1) CAUSE OF ACTION SHOULD HAVE BEEN DISMISSED (FIRST DEPT))

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