Articles Posted in Construction Accidents

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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.

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A 51 year-old union carpenter fell from a ladder at the construction site at 1111 S. State Street in Chicago on May 12, 2004, severely injuring his head and neck as a result of the Chicago construction site accident. The plaintiff, James Conwell was carrying a doorway header beam on a ladder that gave way. Although Mr. Conwell weighed about 220 pounds, the ladder was designed to safely hold a capacity of up to 225 pounds. The weight of the beam Conwell was carrying was about 100 pounds.

The fall at the Chicago construction site caused the beam to strike the back of the plaintiff’s head and neck, causing a seven-inch gash below his right ear. The gash opened his jugular vein. After extensive surgery to repair the laceration, plaintiff continued to experience aura migraines, neck pain, tinnitus or ringing in his ears, severe hypersensitivity to sounds and cognitive deficits.

The ensuing personal injury lawsuit ended in a jury trial which resulted in a verdict of $1.47 million in favor of the plaintiff, Mr. Conwell. Mr. Conwell work at the site for Kole Construction, a carpentry subcontractor. The defendant in the case was the general contractor, McHugh Construction Co.

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In a second Illinois Supreme Court opinion regarding this case, the court handed down its opinion in Ready v. United/Goedecke, Inc., No. 108910, an important case distinguishing fault apportionment.

The court’s first opinion, Ready I, held that Illinois Code of Civil Procedure Section 2-1117 did not permit the apportionment of fault to defendants who had already settled in the Illinois wrongful death case. Following that Supreme Court decision (Ready I), the case was remanded to the Illinois Appellate Court to consider the defendant’s sole proximate cause defense. The appellate court decided that the lower court had erred in refusing to admit evidence of the conduct of the settling defendants. However, the Illinois Appellate Court did not reach the issue of defendant’s entitlement to a jury instruction on the point.

In this opinion, Ready II, the Illinois Supreme Court concluded that the Circuit Court of Cook County was wrong both in excluding the evidence of the actions of the settled defendant, but also it erred in refusing to instruct the jury on sole proximate cause by not giving the second paragraph of Illinois Pattern Instruction, 12.04.

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A Cook County jury has determined that the company engaging a torch-cutter is responsible for worker’s wrongful death. The jury verdict was $734,400. Fernando Corral, age 51, was working as a torch-cutter at Mervis Industries, Inc. cutting a portion of a single-deck rail car when a piece of steel fell on him causing his wrongful death. He was survived by his wife and four children.

The family of Mr. Corral brought an Illinois wrongful death lawsuit alleging that the defendant company, Mervis, chose not to make the area where Mr. Corral was working safe, that it should have recognized the hazards involved in torch-cutting work and guarded against those hazards.

The Illinois wrongful death case had a complicated past. A motion for summary judgment was first granted by a trial judge indicating that Mervis did not owe a duty to Corral because he was working for an independent contractor at the time of this incident.

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A Cook County jury verdict was affirmed by the Appellate Court, resulting in an $8.3 million award to the surviving spouse of a construction worker who died in a Chicago construction site accident. The court found that the defenses’ claims of an unfair trial and of unreasonable compensation were unfounded and affirmed the Illinois jury’s decision in Colella v. JMS Trucking Company of IL, Inc., et al., No. 1-08-1072.

The Illinois construction site accident occurred when the decedent was struck by a JMS Trucking dump truck driven by defendant Samuel Inendino. At the time of the accident the decedent was working at removing water from the area around a newly installed water main. At the jury trial the decedent was found to have contributed 10 percent to his own accident, while the defendants JMS Trucking and Inendino were 90 percent negligent.

While defendant JMS Trucking had attempted to bring the decedent’s employer into the construction site injury lawsuit as a third party defendant, the jury did not find the decedent’s employer, Benchmark Construction Company. On appeal, JMS Trucking argued that the Benchmark’s liability in the decedent’s accident and death was so obvious that it should have been reflected in the jury verdict. However, the appellate court did not agree and let the jury’s ruling regarding the third-party defendant stand.

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A $6.25 million settlement was reached in an Illinois work site injury lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County for a roofing accident that occurred at a Chicago South Side Metra facility, Luis Vasquez, et al., v. Walsh Construction Company, et al., No. 04 L 011387. The construction site injury lawsuit was brought by a Chicago roofer who fell 20 feet to a concrete floor while replacing concrete panel roofing tiles. The Cook County case was filed against Metra and several other contractors whom the plaintiff contended were liable for his injuries.

