Fernandes v. DAR Development Corp.

Plaintiff Rolando Fernandes and his boss, Mario Freitas (Mario), were installing a sewer pipe on a residential construction site. The wall of the trench in which Fernandes was working collapsed, burying him up to his chest. Mario promptly extricated plaintiff and later drove him home. Fernandes was seriously injured and has not worked since that day. Fernandes filed a complaint against the general contractor, DAR Development Corp. and DAR Construction, Inc. (collectively DAR or defendant), seeking compensatory damages. At trial, the court rejected defendant s request to charge comparative negligence. The jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff. In resisting defendant s request to charge Fernandes' negligence, plaintiff argued according to controlling New Jersey case law, a worker's negligence should not have been submitted to the jury in negligence claims by an injured worker against third parties, such as a general contractor. He also argued that the record provided no evidential support for a comparative negligence charge. The Appellate Division affirmed the decision by the trial court refusing to submit the issue of plaintiff's negligence to the jury. In doing so, the appellate panel invoked not only the leading authority on negligence claims by injured workers arising from workplace accidents against third parties, but also authority governing workplace accidents involving unsafe or defectively designed equipment. After review of the Appellate Division's decision, the Supreme Court concluded that in negligence claims by injured workers against third parties, such as a general contractor, there was no sound reason to depart from settled precedent that an employee's negligence may be submitted to the jury when evidence has been adduced that the injured employee unreasonably confronted a known risk and had no meaningful choice in the manner in which he completed that task. The Court also determined, like the Appellate Division, that in this case the evidence produced at trial provided no basis to submit the issue of Fernandes' negligence to the jury. View "Fernandes v. DAR Development Corp." on Justia Law