Fell From an Unsecured Ladder on a New York School Job: Who Is Liable?

Take a hypothetical. A roofer from Patchogue is replacing flashing on a public middle school on Long Island during the summer break. The roofing company that employs him is a subcontractor; a general contractor runs the project for the school district. He climbs down an extension ladder that nobody tied off and nobody is holding. Halfway down, it shifts, and he falls to the asphalt.

Who pays, who can he sue, and what deadline is already running? The answers turn on the Scaffold Law, on workers’ compensation, and on the fact that the owner is a public school district. Our Long Island construction accident lawyer page covers construction claims generally; this post stays with the school job. It is general information, not advice about any one claim.

Who can be sued when a worker falls on a school roofing job

The statute names the parties. Labor Law § 240(1) requires “all contractors and owners and their agents,” in the repair or alteration of “a building or structure,” to furnish “scaffolding, hoists, stays, ladders” and other devices “so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person so employed.” The exception for owners of one- and two-family dwellings does not reach a school district.

The owner’s duty does not depend on whether the owner was on the roof. The Court of Appeals, in Blake v Neighborhood Hous. Servs. of N.Y. City, 1 NY3d 280 (2003), described owners and contractors as liable “regardless of whether they exercise supervision or control over the work.” A third party becomes an “agent” under the statute “only when work is delegated to a third party who obtains the authority to supervise and control the job.” So the subcontractor that ran the roofing crew can be in the case; a trade that never had authority over the roofing work is not an agent under the statute.

A September 2026 decision shows the structure on a real Suffolk County project. In Rojas v Riverhead Cent. Sch. Dist., 2026 NY Slip Op 05432 (2d Dept Sept. 23, 2026), a roofer employed by a subcontractor fell at a building owned by the Riverhead Central School District. He sued the district and the general contractor, won summary judgment on liability against both, and the Second Department affirmed.

The card below lays out each party on a public school job.

You got to sue everybody. Owner, they have a non-delegable duty under Labor Law section 240, so the school district is in the case, even if they never set foot on the roof, right? You just do a little bit of research and you find out who the general contractor was. The general contractor has a duty to oversee the job unless it’s your actual employer. You don’t put in your actual employer because that’s workers’ comp. So the subcontractors that have control over the job, they’re in the case too.

The practical step is to identify every company on the job before memories fade: the contract documents, the permit, the sign on the fence and the names on the trucks.

Why the direct employer stays out of the lawsuit

Workers’ Compensation Law § 11 makes the employer’s liability for a work injury “exclusive and in place of any other liability whatsoever” to the employee. The injured roofer collects compensation benefits through his employer’s carrier and does not sue the roofing company that employs him. The statute makes one exception for the worker: if the employer failed to secure compensation coverage, the employee may elect to claim compensation or to sue the employer in court.

The “grave injury” language in the same section is often misread. It does not let the worker sue the employer. It decides whether the school district or the general contractor can pass part of its own liability back to the employer through contribution or indemnity, and the list is short: death, permanent and total loss of use or amputation of an arm, leg, hand or foot, paraplegia or quadriplegia, and a few others the statute names.

The worker’s case therefore has two tracks. Compensation pays without regard to fault, from the employer’s carrier. The lawsuit runs against the owner, the general contractor and any subcontractor with authority over the work.

When a ladder fall is a Labor Law § 240 violation

A fall alone does not decide the case. The Second Department said so in Rojas: “A fall from a ladder, by itself, is not sufficient to impose liability under Labor Law § 240(1).” Liability attaches when the evidence shows that the “ladder was defective or inadequately secured and that the defect, or the failure to secure the ladder, was a substantial factor in causing the plaintiff’s injuries.” The court then stated the rule that decided the appeal: “where a ladder slides, shifts, tips over, or otherwise collapses for no apparent reason, the plaintiff has established a violation.”

The proof in Rojas was the worker’s own testimony: his deposition and his testimony at a General Municipal Law § 50-h hearing, which “established that the unsecured ladder shifted, causing him to fall.” The defendants “failed to raise a triable issue of fact.” The fall had happened in August 2013.

Blake holds that comparative negligence is not a defense to a § 240(1) violation. It also holds there is no liability where there was no violation and the worker’s own negligence was the “sole proximate cause” of the fall, and it notes the statute does not reach a “recalcitrant worker” who refused available safety devices. Defendants raise both, and each turns on the facts: what device was there, whether it was adequate, and what the worker was told. In Jason Tenenbaum’s experience, “those defenses very rarely succeed. You’d have to show that the employee’s conduct was the sole proximate cause of his injuries, and you just can’t do that. It’s just very difficult.”

Whether § 240 changes in the 2027 budget is an open question; our neutral explainer on the Scaffold Law in the 2027 budget sets out the bills and both sides’ arguments. In practice, the ladder itself is evidence: who supplied it, whether it was tied off or footed, and what it was standing on.

