Dwyer v. Goldman Sachs Headquarters LLC
| Decision Date | 17 August 2011 |
| Docket Number | No. 09 Civ. 7498(SHS).,09 Civ. 7498(SHS). |
| Citation | 819 F.Supp.2d 320 |
| Parties | Joseph DWYER, Plaintiff, v. GOLDMAN SACHS HEADQUARTERS LLC and Structure Tone, Inc., Defendants.Goldman Sachs Headquarters LLC and Structure Tone, Inc., Third–Party Plaintiffs, v. OH & M Electrical Corp., Third–Party Defendant.OH & M Electrical Corp., Fourth–Party Plaintiff, v. Unity Electrical Corp., Fourth–Party Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
David Jaroslawicz, Jaroslawicz & Jaros, LLC, New York, NY, for Plaintiff.
Larry H. Lum, Aviva Stein, Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP, Daniel Joseph Morse, Hardin, Kundla, McKeon, Poletto, PA, New York, NY, for Defendants/Third-Party Plaintiffs.
In this slip-and-fall action, plaintiff Joseph Dwyer asserts claims pursuant to New York Labor Law §§ 200, 240(1), and 241(6) as well as common-law negligence claims, which arise out of injuries he suffered while working on a construction project. Defendants Goldman Sachs Headquarters LLC and Structure Tone, Inc.—the owner of the building where plaintiff's injuries occurred and the general contractor for the construction project, respectively—bring a third-party action seeking contractual indemnification from OH & M Electrical Corp., the subcontractor that employed Dwyer on the construction project.
Defendants have now moved for summary judgment, requesting that the Court dismiss plaintiff's complaint and grant defendants' contractual indemnification claim against OH & M in the third-party action. For the reasons set forth below, the Court grants defendants' motion for summary judgment with respect to (1) plaintiff's New York Labor Law § 240(1) claims; (2) plaintiff's New York Labor Law § 200 and common-law negligence claims; and (3) defendants' contractual indemnification claim against OH & M. With respect to plaintiff's New York Labor Law § 241(6) claims, defendants' motion for summary judgment is granted in part and denied in part.
Dwyer is a citizen of New Jersey. (Compl. ¶ 1; Answer ¶ 1.) Goldman Sachs is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in New York. ( Id. ¶ 2; Answer ¶ 2.) Structure Tone is a New York corporation with its principal place of business in New York. ( Id. ¶ 14; Answer ¶ 14.) Because the parties are diverse and more than $75,000 is in controversy, this Court has subject matter jurisdiction over the action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a). The Court has ancillary jurisdiction over defendants' contractual indemnification claim against OH & M, See Bank of India v. Trendi Sportswear, Inc., 239 F.3d 428, 436–37 (2d Cir.2000).
Goldman Sachs hired Structure Tone as general contractor for a construction project located at Goldman Sachs' headquarters in New York City. (Defs.' Local Rule 56.1 Statement of Undisputed Facts ( ) ¶ 1; Pl.'s Local Rule 56.1 Statement of Undisputed Facts (“Pl.'s 56.1”) ¶ 1; Third–Party Def.'s Local Rule 56.1 Statement of Undisputed Facts (“OH & M's 56.1”) ¶ 1.) Structure Tone in turn subcontracted with OH & M for OH & M to perform certain electrical work at that construction site. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 1; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 1; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 1.) In April 2009, Dwyer was performing electrical work for OH & M at that site. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 1; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 1; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 1.)
At the time, Dwyer was working in an area where “[c]omputer data floors” had been installed. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 6; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 6; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 6.) These floors consisted of two levels: a lower level made of concrete and a higher level made of two-by-two foot tiles. The tiles were screwed into pedestals placed twelve-to-eighteen inches above the concrete subfloor. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 6; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 6; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 6.) 1 HVAC, electrical, and data wiring was installed in the area between the raised tile floor and the subfloor. The floor tiles could be removed to allow access to that wiring. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 11; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 11; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 11.)
On April 16, 2009, Dwyer arrived at the construction site and brought an A-frame ladder to his work area. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 8; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 8; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 8.) He set up the ladder on the raised tile floor, climbed to the fourth rung, and began splicing wires in the ceiling. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 8; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 8; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 8.) While Dwyer was splicing wire, someone removed a tile from the raised floor, thereby creating an opening in the floor, and placed that tile on the ground next to Dwyer's ladder. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 8; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 8; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 8.) Subsequently, as Dwyer stepped down from the lowest rung of the ladder to the ground, his foot slipped on the removed floor tile and he fell into the opening in the floor. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 8; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 8; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 8.) As a result, Dwyer injured his knee, which eventually required surgery. (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 17; Pl.'s 56.1 ¶ 17; OH & M's 56.1 ¶ 17.)
