Latazela v Compass Six Owner LLC

Holding The court affirmed the grant of partial summary judgment to the plaintiff on Labor Law §§ 240(1) and 241(6) claims, finding that the plaintiff’s fall from a moving scaffold without proper anchor points or guardrails established a prima facie case. The court rejected the defendants’ arguments that the plaintiff was the sole proximate cause of his injuries or that expert biomechanical evidence raised a triable issue of fact.

The court’s words

conceptually impossible for a statutory violation (which serves as a proximate cause for a plaintiff's injury) to occupy the same ground as a plaintiff's sole proximate cause for the injury

2026 NY Slip Op 06009, at the official text

the statement does not materially conflict with plaintiff's deposition testimony that he was injured in a fall from the scaffold that moved as he worked atop it

2026 NY Slip Op 06009, at the official text

the expert did not describe the methodology he used to determine the forces generated by the accident, nor did he identify the biomechanical engineering principle he relied upon

2026 NY Slip Op 06009, at the official text