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Can You Sue After a Construction Hoist or Material Hoist Accident in New York?
Yes, and usually on stronger footing than an ordinary workplace injury claim.
New York Labor Law § 240(1) names hoists by word, alongside scaffolding, ladders, pulleys, braces, and ropes.
That single drafting choice changes what an injured worker has to prove.
When a hoist fails and gravity does the damage, the question stops being whether the owner or the general contractor behaved reasonably. It becomes whether the device gave proper protection.
They cannot delegate that duty to your employer, and on a § 240(1) claim your own carelessness is not a defense.
Call (888) 713-6653 for a free review of your hoist accident claim. No fee unless we win.
New York Hoist Accident Claims at a Glance
- Labor Law 240(1) lists hoists among the devices owners and contractors must furnish
- The duty is absolute and non-delegable, and comparative negligence is not a defense to it
- Industrial Code Subpart 23-6 governs material hoisting; Subpart 23-7 governs personnel hoists
- A temporary personnel hoist cannot go into service without a special approval
- A workers' compensation claim and a Labor Law claim can run at the same time
- Falling material from a hoist car is the 240(1) falling-object branch, not ordinary negligence
- The hoist owner, the erector, and the maintenance company are separate potential defendants
Why a Hoist Failure Is Absolute Liability Instead of an Ordinary Negligence Claim
Labor Law § 240(1) requires that contractors and owners furnish or erect scaffolding, hoists, stays, ladders, slings, hangers, blocks, pulleys, braces, irons, ropes, and other devices, so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person employed on the work.[1]
Read that list again. Hoists appear third.
The statute does not ask whether the owner inspected the hoist, whether the general contractor knew it was defective, or whether anyone on site behaved unreasonably. It asks whether the device gave proper protection against the elevation-related risk it existed to guard against. If it did not, and that failure caused the injury, liability attaches to the owner and the general contractor regardless of who actually erected, serviced, or operated the equipment.
Two consequences follow, and they are why these cases are worth pursuing properly.
- The duty cannot be handed off. An owner does not escape by pointing at the hoist subcontractor, and a general contractor does not escape by pointing at your employer. The obligation runs to them by statute.
- Your own conduct does not reduce the recovery. Comparative negligence is not a defense to a § 240(1) claim. That is a rule with almost no equivalent anywhere else in New York injury law, and it is why the defense fights so hard to characterize a hoist case as something other than a gravity case.
The fight is usually over that characterization. A worker crushed between a hoist car and the shaft wall has a different argument to make than a worker struck by a bundle of pipe that slid off the platform, and both are different from a worker who fell into an unguarded hoistway opening. Our page on the Scaffold Law and how § 240(1) works covers the doctrine in depth.
Material Hoists, Personnel Hoists, and Which Industrial Code Subpart Governs
New York regulates hoisting equipment in two separate Subparts of the Industrial Code, and the distinction matters because it decides which specific provision supports a § 241(6) claim.
| Equipment | Governing Subpart | Core Requirement | Common Failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Material platform and bucket hoists | 12 NYCRR 23-6 | Trained designated operators, signal system operation, maintenance in good repair with sufficient inspection | Brake and cable failure, overload, load shifting off the platform |
| Temporary personnel hoists | 12 NYCRR 23-7 | No service without a special approval for that installation | Unapproved or modified installation, gate and interlock defeats |
| Cranes and derricks | 12 NYCRR 23-8 | Expressly carved out of the general material hoisting Subpart | Rigging failure, load drop, contact with the load |
| Permanent building elevators used temporarily | 12 NYCRR 23-7 | Treated as a personnel hoist while used to move workers during construction | Misleveling, door failure, uncontrolled movement |
Subpart 23-6 states its own limits plainly. It applies to material hoisting equipment other than cranes, derricks, aerial baskets, excavating machines used for hoisting, and fork lift trucks.[2] Its general requirements are the ones that carry most cases: only trained and designated persons may operate hoisting equipment, material hoists are operated only in response to a signal system that operators and signalmen can both read and execute, and the equipment is maintained in good repair and proper operating condition with inspections sufficient to keep it that way.
Those are concrete commands rather than general exhortations to be careful, which is exactly the line the Court of Appeals drew for § 241(6) predicates. A regulation that tells a contractor to keep a site "safe" supports nothing. A regulation that says only a trained designated person may run the hoist supports a claim. Our page on Labor Law § 241(6) and the Industrial Code explains how that test is applied.
The Special Approval Requirement Almost Nobody Raises
Subpart 23-7 governs personnel hoists, meaning temporary workmen's hoists used to carry people to and from their working levels, and permanent elevators put to temporary use during construction.
It carries a requirement worth knowing about, because it is documentary and it is checkable: a temporary personnel hoist shall not be placed in service until that installation has been granted a special approval.
