$950,000 Settlement – Falling Object TBI at Bronx Construction Site
Some injuries end a chapter of someone’s life. A traumatic brain injury can end the whole book as the person knew it. In 2024, Linden Law recovered $950,000 for a Bronx construction worker who will spend the rest of his life dealing with what happened on a job site that should have been safe.
The Case
Our client was working on a Bronx construction project when debris fell from an upper level of the structure and struck him directly on the head. There was no protective netting above the area where workers were active. There was no overhead protection of any kind. He was wearing a hard hat – but a hard hat is not designed to absorb the impact of falling construction materials from height. He was transported to a trauma center with multiple skull fractures and a traumatic brain injury that required emergency neurosurgery.
The Injury
A traumatic brain injury is not like a broken bone that heals on a predictable timeline. The brain is not that cooperative. Our client underwent neurosurgery to address the skull fractures and relieve pressure on the brain, and the initial physical recovery was measured in months. But the cognitive effects – the ones that don’t show up on a scan and don’t have a clear endpoint – were what changed his life most fundamentally.
He experienced persistent difficulties with memory, concentration, and word retrieval. He was prone to headaches that could sideline him for days. His sleep was disrupted in ways that compounded everything else. He had been a capable, experienced construction worker; afterward, the noise and cognitive demands of job sites were genuinely difficult for him to manage. His treating neurologist documented permanent cognitive deficits with a level of specificity that made it impossible for the defense to dismiss them as subjective complaints.
How We Established Liability
New York Labor Law § 240(1) covers falling object cases just as it covers falls from elevation – and the standard is the same: absolute liability on the property owner and general contractor when proper overhead protection is not provided. On this site, there was no netting, no debris catch platform, no planking over the area below active overhead work. This was not a close call on the safety requirements. It was a straightforward violation.
We retained a construction safety expert who had spent decades working in site safety compliance and could speak to exactly what was required under OSHA and New York Industrial Code standards – and exactly how far this site fell short. We also obtained the site safety plan, which called for overhead protection in the area where our client was injured. The protection was called for. It simply wasn’t installed.
Challenges We Overcame
The defense team’s primary strategy was to minimize the cognitive injuries. Their neurologist argued that our client’s documented deficits were within normal variation and could not be causally attributed to the construction site accident with certainty. They suggested pre-existing conditions might be responsible – a tactic that is common in TBI cases precisely because brain injuries are complex and juries can be skeptical of symptoms they cannot see.
We responded by building an extraordinarily detailed medical narrative. We gathered employment records from before and after the injury, statements from family members and coworkers documenting the before-and-after changes in his cognitive function, and expert testimony from a neuropsychologist who administered formal cognitive testing. The results were objective, documented, and clearly inconsistent with the defense’s “normal variation” theory.
We also pushed hard on the liability side to ensure there was no daylight for the defense to exploit. By the time we were ready for trial, the settlement demand was well-founded and the defendants knew it.
The Outcome
The case resolved for $950,000. Given the permanence of our client’s injuries, no amount of money is adequate – but the settlement provided real financial stability, covered his medical costs and ongoing care needs, and recognized the severity of what he endured.
For more information about your rights after a construction site injury in the Bronx, visit our construction accident practice area page or our Bronx personal injury page.
Injured in a similar accident? Call (212) 804-8440 for a free consultation. No fee unless we win.