Are the Winds Changing?

In Chacha v. Glickenhaus Doynow Sutton Farm Development, LLC, the plaintiff, a carpenter, was on the first floor of a residence under construction when a strong gust of wind blew a piece of plywood off a nearby stack, striking the plaintiff in the arm and knocking him over the edge and onto the floor ten to fifteen feet below.  Although the Second Department held that the plaintiff established that the defendants violated Labor Law Sec. 240(1) by failing to provide him with an adequate safety device, the Court found that the plaintiff failed to establish as a matter of law "that his accident was a foreseeable consequence of the defendants' failure to provide him with an adequate safety device, rather than the result of an unforeseeable, independent, intervening act that attenuated the defendants' failure to provide him with an adequate safety device." 

Similar arguments have been frequently made by defense counsel and routinely rejected.  Perhaps this case signals a shift.