On April 1, 2025, the Appellate Division affirmed the lower court's granting of the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment on his Labor Law Section 240 claim. The decision highlights the current state of Section 240 law and what an owner or contractor can expect when defending similar claims. 

In Mederos v 147 Amsterdam LLC, ___AD3d___, 2025 NY Slip Op 01895 (1st Dept 2025), the Appellate Division addressed and rejected four defenses that are often at play in many Section 240 claims. 

1. The plaintiff's accident was unwitnessed, and his injuries prevented him from describing how the accident occurred. So the mechanism of the accident was disputed to some degree. What was not disputed was that witnesses heard a sound and thereafter found the plaintiff on the ground next to a collapsed/overturned scaffold. This was sufficient to establish the plaintiff's entitlement to summary judgment. "The plaintiff's evidence was sufficient to conclude that Vinicio fell from the scaffold and that the absence of proper protection was at least a proximate cause of his accident." 
2. Even deciding unknown facts in the defendants' favor and concluding that the plaintiff's acts or omissions contributed to the accident would still be insufficient to defeat the plaintiff's motion. “Even construing the unknown facts in their favor — e.g., that the scaffold had railings and working wheel locks or brakes that Vinicio did not engage before his accident — defendants still failed to fulfill their nondelegable duty to furnish Vinicio with adequate safety devices to perform his work.” 
3. Even if the plaintiff had some kind of unexpected medical event that contributed to his fall, that would also be insufficient to defeat the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. Even if, as some witnesses speculated, the plaintiff experienced some kind of medical event that caused him to fall off the scaffold, "it was not the sole proximate cause of the accident such as would absolve defendants." 
4. The plaintiff's intoxication would be insufficient to defeat the plaintiff's motion. "…if Vinicio was intoxicated at the time of his accident, a worker's alcohol use amounts, at most, to comparative negligence, which is not a defense to a Labor Law § 240 (1) claim."

The decision highlights what is now well-settled law in the Appellate Division, especially the First Department. The sole proximate cause defense does not focus on the plaintiff's usage of a particular device, or whether a particular device malfunctioned in some way. Rather, the defense requires evidence that the plaintiff: 1) was provided with an adequate safety device; 2) knew both that the other adequate safety device was available and that they were expected to use them; 3) chose for no good reason not to use the other adequate safety device; and 4) would not have been injured had they not made that choice to not use the other adequate safety device. Biaca-Neto v Boston Rd. II Hous. Dev. Fund Corp., 34 NY3d 1166 (2020).