The absolute liability of the Scaffold Law drives up the cost of nearly every public project in the state. This is not opinion; this is fact. The data is not in dispute.
The School Construction Authority paid an additional $140 million for insurance for 2014 due to the Scaffold Law. Their estimate for the next three years is $400 million in additional insurance costs.
As Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio call for more pre-kindergarten classrooms, hundreds of millions will be spent on the Scaffold Law while kids go to school in trailers.
The Port Authority pays, on average, $22.7 million for losses on the New York side of a bridge vs. $10.3 million on the New Jersey side — same bridge, same workforce, only absolute liability in New York.
That is not just an apples-to-apples comparison, it's the same apple. Elsewhere, the Port Authority's costs for street construction in New York are three times higher than their costs in New Jersey.
With these documented costs, is it any wonder that New York Conference of Mayors, New York State School Boards Association and disaster relief groups like Habitat for Humanity have all called for reform of the Scaffold Law?
Advocates and public institutions are not calling for the abolition of the law, they are only asking that the absolute liability (property owners and contractors are 100 percent at fault, regardless of the facts) be changed to comparative negligence (liability apportioned in court), the same way it is done in every other state and every other part of our civil justice system.
There are certainly advocates on both sides of the Scaffold Law debate (i.e,. trial lawyers and unions vs. everyone else). But, perhaps, Albany needs to stop listening to advocates and start listening to their colleagues in government. If they do, they will hear — loud and clear — that millions of taxpayer dollars are wasted every year on a law that only exists in New York.
Tom Stebbins is executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York.