A worker who suffered an electrical injury that caused him to fall from a ladder is entitled to summary judgment on his labor law claim, a divided New York appellate court has ruled.

An employee of New York-based Knight Electrical Services Corp., Justin Nazario was injured in October 2009 while removing old light fixtures at a property owned by 222 Broadway L.L.C., court records show.

He was standing on the third or fourth rung of a 6-foot-tall wooden ladder when he received an electric shock from an exposed wire, according to records. Mr. Nazario was still holding the ladder, which remained in an open and locked position because it was “not secured to something stable,” when he fell to the floor.

He filed a claim under New York's Labor Law 240 and 241, or the Scaffold Law, against 222 Broadway, which then filed a contractual indemnification claim against Knight Electrical Services Corp., records show.

Mr. Nazario's motion for partial summary judgment on his labor law claim was denied, while 222 Broadway's motion for summary judgment on its contractual indemnification claim was granted by New York state Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey D. Wright in April 2014, according to records.

On Thursday, in a 4-1 decision, the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division's 1st Judicial Department ruled that Justice Wright erred in dismissing Mr. Nazario's labor law claim.

“It is not a requirement that a worker injured by a fall from an elevated height demonstrate that the safety device was defective or failed to comply with safety regulations,” the appellate court's ruling states. “The worker's burden is to show that the absence of adequate safety devices, or the inadequacy of the safety devices provided to protect the worker from a fall, was a proximate cause of his or her injuries.”

Justice Peter Tom wrote separately that the Court of Appeals cautioned against “the mistaken belief that a fall from a scaffold or ladder, in and of itself, results in an award of damages to the injured party.”