A worker who sustained a catastrophic injury after falling down an elevator shaft recently received a multi-million dollar settlement for those damages and resulting costs. The worker allegedly fell down the shaft in 2016 and his personal injury lawsuit reportedly settled in November of 2019.

According to the lawsuit, the employee fell down an elevator shaft because it was poorly lit four years before. The injuries, including facial fractures, a right wrist fracture, and a skull fracture, reportedly happened at Kean University.

The injured employee said that he and another employee were wheeling a door set in a hallway that didn’t have the right lighting.

There were multiple defendants named in the lawsuit, including the general contractor managing the project, a carpentry contractor who employed the injured worker, and Otis Elevator Co when the settlement was reached in late November.

The injured worker was the safety foreman and was informed that the elevator was propped open on the first floor with a plastic foam block. As revealed in the lawsuit, the general contracting company did not meet their contractual obligations because they failed to have an elevator operator on-site to supervise the situation.

The elevator operator’s role would have been to prop open the doors, but the use of the foam block meant the company could avoid hiring that additional worker. The employee who suffered the catastrophic injury pried open the elevator door with his own hands prior to falling down the shaft. He was immediately taken to the hospital for the treatment of his injuries.

After he was admitted to outpatient treatment, he filed for workers’ compensation benefits, but that insurance company refused to pay for his care. Although the injured elevator worker went back to work at first around five weeks later, he suffered such severe cognitive and balance issues that he had to retire one year later.

Injuries on the job could lead to a workers’ comp claim or a third-party personal injury claim if it can be shown that the employer or others involved failed to supervise the work situation properly.

Around 17,000 people are injured every single year because of an elevator or an escalator, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Elevators cause the vast majority of both fatal and catastrophic injuries.

Nearly half of those injured working around elevators were people who fell into the shaft, followed by the second-most serious cause of injuries, getting caught in between the moving machinery.

Elevator injuries can be tied to multiple causes such as unprotected openings, lack of posted warning signs, failure to have an emergency plan, and unawareness of the surroundings. Whenever employees are working on an elevator shaft, the supervisor should ensure that proper safety precautions have been taken and that each worker is using the right safety gear.

Since brain damage is a common side effect of falling down an elevator shaft, an injured employee with a catastrophic might suffer critical consequences and need lifelong medical care. The expenses associated with helping a loved one who has a traumatic brain injury are very high, leading many to turn to a lawsuit to get support for this past and ongoing care.