Electrocuted on the Job in New York: Suing Con Edison and Site Owners After High-Voltage Burns and Cardiac Arrest
- Reza Yassi
- Jul 8
- 9 min read
You're guiding a steel beam into place on a Brooklyn job site when the crane's load line drifts too close to an overhead power line. Or you're on a boom lift in the Bronx, and the guardrail brushes a cable nobody told you was still energized. In a fraction of a second, thousands of volts pass through your body. If you were electrocuted on the job in New York, you're likely facing deep burns, a heart that stopped and had to be restarted, and a workers' comp system that pays only a fraction of what you've lost. This post explains how third-party lawsuits against Con Edison, property owners, and contractors recover the compensation workers' comp never will.
Why Is Being Electrocuted on the Job So Often a Catastrophic Injury?
High-voltage contact is catastrophic because electricity doesn't just burn the skin it touches — it travels through the body, cooking muscle, nerve, and organ tissue from the inside while it disrupts the heart's electrical rhythm. That's why electrocution injuries so often combine two separate medical disasters: severe burns and cardiac arrest.
The burns from high-voltage contact are unlike an ordinary thermal burn. The current enters at one point and exits at another, destroying tissue along the entire path. Surgeons frequently find that the damage under the skin is far worse than what's visible, which is why electrical burn patients face repeated debridement surgeries, skin grafts, and sometimes amputation of a hand or arm that couldn't be saved. Electrical injuries make up a small share of U.S. burn center admissions, but they are among the most severe cases burn units see. We've written before about how these injuries are valued in our breakdown of severe burn verdicts and settlements in New York.
The cardiac side is just as dangerous. A strong current across the chest can throw the heart into a chaotic rhythm or stop it entirely. The Mayo Clinic explains that sudden cardiac arrest is fatal within minutes without treatment, and even a survivor who is resuscitated may suffer lasting harm because the body was deprived of oxygen while the heart was stopped. When a jury hears that a worker's heart stopped on the job site and a co-worker performed CPR on the gravel until paramedics arrived, the pain-and-suffering component of the case changes dramatically. A cardiac arrest also means lifelong cardiology care, possible implanted devices, and permanent work restrictions — all of which multiply damages well beyond the burns alone.
These aren't rare events. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries consistently records a significant number of American worker deaths each year from exposure to electricity. NIOSH, the federal workplace-safety research agency, has studied these deaths for decades and found the same pattern again and again: workers contacting overhead power lines that should have been de-energized, insulated, or moved.
Can You Sue Anyone If Workers' Comp Bars a Lawsuit Against Your Employer?
Yes — workers' comp only blocks a lawsuit against your employer, not against the other companies whose negligence put a live wire in your path. This is the single most important thing to understand after you've been electrocuted on the job in New York.
Here's how the system fits together. Under Workers' Compensation Law § 11, comp benefits are your exclusive remedy against your employer — you generally can't sue the company that pays your wages, no matter how careless it was. But Workers' Compensation Law § 29 expressly preserves your right to sue a negligent third party. Collecting comp benefits and filing a third-party lawsuit aren't alternatives; New York law lets you do both at the same time.
Why does the lawsuit matter so much? Workers' comp pays your medical bills and a wage benefit of roughly two-thirds of your average weekly wage, subject to a statutory cap that hits high earners especially hard. It pays nothing — zero — for pain and suffering, disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, or your spouse's loss of your companionship. For a worker with grafted burns across his arms and chest and a defibrillator in his heart, the comp check doesn't begin to reflect the loss. Only the third-party case recovers full damages, which is why serious electrocution cases in New York so often resolve at seven figures.
The list of potential third-party defendants in an electrocution case is usually longer than injured workers expect. Con Edison or another utility may have owned and maintained the line. A property owner may have hired contractors to work directly beneath energized cables. A general contractor may have scheduled crane picks or scaffold erection in a danger zone without arranging a shutdown. An equipment manufacturer may have sold a lift without adequate warnings. As we covered in our review of NYC construction accident trends in 2026, job sites in the five boroughs routinely stack multiple companies on one project — and each one is a potential source of recovery outside the comp system.
What Duty Does Con Edison Owe to Workers Near Its Power Lines?
New York law holds electric utilities to a duty of care that rises with the danger of what they're distributing — and courts have long recognized that high-voltage electricity is about as dangerous as it gets. In Miner v. Long Island Lighting Co., 40 N.Y.2d 372 (1976), New York's highest court made clear that a utility maintaining high-voltage lines must exercise care commensurate with that extreme danger, and it upheld liability where a worker was injured by an inadequately insulated line.
In practice, that duty covers the situations that produce most electrocution cases. If Con Edison knows construction is happening near its lines — because permits were filed, because a contractor requested a markout or a shutdown, or because its own crews saw scaffolding rising next to a feeder — it must respond appropriately. That can mean de-energizing the line during the work, insulating or shielding it, relocating it, or at minimum warning the workers exposed to it. A utility that ignores a shutdown request, misidentifies which line is live, or leaves a low-hanging service drop sagging into a work area has breached a duty owed directly to you, and that claim doesn't run through your employer at all.
The site owner and general contractor carry their own responsibilities. They control the means and sequence of the work: where the crane sets up, where materials are staged, whether anyone verified clearance distances before sending workers aloft. An owner who lets rebar handlers work under energized lines, or a GC that never called the utility before scheduling a lift, faces direct negligence claims. Depending on the facts of the project, additional statutory claims against owners and contractors may be available too, and a lawyer should evaluate every one of them early.
