Slap NYs greedy ambulance chasers: Rein in the Scaffold Law

Any New York leader who cares about “affordability” will cheer Rep.Nick Langworthy’s effort to rein in the state’s obscene “Scaffold Law.”President Donald Trump, and anyone who’s built anything in the Empire State, knows how the 140-year-old law makes construction projects more expensive — and less viable.Ever since 1885, this statute has made contractors and property owners 100% liable for workers’ “gravity-related” injuries even when they’re almost entirely the fault of the workers’ themselves.That “absolute liability” rule sends insurance premiums through the roof, adding as much as 10% to construction costs.Every other state uses a different “comparative negligence” standard — meaning parties share liability in proportion to their responsibility for the injury.And now Langworthy (R-NY) is pushing a workaround for projects that use federal funds.His bill would send lawsuits over injuries on federally funded jobs to federal courts, where “comparative negligence” holds.Even uber-liberal states like California and Illinois don’t impose the “absolute liability” standard; Illinois became the last state in the union to scrap that approach — decades ago.Taxpayers could save billions on federally backed projects like the Hudson River Gateway project and the Port Authority Bus Terminal.The expected total price tag for federally funded work in New York over just the next five years is about $80 billion; if the Scaffold Law accounts for 10% of those costs, that’s $8 billon saved.Albany should have ditched the Scaffold Law long ago: In New York, a worker who hurts himself while drunk or ignoring safety rules can make his bosses entirely responsible — even if the worker was 99.9% responsible.

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