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Welcome to Jersey Justice, a civil law podcast that shares

practical tips and stories about personal and workplace injuries.

Joined two of the brightest New Jersey injury attorneys, Gerald Clark

and Mark Morris of Clark Law Firm.

As they take you behind the scenes of.

Justice and civil law.

But first, a quick disclaimer.

The information shared on this podcast is for general information purposes only.

Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any

individual case or situation.

This information is not intended to create and does not constitute

an attorney-client relationship.

Hello everyone.

Welcome back, and we are back for another episode.

In today's episode, we're gonna be talking about workplace injuries and what you

need to know about the investigation process and what is involved in evidence

gathering in workplace injuries.

And today I am super excited to be here with Cheryl Clark and Mark Morris

from Clark Law Firm in New Jersey.

And we're gonna be educating consumers about what happens when you get injured on

the job and you incur a workplace injury.

We're gonna be educating you on what you need to know about the evidence

gathering process and some generalities.

So stay tuned.

I wanna go ahead and welcome Gerald, and we're gonna start

with him and I'm gonna ask.

To give us a little bit of that history of the topic of workplace

injuries in New Jersey, and what does the audience need to know?

All right, what's up, dimple?

It's super fun to be here again today, so, so yeah, let's talk about

workplace injuries and what it matters I want to kind of talk about this

more in terms of what people that work on construction sites or work

in factories or work in hospital.

What they might be interested about, even if they haven't

been involved in an injury.

Maybe they've seen it and hopefully they haven't been injured themselves,

but I want to kind of make it a little bit interesting or give some

background about the whole history behind it, even beyond, you know,

law and, and injury kind of thing.

So, to go back around the turn of the century in the late 18 hundreds, the

early 19 hundreds in America, we had the Industrial Revolution basically.

The economy in the United States transferred from farming and moved

more towards cities and industry.

And when it started out, there was really no regulations.

There was no workplace injury standards to prevent people

from getting hurt on the job.

And there was some really, horrific conditions.

By today's standards, it's similar.

To the food industry.

The food industry was very unregulated in the, early 19 hundreds, late 18 hundreds,

along with that industrialization.

And there was a book that was written called The Jungle.

And the Jungle exposed a lot of the, you know, really gross things that

would go on in food factories, which led to laws and regulations to make

sure our food supply was was safe.

Jump in for the jeopardy answer, if I can.

Was that Upton sin?

Yeah.

Jungle.

Yes, it was.

All right, I'm going back on mute.

So for example, like when they built the Lincoln Tunnel in New York, between

New York and New Jersey, under the Hudson River, many, many people died.

When they built the Empire State Building.

Many iron workers fell to their deaths.

You know, it was just common inplace.

So in 1970, the President Nixon signed into law the

occupational health and safety.

Which was basically meant to provide safe and helpful working conditions

for anyone working in, , America.

One of the things that led to that, there was a thing called the triangle shirt,

waste Factory incident, which was in the fashion district in Manhattan, New

York, and they didn't want the people taking breaks and they wanted to make sure

all the workers were working and stayed on the factory floor for many hours A.

And then a fire broke out and no one could get out of the building cuz the

doors were locked to the stairwells.

So hundreds, I believe it was hundreds of people died.

And that was one of the impetus that led to the passage of this statute.

So the key, the key thing as far as

interrupt you and say, I actually remember studying that in school.

I remember that.

Learning that in school many years ago.

That's cool.

What did you learn about.

I just remember the story of they were trapped and they

couldn't get out like that.

Just the story, it's like coming back to me.

I don't know if it was in elementary school, high school, college, but

I remember the story of like, they were trapped and because the doors

they couldn't get out, like then how it just, it's ringing a bell.

Yeah.

Jerry, Same thing.

Not to cut your flow off, but with, I have, have no flow.

Just go, you've got plenty of flow.

It flows.

But back to the jungle, like the up to Sinclair, I jumped in cause I,

you know, I was an English major.

I'm like, wow, I knew who this author is.

I remember that was about, you said the food industry.

I think it was like the meat packing industry.

Yeah.

