Plaintiff Omar Cruz was injured on August 5, 2003 while working at a construction site located on 164th Street in the Bronx, New York. Heavy rain from the night before had caused the trench in which the construction was occurring to cave in. The following morning, Mr. Cruz was ordered to go into the trench with two other workers to remove the stripping panels from the excavation site. Three minutes after the men entered the ditch, the excavator operator at the site moved the excavator causing the dirt to shift and the ditch to cave in further. The two other workers were able to escape, but Mr. Cruz was not as he had his back to the dirt wall and did not see it falling.
Mr. Cruz was buried under ten feet of dirt. He was immediately pulled out of the pit, but he was by then bleeding from his mouth and had lost consciousness. He suffered from severe internal bleeding, oral and facial injuries, and broken toes and leg. He currently suffers from back and stomach pain, difficulty in walking and moving due to the abdominal trauma, and he requires the assistance of a wheelchair.
Throughout the course of litigation, it was discovered that excavators should not be moved while men are working in a pit. This is in violation of the strict duties imposed upon construction site supervisors and owners under New York Labor Law. The case was litigated in the Supreme Court of New York - Bronx County before the Honorable Justice Alan J. Saks by Richard M. Winograd, Esq. and Gary R. Novins, Esq. It settled for $1,750,000 in 2008.