A school district is a public owner, so the notice of claim comes first

Education Law § 3813(2) provides that no action “founded upon tort” shall be maintained against a school district “unless a notice of claim shall have been made and served in compliance with section fifty-e of the general municipal law.” General Municipal Law § 50-e(1)(a) sets the clock: “within ninety days after the claim arises.”

Subdivision 1 of the same section has a separate three-month verified claim for other claims against districts, such as contract and employment claims; our post on the § 3813 deadline for school employees covers that clock. An injured worker’s claim is a tort claim, so the 90 days apply.

It’s a government entity, so the notice of claim comes first. You only have 90 days to file a notice of claim against a school district. So if you’re going to file against a school district, you always need to file a notice of claim. You can’t go wrong by filing a notice of claim. You can go wrong by waiting and missing it.

The notice must be in writing and sworn, and it must state “the time when, the place where and the manner in which the claim arose” and the injuries claimed so far as then practicable, without a dollar amount. It is served personally or by registered or certified mail.

A missed deadline is not always the end, but it is a motion, not a right. A court “in its discretion” may extend the time, weighing “in particular” whether the district or its insurer “acquired actual knowledge of the essential facts constituting the claim” in time. The general contractor and the subcontractors are private companies: no notice of claim, and three years to sue under CPLR 214(5). Consequently, the district’s clock runs out first; serve well inside 90 days.

The 50-h examination and the deadline to sue the district

Once the notice is served, the district may demand an examination of the claimant “relative to the occurrence and extent of the injuries,” upon oral questions and possibly with a physical examination by a physician, and no action may be commenced until the claimant complies. Our post on the 50-h hearing explains what happens in the room.

Treat the 50-h testimony as trial testimony. In Rojas, it was one of the two transcripts that won summary judgment; it would have been used against him just as readily if his account had changed.

The lawsuit against the district “shall be commenced within one year and ninety days after the happening of the event upon which the claim is based,” under General Municipal Law § 50-i(1). The clocks below run from the day of the fall.

The district’s deadlines set the pace for the whole case.

Indemnification fights and the workers’ compensation lien

The second half of Rojas was a fight among the defendants. The district sought contractual indemnification from the roofing subcontractor and lost: it “was not a party to the agreement” between the general contractor and the subcontractor, nor “named as an indemnitee therein,” and the subcontractor was not bound by the indemnification clause in the district’s own contract with the general contractor.

So the owner and the general contractor are gonna fight over who pays what, right? And that’s their problem, not yours. What matters to you is that whatever they’re going to pay in workers’ compensation benefits is going to come out of your settlement because the comp carrier has a lien. So just know that number before you even start talking about settling.

The lien comes from Workers’ Compensation Law § 29(1): the carrier is repaid from any recovery, “whether by judgment, settlement or otherwise,” for the compensation and medical benefits it paid, after the reasonable costs of the recovery, including attorney’s fees, are deducted and apportioned. A settlement for less than the compensation provided needs the carrier’s written approval or a court compromise order. Consequently, the lien and the carrier’s consent belong in the settlement discussion from the start.

Back to the roofer from Patchogue

The roofer has a workers’ compensation claim through his employer’s carrier, whatever caused the fall. He has a § 240(1) claim against the school district as owner and against the general contractor, and against any subcontractor that had authority to supervise and control the roofing work; his own employer is not a defendant. If the ladder shifted while he was using it, Rojas is close to his facts, and his account at the deposition and at any 50-h examination has to be the same account.

The first deadline is the district’s: a sworn notice of claim within 90 days of the fall. Our Long Island scaffold accident lawyer page covers preserving the evidence before a site is cleaned up.

Sources

• Rojas v Riverhead Cent. Sch. Dist., 2026 NY Slip Op 05432 (2d Dept Sept. 23, 2026)
• Blake v Neighborhood Hous. Servs. of N.Y. City, 1 NY3d 280 (2003)
• New York Labor Law § 240, Scaffolding and other devices for use of employees
• New York Labor Law § 241, Construction, excavation and demolition work
• New York Workers’ Compensation Law § 11, Alternative remedy
• New York Workers’ Compensation Law § 29, Remedies of employees; subrogation
• New York Education Law § 3813, Presentation of claims against school districts
• New York General Municipal Law § 50-e, Notice of claim
• New York General Municipal Law § 50-h, Examination of claims
• New York General Municipal Law § 50-i, Presentation of tort claims; commencement of actions
• New York CPLR 214, Actions to be commenced within three years
• New York General Construction Law § 66, Definitions

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A fall on a public school job runs on two tracks: workers’ compensation through the employer, and a Labor Law § 240(1) claim against everyone else, with the district’s deadline first. Our construction accident practice handles the second track.

If you fell from a ladder or scaffold on a school or other public construction job, call (516) 750-0595 with the date of the fall and your workers’ compensation claim number, or request a free case review.