And it was like an expose that as there were no regulations,

there was, no legislation.

Basically making sure that, I guess this food industry was regulated

and things were done safely.

They were finding like body human body parts in the

meat that was getting sent out.

And because there was no governing, I guess, act or anything that cared about

that, this type of thing just went on and.

Yeah, I guess the history of it is just part of society progressing

and a lot of people will, you know, complain about regulations and,

oh, there's too many regulations.

But, you know, and, and that may be true in some areas, but it's nice to

know that our planes are regulated.

So when we go flying and, and our food safe, and that there's

protections for workers on job.

Going back to the introduction, so the main law is the OSHA workplace

safety law, and it addresses like all parts of a construction site.

So there's rules about ladders on job sites.

If there's trenches being dug, the trench has to be protected if it's over four

feet or if it's likely to collapse.

Because trenches on job sites and they dig trenches to put in lines or

sewer lines or gas lines, and they can collapse on workers and crush them,

suffocate them if they're up on heights.

Any worker above six feet has to have fall protection.

And the whole crux of this thing is when you have a work site, ordinarily

you'll have a general contractor that runs the job site and they

hire all the subcontractors, like the plumber, the electrician, the

masonry people, the the carpent.

And they generally have the power and the control on the job site

because they can hire and fire the subcontractors and they can set the

rules of the road on the job site.

So the OSHA law and the safety standards, because there's standards beyond osha.

There's standards from the National Safety Council, general Contractors of

America, and several other three safety.

The crux of it all is that the general contractor has to enforce safety

on the job site from the top down.

So they can't say, oh, well, we relied on the subcontractor to do their own safety.

Because the way it works on a job site is it's kind of like the totem pole.

And the general contractor would just say, well, I left this up to

the subcontractor to enforce safety.

And then the subcontractor will say, oh, well, I left it up to

the sub subcontractor, the guy I.

To do the work to enforce safety.

And then that person will say, well, I relied on the employee that got

hurt to follow the safety rules.

But the thing is, on job sites safety, it takes time and it costs money.

So like if you're gonna put trench protection in a trench, that takes

time and it slows down the job.

And everyone knows in construction that time is money.

And if you're gonna make roofers wear fall, protect.

Then it takes time.

And also part of all that is the workers have to be trained.

There has to be like a safety culture.

It has to be enforced.

And it has to be a situation where workers are free to complain about safety and

say, Hey, I don't feel comfortable here doing this without losing their jobs.

And that's kind of the whole crux of it all.

So that's kind of the history of it.

That's kind of like the background of it.

And when, when we look at a case, you know, Most often when there's

an injury on a job site, from what we have seen, it's because the general

contractor is not following safety rules.

And what happens is if the general contractor's hiring subcontractors

that don't file the safety rules, the subcontractor can they can bid the

job cheaper and get the job cheaper.

So , if they can bid the job cheaper, they're more likely to get the work.

And then what happens is it causes like a race to the bottom.

So if I'm gonna be a responsible contractor and follow the safety

rules, I'm gonna get outbid by the guy that's not doing it.

And then it's gonna cause a race to the bottom and it's gonna

make job sites really safe.

And it's unfortunate because if you drive around, for example, New Jersey and you

drive around residential construction project, I've almost never seen a New

Jersey construction project, a residential construction project where the OSHA

safety rules are not being violated.

And it's unfortunate because it's putting workers at risk and workers,

they get really badly injured.

You know, when you fall 10 feet, you know, from a second story

or you fall off a roof, 20 or 30 foot, it's not gonna be pretty.

And it's, and it's unfortunate and it's sad and a lot of.

That are working on these sites in those conditions, they really don't

have any kind of like meaningful choice.

They, have to do it.

If they complain about safety, they just won't get picked up for work the next day.

And I'm not saying this is in every case, but it's in many,

many cases that we've seen.

And it's an unfortunate thing.

So if that happens and people come to us, like as attorneys and stuff,

there's certain things that that we want to do to investigate the case

and gather the evidence Necess.

To protect the rights of the injured worker, you know, in court.

Okay?

All that I, I hope that wasn't too long wind.

No, no, no.

