$2.75 Million Settlement for Building Porter Who Fell 14 Feet Through Unmarked Floor Hole
Won by The Orlow Firm.
A Manhattan building porter fell 14 feet through an unguarded third-floor hole after a general contractor's superintendent removed the only cover and left without any warning, resulting in three spinal surgeries and a $2.75 million settlement.
What happened
On December 6, 2013, a long-time union porter at a Manhattan residential building was asked by his supervisor to move a heavy filing cabinet into a third-floor storage room. He and a coworker brought the cabinet down on a dolly and found a piece of loose plywood sitting on the floor in their path. There were no warning signs. Nothing indicated any active construction in the room. The two workers lifted the plywood to clear the way, and as the porter stepped forward, the floor gave out beneath him. He fell 14 feet to the level below.
What the porter did not know was that a 3-by-6-foot hole sat beneath that plywood. The general contractor's superintendent had covered it with plywood and four nails. That morning, an HVAC subcontractor told the superintendent he would be installing new ducts later in the day. The superintendent went to the storage room, pulled out the nails, and left. He did not re-secure the plywood, lock the door, post any warning signs, or notify building management that an open hole now sat in the middle of that floor.
The defense built its case on comparative negligence: the porter had picked up the plywood, the porter had stepped forward without checking. The superintendent later claimed he had written the word 'danger' in red marker on the plywood before he left. Adam Moses Orlow, the firm's Senior Trial Partner, deposed four witnesses who had entered the room after the accident. All four testified there were no markings of any kind on the plywood. Post-accident photographs of the plywood matched that testimony. The superintendent's account fell apart, and with it the comparative-negligence defense.
The porter was transported by ambulance with multiple right-side rib fractures and transverse process fractures spanning from T9 through L5. Imaging later confirmed herniated discs in both his neck and lower back. He required three spinal surgeries: a cervical fusion at C3-4 and C4-5 in July 2014, a lumbar fusion at L5-S1 in October 2015, and a third procedure in March 2017 after the second surgery failed to hold.
The firm recovered $2.75 million.