32 THE QUEENS COURIER • MAY 16, 2019 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
LADDER TO HEAVEN
Q: I was employed by a management company and needed to paint a wall in the
lobby of a building. Until my accident, I was not aware that my employer and this building
were controlled by the same people.
There were no devices available to do my work, apart from my employer’s
ladder – no scaffolds, ropes or other protective devices. I extended the ladder to twenty-one
feet, secured it, placed it directly on the tile floor three feet away from the wall, and leaned
the top a foot below the ceiling. No one was holding or footing this ladder. After I had been
painting the top part of the wall for a couple of minutes, the bottom part of the ladder
slipped backwards, and I fell. A: Against your employer, generally your sole, exclusive remedy is recovery under
the Workers’ Compensation Law. That is, against your employer or any ‘alter ego’ thereof,
you may not bring a lawsuit. Two entities are ‘alter egos’ if (a) one controls the day-to-day
operations of the other or (b) the two operate as a single integrated entity. They are not
‘alter egos’ if (a) the two companies have been kept separate and distinct; (b) neither is a
subsidiary of the other; (c) they were formed for different corporate purposes; (d) each
maintains its own separate bank account and pays its own expenses; and (d) separate
schedules are prepared for tax purposes.
The starting point in a legal analysis is that the underlying owners, for their own
business and legal advantage, elected to operate through separate corporate entities. The
structure they created should not lightly be ignored at their behest, in order to shield one of
the entities they created from legal liability.
Assuming you can clear the alter-ego hurdle, then one viable claim you appear
to have is under section 240(1) of the Labor Law. The statute imposes a nondelegable duty
upon owners and general contractors to provide safety devices to protect workers from
elevation-related risks. Here, the owner apparently failed to provide that protection.
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