The 129 year old Scaffold Law, unique to New York, has made the state the most expensive state in which to build a project - from a house, to a school or hospital, to the World Trade Center or a new Tappen Zee Bridge.
This law makes the contractor AND the property owner absolutely liable for any gravity related injury on a construction job site, regardless of fault.
In the case of large public projects, the added insurance and settlement costs can run into hundreds of millions of dollars. Thus hundreds of projects don't get built each year which costs the state tens of thousands of construction jobs with good benefits.
Even if the construction company has provided all of the safety training and equipment that the law requires and the injury was caused by employee negligence, the contractor and property owner still bear 100 percent of the cost.
The law as written treats good, responsible contractors and owners - who provide safety equipment and training - the same as it does the bad actors who don't.
Finally, many insurance companies are no longer willing to write policies for construction projects in New York