In August 2009, Dwyer commenced this personal injury action against Goldman Sachs and Structure Tone. Defendants then brought a third-party action seeking contractual indemnification from OH & M, which, in turn, asserted a fourth-party claim against Unity Electrical Corp., another electrical subcontractor on the project. Defendants have now moved for summary judgment.
Summary judgment is appropriate only if the evidence shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a); Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). In determining whether a genuine dispute of material fact exists, this Court is required to “resolve all ambiguities, and credit all factual inferences that could rationally be drawn, in favor of the party opposing summary judgment.” Kessler v. Westchester Cnty. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 461 F.3d 199, 206 (2d Cir.2006). Nonetheless, the party opposing summary judgment “may not rely on mere conclusory allegations nor speculation, but instead must offer some hard evidence” in support of its factual assertions. D'Amico v. City of N.Y., 132 F.3d 145, 149 (2d Cir.1998).
Dwyer has asserted numerous state law claims, all of which boil down to essentially one contention: that defendants failed to provide a safe construction site and that this failure caused Dwyer's slip-and-fall accident in April 2009. The Court now turns to each claim.
Section 240(1) of New York's Labor Law imposes absolute liability on owners and contractors “for injuries proximately caused by a failure to provide safety devices necessary for protection to workers subject to the risks inherent in elevated work sites.” Agric. Ins. Co., Inc. v. Ace Hardware Corp., 214 F.Supp.2d 413, 417 (S.D.N.Y.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). Specifically, the statute provides that “[a]ll contractors and owners ... shall furnish or erect, or cause to be furnished or erected ... scaffolding, hoists, stays, ladders, slings, hangers, blocks, pulleys, braces, irons, ropes and other devices which shall be so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to” workers employed on the premises. The duty imposed by Labor Law § 240(1) is non-delegable; the contractor and owner may be held liable even if they did not exercise supervision or control over the plaintiff's work. See Ross v. Curtis–Palmer Hydro–Elec. Co., 81 N.Y.2d 494, 500, 601 N.Y.S.2d 49, 618 N.E.2d 82 (1993).
“The extraordinary protections of Labor Law § 240(1) extend only to a narrow class of special hazards, and do ‘not encompass any and all perils that may be connected in some tangential way with the effects of gravity.’ ” Nieves v. Five Boro Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Corp., 93 N.Y.2d 914, 915–16, 690 N.Y.S.2d 852, 712 N.E.2d 1219 (1999) (quoting Ross, 81 N.Y.2d at 501, 601 N.Y.S.2d 49, 618 N.E.2d 82 (emphasis in original)). “The core objective of the statute in requiring protective devices for those working at heights is to allow them to complete their work safely and prevent them from falling.” Nieves, 93 N.Y.2d at 916, 690 N.Y.S.2d 852, 712 N.E.2d 1219. Section 240(1) is thus inapplicable where the plaintiff's “injury results from a separate hazard wholly unrelated to the risk which brought about the need for the safety device in the first place.” Id.
Here, the ladder Dwyer was using when the accident occurred did not malfunction in any respect or in any way cause his injuries. Nevertheless, Dwyer argues that section 240(1) applies because the ladder was next to the removed floor tile and the floor opening. However, this argument is foreclosed by several decisions of the New York Court of Appeals. See Nieves, 93 N.Y.2d at 915, 690 N.Y.S.2d 852, 712 N.E.2d 1219 (); Cohen v. Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Ctr., 11 N.Y.3d 823, 825, 868 N.Y.S.2d 578, 897 N.E.2d 1059 (2008) (). As in Nieves, Dwyer's fall “resulted from a separate hazard wholly unrelated to the danger that brought about the need for the ladder in the first instance—an unnoticed ... object on the floor.” Nieves, 93 N.Y.2d at 916, 690 N.Y.S.2d 852, 712 N.E.2d 1219.
Dwyer also contends that the floor opening he fell into posed an elevation-related risk protected by Labor Law § 240(1). But Dwyer has not explained how his proximity to a floor opening that was, at most, eighteen-inches deep “could have entailed an elevation-related risk which called for any of the protective devices of the types listed in section 240(1),” See Rocovich v. Consolidated Edison Co., 78 N.Y.2d 509, 514–15, 577 N.Y.S.2d 219, 583 N.E.2d 932 (1991); see also Toefer v. Long Island...
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