Chicago construction site accidents are fairly common considering the heightened risk of working at a construction site versus at a desk job. And while some of these construction accidents can be considered part of the every day routine of doing construction work, when an Illinois construction accident is the result of negligence on the part of a company or fellow employee, then an Illinois personal injury claim can be brought.
The case of Aguilera v. FHP Techtonics Corporation is an example of a situation where the Chicago construction site accident was the result of a company’s negligence, in this case the general contractor of the job. Thirty-seven year-old David Aguilera was severely injured when he fell through an elevator shaft during the demolition of a building during the Chicago Transit Authority’s expansion project for the system’s Brown Line project.
Aguilera had opened the door of a freight elevator while working on the project, which opened despite there not being an elevator waiting. Aguilera fell some twenty feet through the open elevator shaft, and sustained a torn meniscus and anterior cruciate ligament tears in his knee, along with a concussion and lower back strain.
Aguilera claimed that as a result of the injuries he sustained from the Chicago construction site accident that he was permanently injured and unable to find substitute employment given his limitations. The severity of the nature of his construction site injuries required that he have surgery to try and repair the damage to his knee.
Aguilera and his attorneys attributed his construction site injuries to the project’s general contractor, FHP Tectonics. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury was given a special interrogatory asking them to consider whether the contractor retained control over the safety of the work being done by the plaintiff. The jury found against the general contractor and in favor of Mr. Aguilera in the amount of $534,379.
Kreisman Law Offices has been handling Chicago construction site injury lawsuits for over 35 years in Chicago, Cook County and surrounding communities, including Evanston, Brookfield, Schaumburg and Wheeling.
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