That is an approval tied to the specific installation, not a general certification of the equipment model. So the questions become answerable from paper. Was an approval issued for this hoist, at this address, in this configuration? Was the hoist modified after the approval was granted? Did the tower get raised, the tie-ins changed, or the car swapped without anyone going back for a new approval?
Those records sit with the hoist erector, the general contractor, and the approving authority, and they exist independently of anyone's memory of the accident. A case built on them does not depend on a coworker being willing to testify against the company that still employs him.
How Hoist Accidents Actually Happen on New York Jobsites
Hoist injuries fall into a small number of repeating patterns, and each one points at a different theory and a different defendant.
The Car or Platform Falls
Brake failure, cable and rope failure, overspeed governors that do not engage, or a load that exceeds the rated capacity. This is the purest § 240(1) scenario there is: the device existed to hold something against gravity and it did not.
Material Falls Off the Hoist
Pipe, block, rebar, sheetrock, and buckets of material that slide, shift, or topple off a platform while it is moving. New York treats an object that was being hoisted, or that required securing for the purposes of the undertaking, as falling within § 240(1) rather than ordinary negligence. Our page on struck-by falling object claims under § 240(1) covers where that line sits.
Falls Into the Hoistway
Gates left open, interlocks defeated so the car can be called with the gate up, missing barricades at upper landings, and openings left unguarded between deliveries. A worker who steps into a shaft has both a § 240(1) claim and a § 241(6) claim resting on the hazardous-opening provisions. The related mechanism is covered on our page about falls through floor openings and unguarded holes.
Crushing and Shearing at the Landing
Caught between the car and the sill, the car and the shaft wall, or in a gate that closes on a worker loading material. These are the injuries that take hands and feet, and they usually implicate the maintenance company alongside the owner and the general contractor.
Riding a Material Hoist
A material hoist is not built to carry people, and workers ride them anyway because the personnel hoist is slow, broken, or twenty floors away. Expect the defense to make this the centerpiece of the case. On a § 240(1) claim it is far weaker than it sounds, because comparative fault is not a defense and the argument only wins if the worker's conduct was the sole proximate cause of the accident. Our page on the sole proximate cause and recalcitrant worker defenses explains what the defense actually has to establish.
Erection and Dismantling
Tower sections, tie-ins to the building, and the mast climbing operation itself. Hoist erectors work at height on partially assembled equipment, and these are among the most severe cases in the category.
Who Owns the Hoist Is Rarely the Same as Who Runs the Job
A construction hoist on a New York high-rise typically involves four separate companies before you reach the property owner.
The hoist is usually rented from an equipment company. A specialty subcontractor erects it, ties it to the building, and jumps it as the structure rises. A maintenance contractor services it under a separate agreement. An operator, often employed by yet another entity, runs it.
Workers' compensation bars a direct claim against your own employer in almost every case. It does nothing to the claims against the other companies, and it does nothing to the statutory claims against the owner and the general contractor.
So the first work in one of these files is mapping the contracts. The rental agreement, the erection subcontract, the maintenance agreement, and the general contractor's purchase orders establish who owed what to whom, and they are the documents that turn a single comp claim into a case with real coverage behind it. Our page on owner, general contractor, and construction manager liability covers how that responsibility is allocated.
Injuries From Hoist Falls, Crush Events, and Dropped Loads
Hoist accidents produce the severe end of the construction injury range, because the forces involved are equipment forces rather than human ones.
- Traumatic brain injury. From a fall inside or from the car, or from being struck by material dropped from height. Consequences persist even where imaging reads normal.
- Spinal cord injury and paralysis. The catastrophic outcome in a car drop or a fall down a hoistway, and the injury that drives lifetime care costs.
- Crush injuries and amputation. Hands, arms, feet, and legs caught between the car and the landing or in gate mechanisms.
- Multiple orthopedic trauma. Pelvis, femur, tibia, and calcaneus fractures are the signature pattern of a vertical fall onto a hard surface.
- Internal and crush-related organ injury. Common where a load lands on a worker rather than striking a limb.
- Fatal injuries. Car drops, dropped loads, and falls down shafts are among the deadliest mechanisms in high-rise construction, and they give the family both a wrongful death claim and a survival claim.
Get treated, report the accident to your employer in writing, and file the comp claim. None of that costs you the Labor Law case, and the medical record created in the first days is what the entire valuation is later built on.
What a New York Hoist Accident Case Can Recover
New York places no cap on compensatory damages in a construction case, which matters more here than in most states, because the injuries in this category are frequently permanent.
- Past and future medical expenses. Surgery, hospitalization, rehabilitation, prosthetics, home modification, attendant care, and the projected cost of treatment across a normal life expectancy.
- Lost earnings and lost earning capacity. Not only wages missed, but the difference between what a trade paid and what the worker can earn afterward. For a union member this includes benefit contributions and pension credits.
- Pain and suffering. Usually the largest single component, valued against what New York appellate courts have sustained for comparable injuries.
- Loss of enjoyment of life. Separately compensable in New York.