As a result of his fall, the roofer suffered a mild traumatic brain injury, fractured his wrist, herniated several discs in his spine, tore his knee cartilage, and sprained his ankle. The Chicago construction site accident occurred in 2004 and the plaintiff has not been able to return to work. Prior to the accident he had been a union roofer for over 30 years.

Like many construction site accident lawsuits, in Vasquez the plaintiffs alleged that multiple defendants played a role in the resulting injury. Metra was involved in the lawsuit because it owned the Chicago facility where the construction site accident occurred. Metra had contracted its tile replacement project to Walsh Construction Co., who was then responsible for overseeing the roof maintenance. Walsh in turn sub-contracted the labor to Knickerbocker Roofing and Paving Co., who was the plaintiff’s employer and would later be added to the case as a third-party defendant. Consoer Townsend Environdyne (CTE Inc.) was the site engineer of the roofing project while Cotter Consulting was responsible for determining which roofing panels needed to be replaced.

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The Illinois Supreme Court is in the process of reviewing an Illinois wrongful death case involving a construction worker who fell to his death from a scaffold. The case of Ready v. United/Goedecke Services, Inc., No. 108910 had already been reviewed by the Illinois Supreme Court and remanded to the Appellate Court. However, Ready returned to the Illinois Supreme Court for review after the Illinois Appellate Court disregarded the higher court’s mandate.

In Ready, the Illinois wrongful death claim was brought by the construction worker’s widow against the owner of the plant where decedent was working, the general contractor for the construction job, and a scaffolding subcontractor. Prior to the 2003 Cook County trial both the plant owner and the general contractor settled with the decedent’s widow regarding the Illinois construction site injury.

However, the scaffolding contractor elected to go to trial where a $14 million verdict was entered in favor of decedent’s estate. The jury did find that the plaintiff-decedent contributed to his own fall, valuing his contributory-negligence for the construction site injury at 35%. Therefore, since the plaintiff-decedent was 35% responsible, the $14 million verdict was reduced by 35%, or $4.2 million. The verdict was further reduced by the value of the settlements already secured by plaintiff so that in the end the verdict was reduced by almost $8 million.

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In 2002, a mother and her teenage daughter were living in a rented home. One night, the high school junior returned home at 10:30 pm and noticed a faint order when she walked into the residence, but she didn’t identify it as natural gas because she didn’t know what natural gas smelled like.

On the following morning, the mother woke up about 6:30 am and smelled what she thought was natural gas. Her daughter recognized the odor as the same she had detected the night before but the smell had grown much stronger. The mother called 911, but the gas explosion occurred immediately after that call was made. The mother and daughter were severely injured.

The plaintiffs sued the owner and general manager of the duplex where they lived as well as the plumbing company that had installed the gas piping. It was alleged by the plaintiffs that the interior gas piping had been installed negligently and caused the explosion.

After the lawsuit had been filed, the plaintiffs added gas utility, Northern Illinois Gas as a defendant. The plaintiff settled with the building owner and general manager as well as the plumbing company. They proceeded against Northern Illinois Gas who they alleged was negligent in that the company failed to inspect its work and warn the plaintiffs.

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Illinois construction companies have an obligation to provide a safe work environment for their employees and do what they can to avoid Illinois construction site accidents. Because of this duty on the part of construction companies, Illinois construction workers can generally assume that the equipment and materials at a construction site are safe and hazard-free.

However, sometimes this is not the reality, in which case an Illinois construction site injury can result from the failure of a construction company to provide a safe and healthy work environment. Consider the case of Diaz v. Archer Daniels Midland Company, 07 L 142 (Ill., Macon County), in which a 26 year-old construction worker was fatally injured as a result of an Illinois construction site accident.

At the time of his Illinois construction site injury, Francisco Garcia was working for a contractor who had been hired to perform work at the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) Bioproducts plant. Garcia was busy insulating pipes 15 feet in the air while harnessed to a scissors lift. While Garcia was working, a nearby waste compression system over-pressurized, spraying him with scalding steam, toxic chemicals and boiling water.

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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.

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