$2.474 Million Settlement: Construction Worker Shocked by Live Electrical Conduit

In December 2017, a 43-year-old construction worker was part of a crew renovating parking garages at a residential complex in New York. Before work started, the foreman told the crew the garage's electrical power had been shut off. The crew took that at face value, running extension cords from a neighboring building to supply their lights and tools. The worker climbed a scaffold and began drilling into the ceiling with a metal electric drill. His bit struck an electrical conduit that was, in fact, still live.

Sparks flew immediately. The current locked his body, and he began to lose control before a coworker caught him and kept him from falling to the ground. He was taken by ambulance with severe pain in his left leg. Medical imaging later documented muscle atrophy caused by nerve damage from the electrical current and a meniscus tear in his left knee. The shock also aggravated a pre-existing lumbar condition. Conservative treatment did not resolve his symptoms, and in early 2020 he underwent two consecutive lumbar surgeries at Hudson Regional Hospital, including a fusion and a revision fusion.

The firm pursued the property owner and general contractor under New York's Industrial Code provisions governing electrical hazards on construction sites. The defense concentrated its entire case on a single notation in a hospital record that described the worker as having been 'shocked by a loose electric wire.' From that, the defense argued the current may have come from one of the extension cords the crew had brought in, not from the conduit. The argument initially succeeded: the trial court had granted summary judgment in the plaintiff's favor, but the appellate division reversed, ruling the hospital note raised a question of fact.

Adam Moses Orlow, the firm's Senior Trial Partner, addressed the alternative-source theory point by point. He showed the hospital notation was hearsay attributed to the worker's employer, not to the worker himself anywhere else in the record, and the worker does not speak English. A contemporaneous incident report quoted a coworker directly stating the shock occurred when the drill struck the conduit and produced sparks. The most concrete evidence came from the building superintendent: after the accident, the Fire Department directed him to shut off power to the garage, confirming the power had been on throughout. The superintendent then inspected the area and found the conduit was broken at the exact spot where the drill had made contact. The firm recovered $2,474,000.