In Fabrizi v. 1095Ave/ of the Arms LLC, plaintiff was injured when a conduit pipe fell on his
hand. Plaintiff was an electrician
relocating a “pencil box”, which provided access to telecommunication wires on
each floor. While moving a metal support
that required him to drill holes in the wall and leaving the top conduit
dangling from compression coupling, the top conduit fell, striking the
plaintiff. Plaintiff was granted partial
summary judgment, reasoning that as the conduit was attached to the ceiling, it
was not properly secured to protect plaintiff.
On appeal, the
Appellate division modified the order to deny plaintiff summary judgment, as
the plaintiff failed to illustrate that the lack of a protective device was the
cause of the incident. On appeal to the
Court of Appeals, the High Court determined that the Appellate Division should
have granted summary judgment to the defendants, “because they established as a
matter of law that the conduit did not fall on plaintiff due to the absence or
inadequacy of an enumerated safety device.”
This was because the compression coupling kept the “pencil box” together
but was not designed for safety. The
Court of Appeals did not address the issue of foreseeability, which was a main
topic of the Appellate Division’s decision.
Chief Judge
Lippman dissented, urging that plaintiff established an entitlement to summary
judgment since “his gravity-related injury was proximately caused by the
defendants’ failure to provide an adequate safety device.” He went further and emphasized that a tool
capable of stabilizing the conduit pipe “would be precisely the sort of device
contemplated by section 240(1).” In
addition, the dissent rejected the notion that plaintiff caused the accident as
it occurred after he dismantled the “pencil box” since this was “standard
procedure in the trade.” However, the
majority asserted that “section 240(1) does not automatically apply simply
because an object fell and injured a worker.”
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