That's, that's actually great.

And I think it's, you know, it's great for our audience because one of the

goals of, of having this show is to educate them on workplace injuries and

the whole process of, of the system.

Because, you know, this is something that even if people who, they're not injured,

people like to listen to legal podcasts.

They wanna know how the system works and what's involved, what the laws are.

So, Jerry, you mentioned that there were a lot of violations that were happen.

What are some of the most common violations that you would say you

notice, like on these construction sites that you're mentioning?

Well, there's a, there's a government agency called the Bureau

of Labor Statistics, I believe, or the Bureau of Vital Statistics.

And they provide a lot of data for osha.

So OSHA is the, it's part of the Department of Labor.

It's a presidential cabinet, it's the Secretary of Labor, they're part of

the president's cabinet, and they're the head of the Department of Labor.

And the Department of Labor is in charge of enforcing the OSHA rules.

So when they look at country and they say, okay.

What are the biggest problems?

What are the things that are causing the injuries?

They'll often turn to, I believe it's the Bureau of Vital Statistics or

Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they keep statistics on this kind of thing.

And falls is probably the most frequently cited OSHA violation.

So when workers are on scaffolding, the bosses aren't enforcing that

the scaffolding has guardrails.

Or if workers are putting roof roofing material on the top of a roof, on

new construction, the workers have to be protected with a harness.

A shock absorbing lanyard attached to an Anchorage point

that can hold 5,000 pounds.

So really that's a long way of saying falls are probably one of the most

frequently cited safety violations by osha and the most frequent things that

we see in these cases where we're good people that are trying to support a

living for their families are getting needlessly hurt on these sites.

Yeah, and dimple.

We did our first podcast yesterday, and I'm not sure how they're gonna be released

if, you know, I could say it was a go, but as an officer of the court, we did

our first podcast yesterday and we're walking out and I was talking to Jerry.

Anything I'm gonna say about construction cases, I have learned from him.

And you know, this is the only personal injury law firm

I've worked at, but in terms.

How we prosecute construction cases and specifically how

Jerry does construction cases.

I don't think there's many other firms out there that do it like we do.

He is so thorough and I talked about yesterday, the first time we sat down

and went and had lunch, and he talked to me the first time we were ever together.

The Constitution doesn't protect just citizens.

The Constitution protects all people in the United.

And that was in the context of talking about how workers come here and I think

general contractors, companies think, I can throw this guy up on the roof.

Who cares if he gets hurt?

And then lo and behold, he, falls down, has a catastrophic injury, and Jerry is

the first person to go to bat for, for those guys and does a phenomenal job.

This isn't even meant to be a sales pitch.

I already have a, a job here, so I'm not trying to hype him up, but

it's just, it's the reality of it.

So we can, again, just talk forever about these o.

Cases.

And I think the main kind of crux of what Jerry was talking about

with employers choosing, time and, and money, essentially,

they want the job done quicker.

They want to save money.

That's all at a worker's expense.

It's all at the expense of, well, you know what, this guy up on the roof, I'm

not gonna slow the job down and spend, you know, $50 or whatever it is on fall

protection because the sooner I get this job done, the sooner I can move on to the.

In the long run, it ends up being more costly when a worker gets hurt.

So in a perfect world, you know, OSHA would be followed, these contractors would

take the steps to, to enforce the rules and we wouldn't have workers getting hurt.

And I'm sure Jerry would be the first one to tell you that as well.

But it just, you don't see it.

You, you get in the car, you drive around the, you know, roofing being.

Hear the nail guns gallon, and you look and the only cord running

up is from the air compressor.

There's no fall protection and there's violations like that

all over the state government.

Yeah.

Thank you for sharing that, mark.

And you know, that's really unfortunate, but you know, that's why there's

definitely, you know, a need for, for lawyers to be out there to protect

people because the employers are not protecting, their contractors.

And they're going after the money.

They're going after.

How can we, you know, make more money?

How can we get the job quicker so we can move on to the next job?

Which isn't the way that business should be conducted, but we know, I

mean, there's the law in place and there's lawyers, the law firms, because

people don't abide by the rules.

