Georgaklis & Mallas PLLC is proud to announce a $6,500,000 settlement obtained by Kostantinos "Gus" Mallas on behalf of a construction safety inspector who fell approximately six feet through an unsecured plank at a New York City subway station construction site. The settlement was reached after more than eleven years of litigation, during which the site owner and its general contractor contested every element of the case — liability, causation and damages — right up until the end.

The Accident

Our client was a safety engineer whose job was to walk active construction sites, find hazards and document them before someone got hurt. On the day of his accident he was inspecting a platform rehabilitation project in which the existing concrete platform had been demolished and temporary wooden planking had been laid down so workers could cross the open areas. Crews were setting pre-assembled concrete forms in preparation for a pour, which meant protective barriers and walking surfaces were being moved and repositioned throughout the day.

He was photographing a safety deficiency involving compromised fall-protection equipment — the very kind of hazard he was there to catch — when he stepped backward onto what appeared to be part of the temporary walkway. It was not. It was an unsecured piece of plywood formwork that construction workers had left lying in the walking path. The plywood gave way beneath his weight and he plunged through an opening in the platform structure.

The Injuries

The fall caused catastrophic and permanent injuries to our client's spine, both shoulders and both knees. He has undergone nine major surgeries to date. He has been found 100% totally and permanently disabled. The career he spent years building — protecting other workers from exactly this kind of accident — ended the moment the plank gave way, and he continues to live with chronic, unrelenting pain more than eleven years later.

Eleven Years of Defense

The owner and the general contractor did not concede anything. For more than a decade, they argued that most if not all of our client's injuries were degenerative or pre-existing conditions that the fall had merely "exacerbated." They argued that he was capable of returning to work. And they argued that he had no business being where he was standing — that he had wandered into an area he should have avoided and was therefore the sole proximate cause of his own accident.

These are difficult defenses. Degenerative findings appear on the imaging of almost every working adult, and defense medical experts are practiced at pointing to them. The sole-proximate-cause argument, if it lands, is a complete defense under Labor Law § 240(1). The defendants had the resources and the patience to press both for as long as it took.

How We Answered

Mr. Mallas built the liability case around a simple proposition: an owner and general contractor who exercise complete control over a construction site and leave an unsecured plank lying across an open fall hazard, in a walkway that safety personnel are required to use, have violated Labor Law §§ 240(1), 241(6) and 200. A safety inspector whose presence on the site is not just permitted but required by the nature of the work cannot be recast as being somewhere he should not have been after he falls. The hazard he stepped on was indistinguishable from the walkway it sat beside, and no one at the site had secured, marked or removed it.

On damages, the firm assembled the full surgical and medical history to show what the defense narrative could not account for: nine operations, a total and permanent disability determination, and a man who was working full-time in a physically demanding safety role until the day of the fall. Whatever appeared on his pre-accident imaging, it had never put him on an operating table or kept him out of work. The fall did both, again and again.

The defendants had eleven years to wear this case down. They did not succeed. The $6,500,000 settlement was reached with the case fully prepared for trial.

We Never Stop Fighting

Cases like this are won by refusing to accept the other side's version of events, no matter how long they insist on it. Georgaklis & Mallas prepares every case as if it will be tried, and we do not let delay, denial or a well-funded defense decide what our clients' injuries are worth. Congratulations to Kostantinos "Gus" Mallas and the entire litigation team on a hard-fought result for a deserving client.

If you or a family member has been injured on a construction site anywhere in New York, contact Georgaklis & Mallas for a free consultation. Brooklyn: 718-238-2400. Manhattan: 212-779-2400.

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