PBS calls it “the hidden cost of the smartphone revolution.” In the last few years alone, nearly a hundred American laborers have lost their lives while working on a communications tower — the majority of them climbing a cell tower.
In their haste to meet the public’s exponential appetite for better, faster, and more widespread cell phone coverage, the major cell providers are pushing their employees, contractors, and subcontractors to ramp up their work on towers.
As a result, we’ve seen an alarming uptick in the rate of employee accident injuries and deaths involving cell phone towers, and the industry has been slow to respond.
Given that there’s no decline in sight for smartphones — there are more active cell phones than people in the United States — that’s a disturbing and tragic trend.
As New York City workplace injury attorneys, we here at Tucker Lawyers, PC are concerned about the state of cell phone worker safety, not only in our state but throughout the U.S. and around the world. We want workers and their families to know that they have a right to a safe working environment.
Catastrophic injury and death almost always indicate a serious lapse in safety, and that kind of negligence is financially compensable under New York personal injury law. The information below will help laborers here in The Empire State understand their rights and how our office can help.
How Cell Phone Tower Worker Deaths Happen
The overwhelming majority of cell phone tower accidents are the result of negligence.
The most common causes of cell tower accidents include:
- Defective safety equipment
- Inadequate safety training
- Employers asking workers to operate in inclement weather or unsafe conditions
- A work culture that implicitly promotes “skirting the rules”
- Rushing through a job
- Failing to thoroughly check safety apparatus prior to use
- Improper supervision of workers in the field
- Exposure to dangerous electrical currents
- Tower climbers receiving shoddy or cheap equipment before a climb
- Hiring unqualified contractors, subcontractors, or employees
- Employers’ failure to respond to known (or apparent) safety hazards
- Pressure from management to meet unreasonable deadlines or schedules
- Violations of established company procedure
- Violations of state or federal laws.
Any of these errors may give rise to a successful personal injury lawsuit. Our New York City workplace injury attorneys can help you understand whether these or any other violations might have played a role in a loved one’s accident.
Talk with Tucker Lawyers, PC
If you’ve lost a loved one in a cell phone tower accident, or if you are a laborer who has suffered severe injury while providing electrical or communications services, we want to help you. You may be entitled to significant financial compensation, but you’ll need an attorney to ensure that the other side respects your rights.
Relief may be available under theories of personal injury, workers’ compensation, products liability, employment law, wrongful death, and more.
Please contact us as soon as possible to schedule a consultation with the New York City workplace injury attorneys or personal injury lawyer in Brooklyn at Tucker Lawyers, PC. The consultation is free, and we will not charge you for any of our services unless we are able to recover compensation on your behalf. Call us today.
Managing Attorney John. J. Tucker, Esq.
John has personally handled thousands of clients who were victims of another’s negligence and fights relentlessly for their rights. John enjoys bringing closure to a client’s matter so that the injured party can move forward with their life. His background enables him to evaluate complex liability related claims and bring resolution to claims in a record time frame. [ Attorney Bio ]