They don't do things the way that they should.

And I think.

There's lots of law firms out out there, lots of lawyers, and the fact that

you're saying, I'm Clark Law Firm, the process is, is different the way that

Jerry handles these cases and he does the due diligence and he does the research.

You know, that really matters because sometimes, I mean, just in my opinion

as like a potential client, I was injured before I fell on New Year's

Eve because the floor was slipper.

I broke my wrist, I had to get a lawyer, right?

And, and it was because , there was stuff on the floor.

They didn't clean it up.

They were negligent.

It was dark, right?

There was nothing indicating that there's a step that someone would not see.

So things like that happen all the time.

And when it comes to lawyers, there's some lawyers that they will not win the case.

And that's.

They're not putting in the time, the effort that it takes to really, you

know, bring up the valid points, the evidence, everything that's required.

And then there's other lawyers that go above and beyond.

And sometimes you really have to pick your lawyer carefully.

When you hire them, you have to know what questions to ask to make

sure that they are equipped to serve you at the highest level.

That's my opinion as the consumer, . I'll, I'll beat Jerry too, cuz I'm

sure he's probably gonna jump in and try and say the same thing.

Like, we recognize we can lose cases, we can work a case exactly

like we think we should and, and we can, we could still lose it.

We can't guarantee that we're gonna go in and and win every case we can.

We've prepared cases.

We thought perfectly, and it, it's just the nature of the business.

You're not gonna win every case, but especially with these construction

cases, we act as a voice for people that otherwise really don't have a voice.

Like Jerry talked about the totem pole, a lot of times it's, maybe

a non-English speaking individual.

Their paid a minimum wage, cash, you know, they're scared that they're not

gonna be able to feed their family.

Jerry gave the example yesterday.

I think it was the, the guy who was essentially blind and a

step away from being homeless.

And you know, we give these guys a fighting chance and we give 'em a voice.

And in these construction cases, when you're going against giant insurance

companies, a lot of times it's giant construction companies that work all

over the country or all over the state.

That's, that's a lot more than I think most people get,

is getting that, that voice.

I think, you know, a lot of it more than just giving 'em voids.

I mean, that's another way of saying that, you know, these guys get hurt, a

lot of them, and they can't put food on the table, you know, and they can get

money through workers' compensation.

They should, but that's another issue we can talk about.

But really what we're trying to do is get them compensation

to survive and, and to live.

And, and often they can't go back to the job they did before.

And often construction workers.

Don't have the full on education to get more of a desk job.

So it is a voice, but it's also getting a money to make up for the

harms and losses because contractors on the site made a decision to ignore

the safety rules to maximize profits.

And there's nothing wrong with maximizing profits and making money.

That's not the situation.

That's not what we're saying.

What we're saying is you can't do it at the expense of needlessly

putting the workers at risk.

When you're running a job site, you have to follow the rules.

I mean, everyone should follow the rules because if a company is not following

the rules and getting the job AB bidding the job cheaper, it's gonna cause a

race to the bottom and put pressure on all the other contractors to cut

those same corners, which puts people at risk, and then it increases the cost

to society that has to pay for those.

Yeah, and each, each one of those OSHA rules too.

Jerry and I had a trial and this one OSHA expert that we're using, he was

getting cross-examined about one of the OSHA standards that was at issue in the

case, and he, he pretty much pounded the table and said, sir, the OSHA rules are

written in the blood of injured workers.

It was really powerful and I'm, you know, I'm sitting there and

he's advocating for our side.

It still was really impressive to hear Jerry.

I'm sure you, you remember that too and you, you know

exactly what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Now I remembered that you brought it up and it's funny, uh, when you do trials

and it's important with, you know, not to talk so much about personal injury in

lawyers, but if people are like looking for a lawyer for an injury case, you

should ask them how many cases they've actually tried and how many cases

they have actually taken to verdict.

Cuz it's super important.

You know, you don't look at a case and say, here's the facts, here's the law.

It's worth x.

Because a big factor in what a case is worth is who your lawyer is.

Some law firms have a business model of just taking volume.

