A worker drilling holes to run telecommunications cable through a building is not doing work covered by New York's Scaffold Law, the Appellate Division, First Department ruled this week — and that single sentence just took a category of injury claims off the table for a specific kind of job.
Labor Law 240(1), the Scaffold Law, imposes strict liability on owners and general contractors when a worker is hurt in a gravity-related fall during "erection, demolition, repairing, altering, painting, cleaning or pointing" of a building. Courts have spent decades fighting over what counts as "altering" a structure versus routine maintenance or installation work that doesn't trigger the statute. The First Department just drew a line: running low-voltage cable by drilling through existing framing is an installation, not a structural alteration, so 240(1)'s strict-liability hammer doesn't apply.
Here's why that matters at the counter. Under 240(1), a GC or owner is on the hook even if the worker was careless, even if there was no negligence at all — the statute doesn't care, it just asks whether there was an elevation-related risk and inadequate protection. Get the work reclassified as ordinary installation instead of alteration, and the case reverts to ordinary negligence, where comparative fault and a much lower payout are back in play. That's the difference between a six-figure settlement and a case that might get dismissed on summary judgment.
For any contractor doing low-voltage, telecom, security, or data cabling work in occupied buildings — a trade that's grown fast as offices retrofit for smart-building systems — this ruling is worth flagging to your insurance broker and your subs before the next bid. If your scope is described in the contract as "cable installation" rather than "alteration" or "renovation," you may be carrying less 240(1) exposure than you think, and your GL premium negotiations should reflect it. The flip side: don't assume this protects you if the job also involves cutting structural members, relocating conduit through load-bearing elements, or other work a court could call alteration. The line is fact-specific, and plaintiffs' counsel will keep testing it.
This is a single appellate decision, not a change to the statute itself, and other departments could split on the question — that split is exactly what eventually lands in front of the Court of Appeals. Until then, treat this as persuasive authority in the First Department (Manhattan and the Bronx) and watch whether the Second, Third, or Fourth Departments follow or diverge.