- Future care and household services. The help an injured worker now has to hire.
- Loss of consortium. A spouse's own claim.
- Wrongful death and survival damages. Where a hoist accident is fatal, the estate can pursue the decedent's conscious pain and suffering separately from the family's pecuniary loss.
A workers' compensation carrier will assert a lien against the third-party recovery, and that lien is negotiable rather than fixed. Handling it correctly is a meaningful part of what an injured worker actually keeps. Our page on the Labor Law claim alongside workers' compensation explains how the two fit together.
Why Injured Hoist Operators and High-Rise Trades Choose Lawsuit Legal
A hoist case is won on equipment records, contracts, and approvals, and most of those documents are in the possession of companies with no interest in producing them.
- A New York attorney and a New York office. Don Worley has been admitted in New York since 2005, with more than 20 years in personal injury practice. The firm's office at 305 Broadway sits in the Manhattan courthouse district.
- Verified Scaffold Law experience. We handle New York Labor Law § 240 and § 241 claims as a core part of the practice rather than as an occasional file.
- Equipment records requested early. The special approval, inspection and maintenance logs, the erection subcontract, and the rental agreement, before anything gets rebuilt or returned.
- Every responsible company identified. Owner, general contractor, construction manager, hoist owner, erector, and maintenance contractor are separate questions with separate answers.
- Recognized trial lawyers. Our attorneys have been recognized by Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, and the National Trial Lawyers.
- A record built across 40,000 cases. More than $100 million recovered, a 98% recovery rate, and no fee unless we win.
Construction Hoist Accident FAQ
- Is a construction hoist covered by New York's Scaffold Law?
-
Yes. Labor Law § 240(1) names hoists expressly in the list of devices owners and contractors must furnish and operate so as to give proper protection to workers. When a hoist fails and the injury results from the effects of gravity, the claim runs under § 240(1) rather than ordinary negligence, the duty is absolute and cannot be delegated to a subcontractor, and the worker's own comparative fault is not a defense to it.
- I was riding a material hoist when I got hurt. Does that end my case?
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Usually not. Material hoists are not designed to carry people, and the defense will lead with that fact, but comparative negligence is not a defense to a § 240(1) claim. To defeat the claim the defense has to establish that the worker's own conduct was the sole proximate cause of the accident, which generally requires showing that an adequate safety device was available, that the worker knew he was expected to use it, and that he chose not to for no good reason. Where the personnel hoist was broken, backed up, or absent, that showing tends to fail.
- Can I sue if I am already collecting workers' compensation?
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Yes, as long as the defendant is not your own employer. Workers' compensation is generally the exclusive remedy against the employer, but it does nothing to the claims against the property owner, the general contractor, the construction manager, the hoist owner, the erector, or the maintenance company. Those are third-party claims, and in New York construction cases they are frequently worth many multiples of the compensation benefits. The comp carrier will assert a lien on the recovery, which is negotiable.
- What Industrial Code sections apply to a hoist accident?
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Subpart 23-6 of the Industrial Code governs material hoisting equipment other than cranes, derricks, aerial baskets, excavating machines used for hoisting, and fork lift trucks. Subpart 23-7 governs personnel hoists, including permanent elevators used temporarily during construction, and requires a special approval before a temporary personnel hoist is placed in service. Which specific provision is pleaded matters, because § 241(6) requires a concrete specification rather than a general safety standard.
- How long do I have to file a New York construction hoist claim?
-
For an ordinary private construction project, three years from the date of the accident under CPLR § 214. That changes if a public owner is involved. Work on property owned by the City, the MTA, a public authority, or the State can carry a notice of claim requirement measured in days rather than years, and missing it can end an otherwise strong case. Because so much New York high-rise and infrastructure work is publicly owned, that question should be answered in the first conversation.
- What evidence matters most after a hoist accident?
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The equipment and the paperwork behind it. The special approval for the installation, inspection and maintenance logs, the erection and rental agreements, the daily reports, and any accident or OSHA investigation records. The hoist itself matters too, because it can be repaired, modified, or returned to the rental company within days. A written preservation demand directed at the general contractor, the hoist owner, and the maintenance company should go out immediately.
Hurt in a Hoist Accident? The Equipment Will Not Sit There Waiting.
Hoists get repaired, dismantled, and trucked back to the rental yard while an injured worker is still in the hospital.
Workers who go up a building every morning deserve equipment that holds, approvals that were actually issued, and maintenance that happened. The trial lawyers at Lawsuit Legal move on the records first, identify every company in the chain behind the hoist, and build the Labor Law claim alongside the compensation claim rather than instead of it.
We help hoist operators, elevator constructors, laborers, and the families of workers killed on high-rise projects, with the legal help they need to hold owners and contractors to the duty the statute puts on them. Call (888) 713-6653 or contact us online for a free review of your hoist accident claim.
Free Case Evaluation
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TO REQUEST YOUR CASE REVIEW