Sometimes we can equate it to like, you know, are you a McDonald's

or are you a high-end steakhouse?

You know, both will serve a burger, but one will be under one business model.

Another will be on.

So that's important.

But when you try cases, I have found, because we've won a lot of cases and

we've also lost cases at trial, and sometimes when a trial's going well

and you get this feeling that you're going to win, a lot of it is a lot of

times you get these moments at trial that just you feel them into your gut.

You feel them into your.

That.

Wow.

And, and a lot of times you get yo almost will get chills because it was super

powerful and it was like super truthful and super passionate and believed.

And that example that Mark gave

you know, because the defense lawyer at this, at this OSHA workplace

safety trial where a worker was backed up over working on a New

Jersey turnpike resurfacing project.

And the expert was being cross-examined.

Our expert was being cross-examined by the defense lawyer that's coming up with

all kinds of like legal technicalities.

And you said the shirt was red, but it was actually maroon.

Or, you know, with these, these making these distinctions that

really don't mean anything.

And a lot of times they'll do that to like distract the jury because a

confused distract the jury is good for insurance companies and good for the.

I remember our expert in that case cut through all that BS and

just, it all like was just thrown out the window when he came.

And like Mark said, he pounded the desk because it was all about

preventing injury to workers.

And the defense lawyer was cross-examining him on technicalities

that really didn't mean anything.

And he was getting upset because, and this is an expert that is like volunteered

in Haiti , he advocated in El Salvad.

for injured workers and put his life at risk, and he really believes it.

And he did that.

He said the OSHA rules were, were written in blood.

And what he meant by that is what I talked about in the introduction is

all those people that died at the sh shirt, triangle shirt, waste factory

incident, and the industrial revolution.

And, and the rules were written based on all those things that happened.

And that's what he meant by that.

And that was super powerful and we ended up winning that trial.

Mark and I did that.

Six feet.

You need fall protection.

There's a reason that rule exists.

You know, you don't get to be a contractor in a job and say, oh, I'm

not gonna make sure the employees have fall protection above six feet.

I think that's stupid.

You know, it's only six feet.

There's a reason that they decided six feet was when you need fall protection.

And as our expert said, probably involved workers'.

, we could talk for a long time about this

kind of solid introduction that's really like the base of what this is all about.

Because sometimes Congress gets things right, and sometimes Congress

actually does stuff and there's usually there's a reason behind it.

And that's kind of really the whole base for all this, that whole history, right.

Yeah, I mean that history I think is really, great to share cuz it's

the foundation of how this was all established and you know that history

is what made the change happen.

If it wasn't for that history, we wouldn't be sitting here today.

So thank you for sharing that.

And for our audience, we are gonna be having a part two, we're

gonna go into the in-depth part.

Proper investigation and the evidence gathering process because

that's really, really important to know and be well informed on.

But before we sign off for today, I wanna see if Mark has anything

else to share when it comes to, you know, giving us a preview of anything

about proper investigation and that whole process before we move on.

Each case is, is certainly unique.

You'll have a similar kind of broad strokes from each one.

Biggest things, I would say depend on at what stage the case comes to you.

If it's something that had just happened, you wanna try and get out there.

If it's something that happened a year ago, there's different steps and it's not

a one size fits all, so we can talk it.

I guess as a preview, say pictures are worth a thousand words, and the

more pictures, the more video we can.

Of a job plate.

The, the stronger the case is kind of from the, from the job and witnesses matter.

Yeah.

And I think every case is unique.

Right.

And every case deserves also a customized approach in terms of the legal

strategy on how to go in on that case.

And that's where, you know, a skilled attorney comes into

place because they know exactly.

What strategy they're going to build for that case based on the evidence,

based on the photos, based on, you know, what occurred in the circumstances.

So thank you so much for sharing that for our audience, definitely

go ahead and subscribe right now because we are going to make sure

that you don't wanna miss out on.

Our feature episodes, a lot of things that we do here are going to be a

part one of two or part one of four, like a series, and definitely share

this out with all of your network, your friends, your family so we will

see you guys all on the next episode.

And there you have it, folks.

Another episode of Jersey Justice Podcast.

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