Personal Injury & Construction Accident Lawyer in Long Island City
No other neighborhood in Queens has been rebuilt as fast as Long Island City. Towers along Jackson Avenue and the Vernon Boulevard waterfront mean hoists, scaffolds, formwork and open shafts on active sites every day — and construction is where the most powerful statute in New York injury law applies. If you were hurt working in LIC, the law gives you considerably more than most injured workers realize.
The Scaffold Law imposes absolute liability
Labor Law § 240(1) makes owners and general contractors absolutely liable when a worker is injured by an elevation-related hazard and proper protection was not provided — a fall from a scaffold, a ladder that shifted, an unsecured hoist, or an object falling from above. Absolute liability means the worker’s own carelessness is not a defense. Nothing else in New York personal injury law gives an injured person that much leverage.
Alongside it, Labor Law § 241(6) lets a claim rest on a specific Industrial Code violation — debris underfoot, missing guardrails, inadequate lighting in a cellar or shaft — and Labor Law § 200 codifies the general duty to provide a safe workplace, turning on notice and control. The one- and two-family homeowner exemption that limits these statutes elsewhere in Queens has essentially no application to LIC tower work.
Comp and the Labor Law claim run side by side
Workers’ compensation is your exclusive remedy against your own employer, and it pays medical treatment and part of your lost wages — but nothing for pain and suffering. The Labor Law claim runs in parallel against the owner and general contractor, who are not your employer. Filing comp does not waive it. Two comp deadlines control: written notice to your employer within 30 days, and the C-3 claim form filed with the Workers’ Compensation Board within two years.
Off the site: bridges, ferries and traffic
LIC also absorbs the Queensboro and Pulaski Bridge approaches and heavy truck movement on Jackson and Borden Avenues. For any vehicle collision, no-fault pays treatment and part of lost earnings regardless of fault — the NF-2 application generally due within 30 days — and compensation for the injury itself requires meeting the serious injury threshold in Insurance Law § 5102(d). Where a City vehicle or the MTA is involved, a § 50-e Notice of Claim is due within 90 days; otherwise the deadline is the three years under CPLR 214.
Frequently Asked Questions
I am already receiving workers’ compensation. Can I still bring a case?
Yes, and this is the single most common misunderstanding on a construction site. Comp bars a suit against your employer. It does not bar a Labor Law claim against the property owner or the general contractor, who are separate parties. Those claims routinely proceed alongside an open comp file, and they are where compensation for pain, suffering and long-term disability comes from.
I was paid in cash, or I am not documented. Does that disqualify me?
No. Being paid off the books does not convert an employee into an independent contractor — the Board looks at control over the work, not at how the money moved. Labor Law protections and workers’ compensation are available regardless of immigration status, and where an employer carried no comp policy, New York maintains an Uninsured Employers Fund. Many people in exactly this position never file anything, which is the only way to actually lose.
The contractors are all blaming each other. Does that stall my claim?
It stalls them, not you. Under § 240(1) the owner and general contractor are liable for a qualifying elevation-related injury whether or not they personally did anything wrong; how they apportion blame among themselves and their subcontractors is their fight to have. Your job is to establish the fall and the missing protection.
What evidence disappears fastest?
Site photographs, the ladder or scaffold itself, daily logs, toolbox-talk sign-in sheets and site camera footage. Active sites change within days and footage often overwrites within weeks. A written preservation demand sent early is what keeps it available.
Courts that hear Long Island City injury cases
- Queens County Supreme Court, Civil Term — its Long Island City courthouse sits at 25-10 Court Square, in the neighborhood itself. The other building is in Jamaica at 88-11 Sutphin Boulevard.
- NYC Civil Court, Queens County — 89-17 Sutphin Boulevard, Jamaica.
- Workers’ compensation is not a court case at all — it is heard by the Workers’ Compensation Board.
Our Office & Directions from Long Island City
Yakov Mushiyev & Associates, PC
1 Cross Island Plaza, Suite 325
Rosedale, NY 11422
Phone: 718.775.3110
Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Home and hospital visits available.
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This page is general information about New York law, not legal advice about your situation. Every case turns on its own facts, and deadlines vary. Speak with an attorney before relying on anything here.