$1.8 Million Essex County Verdict for Plumber Who Fell on Unguarded Construction Stairs

A 47-year-old plumber hired to install bathtubs in a condo conversion at 304 Paterson Plank faced a practical problem from the first day. The building had no elevator. Getting the fixtures to the upper units meant hauling them up temporary construction stairs that had been installed without guardrails. The project called for him to deliver bathtubs to seven condo units.

While carrying a bathtub up the unprotected stairway, he fell. The fall herniated discs in both his lumbar spine and his cervical spine. The damage proved lasting. He underwent four separate spinal surgeries in the period following the accident, including fusion procedures, as he worked to stabilize his condition and recover function.

The lawsuit named two defendants: Vin-Rick Builders, LLC, which had been engaged as the general contractor on the project, and Hutchgrove Enterprises, the property owner and developer overseeing the condo conversion. Both parties disputed which of them bore responsibility for the unguarded stairway.

The contested issue was site control. Specifically, which defendant held de facto general-contractor authority on the day the plumber fell, and therefore carried the legal duty to provide safe access to the upper floors. A pretrial motion for summary judgment was denied because that question could not be resolved on the papers alone and required a jury to weigh the factual evidence.

John J. Ratkowitz of Ginarte Gonzalez & Winograd, LLP tried the case over seven days in Essex County Superior Court. Ratkowitz built the plaintiff's case around who was directing the project when the stairway remained unprotected. The defense offered circumstantial evidence that Hutchgrove, not Vin-Rick, had assumed active control of the site by the date of the accident, placing the duty to maintain fall protection on the owner-developer rather than the named general contractor.

The jury deliberated 45 minutes. It found no liability against Vin-Rick Builders and returned a verdict of $1,800,000 against Hutchgrove Enterprises on October 24, 2024, finding Hutchgrove 95 percent at fault. Essex County Superior Court entered final judgment on the verdict that December. TopVerdict ranked the result 16th on its list of the top 20 New Jersey verdicts of 2024, and the New Jersey Law Journal covered the verdict on November 13, 2024.

Hutchgrove appealed to the New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, under Docket A-1315-24, arguing the trial court should have granted it summary judgment and that the jury charge on a property owner's duty was flawed. On April 21, 2026, the Appellate Division affirmed the judgment. It held that the duty question was properly left to the jury and that the invited-error doctrine barred Hutchgrove's challenge to instructions its own counsel had framed the case around at trial.