$399,000 Settlement for Warehouse Worker Injured in Loading Dock Fall

On a snowy day in January 2015, a 35-year-old warehouse worker was going through boxes inside a delivery truck at a food distribution facility in Queens. As he stepped from the wet truck bed onto the loading dock, his foot slipped into the open gap between the two surfaces and he fell.

The gap should not have been there. A dock plate, a heavy metal bridge designed to cover the space between a loading dock and a parked truck, was supposed to span that opening. The plate at this facility was broken: the electric controls had failed, the hinges were damaged, and and the plate itself, upwards of 200 pounds with nothing to grip, was far too heavy for one person to move. Workers had adapted by simply stepping over the gap rather than fixing or reporting it.

The building owner denied any knowledge of the problem. To counter that defense, the firm pursued the deposition of the owner's own representative. Under oath, that representative admitted he had personally seen the broken dock plates on multiple occasions. He also acknowledged that most workers had been stepping over the uncovered gap daily, and that nothing had been done to repair the plates for years. A safety expert reinforced the legal case, documenting that the dock violated both the New York City Building Code and OSHA walking-surface standards. The portable plates kept on the dock were too small to bridge the gap, and the primary plate was too heavy to operate safely.

The client was taken to urgent care after the fall with neck and back pain. MRI imaging confirmed disc damage at both the cervical and lumbar spine. Steroid injections provided no relief, and in January 2017 he underwent surgery.

The firm recovered $399,000.