NY-NJ Bridge Injury Makes Court Evaluate Construction Liability

In a marathon argument Monday three camps—developers, insurers, and plaintiffs—all urged the New Jersey Supreme Court to overhaul a test for construction workplace injury liability. But everyone called for different rules to benefit their group.

The justices took the case, brought by a worker injured by an excavator on the New York-New Jersey Goethals Bridge project, in an effort to clarify New Jersey law, which had split into two tests—an older test that granted general contractors strong protections unless three rare exceptions applied, and a modern test based on worksite control factors that was more favorable to plaintiffs.

Yet the ...