Plaintiff was a mechanic's helper who was injured while he and a co-worker were installing an elevator, which was designed so that, when the car descended, a counterweight frame with partially enclosed weights on top of it would ascend, and vice versa.

Both the injured plaintiff and his co-worker testified that, at the time of the accident, they were bringing the elevator platform down the shaft from the eighth floor to the basement, using a hand-held control box. Plaintiff was standing in the elevator shaft's doorway at the basement level, and his co-worker was at the lobby level. As the counterweight frame was ascending, it hit a spike protruding from the elevator shaft's wall, causing five of the counterweights to fall out of their housing. At least one of the counterweights struck plaintiff on his right side.

On these facts, the First Department found that the scaffold law, as codified in Labor Law § 240(1), did not apply, in Buckley v. Columbia Grammar & Preparatory, which was decided on August 16, 2007. The court noted that the statute extends only to a narrow class of special hazards, and does not encompass any and all perils which may be connected in some tangential way with the effects of gravity. Specifically, for the statute to apply, there must be a significant, inherent, and foreseeable risk which is attributable to an elevation differential.

The court concluded that, here, it was not foreseeable that the counterweights which struck plainff posed an elevation-related hazard inherent in testing the functioning of the elevator platform. All that was involved was the moving of the platform up and down using a hand-held control unit. At the time of the accident, the counterweights were in their housing in accordance with both the elevator's design and the installation manual. The elevator shaft was constructed according to specification, and, before the counterweight rails were installed, the walls were inspected for any protrusions which might impinge on the space where the counterweights would move up and down.

"Thus, it could not reasonably be expected at the time of the testing that the counterweight frame would tilt or move in a way that would cause the counterweights to fall."