One venue point worth knowing: Con Edison serves the five boroughs and Westchester, but out in Suffolk County the lines typically belong to PSEG Long Island operating on behalf of LIPA — and because LIPA is a public authority, shorter notice deadlines can apply than in a case against a private utility. Identifying who actually owns the wire is one of the first things your lawyer must nail down, because it changes the clock.
What Is the "Grave Injury" Threshold Under WCL § 11 — and Does It Limit Your Recovery?
The "grave injury" threshold does not limit your own lawsuit against Con Edison or the site owner at all — it only controls whether those defendants can drag your employer back into the case to share the blame. This distinction confuses almost everyone, so it's worth spelling out.
WCL § 11 says that a third-party defendant may seek contribution or indemnification from your employer only if you suffered one of a short list of statutorily defined "grave injuries." That list includes, among others:
Death
Permanent and total loss of use, or amputation, of an arm, leg, hand, or foot
Loss of multiple fingers or multiple toes
Permanent and severe facial disfigurement
An acquired brain injury causing permanent total disability
The Court of Appeals reads this list strictly. In Castro v. United Container Machinery Group, 96 N.Y.2d 398 (2001), the loss of fingertips was held not to be the "loss of multiple fingers," and in Rubeis v. The Aqua Club, Inc., 3 N.Y.3d 408 (2004), the court held that a brain injury qualifies only when it leaves the worker unemployable in any capacity. We analyzed how Manhattan's appellate court applies this standard in our post on the First Department's strict grave injury rulings.
For an electrocution victim, this cuts in interesting ways. Severe electrical burns to the face may qualify as permanent and severe facial disfigurement, and an amputated hand plainly qualifies — which means the defendants can implead your employer and pull its insurance money into the settlement pot. If your injuries don't meet the threshold, the utility and site owner can't shift blame to your employer and must answer for the full judgment themselves under the rules of joint liability. Either way, your direct recovery isn't capped by the grave injury list; it only reshuffles who pays. Experienced lawyers watch how the grave injury question changes settlement leverage, because a defendant who can't spread the loss to the employer often comes to the table sooner.
What Evidence Should You Preserve After an Electrocution, and What Deadlines Apply?
Preserve everything immediately, because in an electrocution case the most important evidence — the line itself, the equipment, the site conditions — can be repaired, re-energized, or demolished within days. A spoliation letter (a formal demand that a company preserve evidence) should go out to the utility, the owner, and the contractors before anyone touches the scene. Key items your lawyer will move to lock down include:
Utility records: shutdown requests, markout tickets, inspection and maintenance history for the line, and outage logs from the moment of contact
Site records: permits, contracts, safety meeting minutes, crane and lift plans, and daily logs showing who directed work near the line
The OSHA investigation file and any Department of Buildings incident records
Photos, phone video, and witness names from the crew that was there — memories fade and workers scatter to new jobs fast
Your complete medical record, from the ambulance run sheet through the burn unit and cardiology follow-up
The deadlines are unforgiving. A negligence lawsuit against a private utility like Con Edison or a private site owner generally must be filed within three years under CPLR § 214, and we've published a plain-language guide to CPLR § 214 that walks through the exceptions. If a public authority owns the line, the window to act can be far shorter, which is another reason not to wait.
There's also a trap at the end of the case that swallows unwary claimants. Most claimants miss that under WCL § 29, the workers' comp carrier holds a lien on your third-party recovery, and settling the lawsuit without the carrier's written consent or a court's approval can forfeit your future comp benefits entirely. A lawyer who handles these cases negotiates the lien down, secures the consent, and protects the benefits — steps that can be worth as much as the settlement itself for a worker who'll need medical care for decades. Anyone electrocuted on the job should treat the comp claim and the lawsuit as one coordinated strategy, not two separate problems.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue Con Edison if I'm already collecting workers' comp?
Yes. Workers' comp only bars a suit against your employer; it doesn't protect a utility, property owner, general contractor, or equipment maker whose negligence caused the contact. WCL § 29 expressly preserves your right to pursue the third-party case while comp benefits continue.
Do I need a "grave injury" to bring a third-party electrocution lawsuit?
No. The grave injury threshold only determines whether the defendants you sue can bring your employer into the case for contribution or indemnity. Your own claims against Con Edison and the site owner exist regardless, and your damages aren't limited by that list.
What if the electrocution killed my family member?
The family can pursue both a wrongful death claim and a survival claim for the pain the worker consciously experienced between the shock and death — including the terror and suffering during cardiac arrest and resuscitation efforts. We explain how those claims work in our post on conscious pain and suffering in New York wrongful death cases.
How long do I have to file an electrocution lawsuit in New York?
Generally three years from the date of the accident under CPLR § 214 for claims against private defendants like Con Edison. If a public authority owns the power line — common on Long Island — much shorter notice deadlines can apply, so speak to a lawyer within weeks, not years.
Talk to a New York Electrocution Injury Lawyer
High-voltage contact on a job site produces two of the most serious injuries in all of personal injury law — deep electrical burns and cardiac arrest — and workers' comp was never designed to compensate either one fully. The path to a real recovery runs through third-party claims against the utility, the owner, and the contractors who let a live wire share space with working people.
If you or someone you know was electrocuted on the job or injured by contact with a power line in New York, the team at Yassi Law PC is ready to help. Call us today at 646-992-2138 for a consultation.
.png)