$1.9MConstruction site fall due to missing guardrails

A 34-year-old electrician and father of two fell nineteen feet through an unguarded floor opening on the third level of a mid-rise under construction. He died at the scene. The opening had been cut two days earlier by a different trade and covered with a sheet of plywood that was neither secured nor marked.

Workers’ compensation was the only benefit his family had been offered.

Because his employer was shielded by the compensation bar, we pursued the general contractor and the concrete subcontractor that had cut the opening.

Daily reports and the site safety plan placed responsibility for hole protection squarely with the general contractor, and its own pre-task inspections had flagged unsecured covers twice before without a documented correction. We coordinated the estate opening so the survival and wrongful death claims could be pleaded together rather than one at the expense of the other.

The general contractor and the subcontractor settled jointly for $1.9 million before depositions of the site superintendent concluded.

The recovery was structured to fund his children’s education and to replace the household income his family lost, with the survival claim resolved alongside the wrongful death claim rather than folded into it.