Background
Hilmer German Carranza-Rafael was employed as a sheetrock worker at a Bronx construction site when he fell from a ladder and sustained serious injuries. According to his deposition testimony, he was nailing sheetrock while standing on an 8-to-10-foot A-frame ladder when the ladder suddenly began to slide sideways. He tried to grab a metal frame on the wall to steady himself but could not, falling to the ground and injuring his neck and back and cutting his left hand on a metal frame.
Carranza-Rafael sued the general contractor, LRC Construction LLC, and others under Labor Law § 240(1) — New York’s Scaffold Law — which imposes absolute liability on owners and contractors for gravity-related injuries resulting from inadequate safety protections at construction sites. The Supreme Court, Bronx County granted Carranza-Rafael summary judgment on liability. In separate motion practice, the Supreme Court also denied defendants’ request to amend their answer to add a fraud affirmative defense. LRC Construction appealed both rulings.
The Court’s Holding
The First Department unanimously affirmed both orders. On the Labor Law § 240(1) claim, the court confirmed that Carranza-Rafael established a prima facie case through his deposition testimony alone: a worker who falls from an unsecured ladder while performing construction work has demonstrated a statutory violation. The court reaffirmed the settled First Department rule that plaintiff need not show the ladder was defective, and need not identify the precise reason the ladder moved. The fall itself from an unsecured ladder is sufficient.
Defendants’ opposition failed on two grounds. Their primary evidence was an affidavit from Jose Delgado-Sanchez, a carpenter present at the accident. That affidavit, translated from Spanish to English, was inadmissible because it was not accompanied by a certification from the translator attesting to the translator’s qualifications and the accuracy of the translation — a requirement expressly imposed by CPLR 2101(b). Because the Delgado-Sanchez affidavit was inadmissible, it could not be used to authenticate either the employer’s (N&J Drywall Corp.) incident report or LRC Construction’s own incident report. Both documents therefore failed to raise a triable issue of fact.
The court further noted that even if the affidavit had been admissible, any discrepancy in the description of the ladder’s size would have been immaterial — a fall from either described height implicates the statute. The denial of the motion to amend the answer to add a fraud defense was also affirmed.
Key Takeaways
- Under Labor Law § 240(1), a worker’s testimony that he fell from an unsecured ladder during construction work establishes a prima facie violation; defendants must rebut with admissible evidence.
- CPLR 2101(b) requires any document translated from a foreign language to be accompanied by a translator’s affidavit certifying qualifications and accuracy of translation; failure to comply renders the translation inadmissible as a matter of law.
- An inadmissible affidavit cannot be used to authenticate other documents submitted in opposition to a summary judgment motion — those exhibits fall with the affidavit.
- Height discrepancies in ladder descriptions do not create a triable issue under § 240(1) if a fall from either described height would implicate the statute.
Why It Matters
This decision carries practical significance for both sides of the New York construction bar. For plaintiffs, it reaffirms that an unsecured ladder fall is one of the most straightforward paths to § 240(1) summary judgment. For defense counsel, it delivers a pointed procedural lesson: affidavits from Spanish-speaking witnesses submitted in opposition to summary judgment must include a fully compliant CPLR 2101(b) translator certification. In New York City construction litigation — where a large share of the construction workforce speaks Spanish — this issue arises routinely, and the cost of overlooking the certification requirement is the complete loss of the affidavit.
The cascading evidentiary consequence deserves emphasis: when the authenticating witness’s affidavit is struck, every document that affidavit was used to authenticate falls with it. Defense teams relying on incident reports corroborated by workers’ statements must confirm procedural compliance before filing their opposition papers.