Cook County construction workers face dangerous on the job conditions that your typical office employee does not encounter. And even with the best safety measures in place, sometimes construction site accidents happen. But in those situations where proper precautions were not taken by the construction company, there may be cause for a Cook County workers’ compensation claim.
A recent Cook County verdict illustrates such a situation. The case involved a 20 year-old construction worker who sustained a broken femur and a back injury after a fall from a scaffold while working as a construction laborer on a project at a public library in Mt. Prospect, Illinois.
At the time of the Cook County construction site injury, the construction worker was on a scaffold assisting bricklayers when he tripped over plastic wrap that had been placed to protect the construction project during the winter months. The worker tumbled through an opening in the scaffold and fell about 30 feet. In addition to his broken femur, he sustained a herniated disk in his lower back which later required multiple surgeries.
The Cook County construction worker’s attorney alleged that the scaffold was unsafe because it lacked the proper fall protection. The scaffold also lacked a safely positioned mid-rail, which allowed the laborer to fall through the opening. At the trial, it was argued that the construction project’s general contractor was negligent in not properly supervising safety on the job and not properly installing the winter protection wrap which caused the laborer to trip.
The defendant general contractor made the argument before the jury that the plaintiff was a mason’s laborer who was trained in scaffold construction and therefore he could have taken many actions to protect the scaffold, but chose not to. The defense also denied that the winter protection was installed wrong or was a cause of the worker’s fall.
The Cook County jury sided with the construction worker and returned a $9.5 million verdict against the construction company.
Kreisman Law Offices has been handling Cook County construction site injury cases for over 30 years, serving those areas in and around Chicago, including Mt. Prospect, Oak Park, Blue Island, and Naperville.
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