Elevator and Escalator Accident Claim: Who Is Responsible

The building owner is responsible for the elevator's safe operation, and in many states an elevator operator is held to the heightened duty of a common carrier toward passengers, the same standard that applies to buses and trains. The owner cannot delegate that duty away by hiring a contractor; it remains responsible for the contractor's failures as well as its own, such as ignoring complaints, deferring repairs or operating the elevator with a lapsed certificate.

The maintenance contractor services the elevator under a contract that specifies the frequency of visits and the work to be done, and it keeps the records: the maintenance log in the machine room, service tickets, callback records for each time it was summoned for a problem, and the parts replaced. Those records show whether the known issue that caused the injury had been reported and left unrepaired. The contractor is a defendant in nearly every elevator claim, and its insurer defends vigorously.

The manufacturer is responsible when a design or component defect caused the failure, which is less common in older equipment with long service histories and more common with specific recalled components. The property manager, if separate from the owner, and a modernization contractor, if recent work was done, may also be responsible. Identifying all of them, and their insurers, is the first task.

Misleveling is the most common elevator injury mechanism: the car stops an inch or more above or below the floor, and a passenger stepping out trips or steps into a gap. It is caused by worn brakes, leveling sensors or control problems that develop over time and are usually visible in the callback records before the injury. A single misleveling event may be hard to prove; a history of callbacks for leveling complaints is evidence that the owner and contractor knew.

Door injuries occur when doors close on a passenger with excessive force or without the detector reopening them, often because the safety edge or light curtain was faulty or disabled. Sudden stops, drops and overspeed events are rarer and more serious, and they implicate the brake, governor and safety systems that inspections are meant to verify. Entrapment, being stuck in a car for hours, is a claim when it causes injury, particularly to passengers with medical conditions.

Escalator injuries come from abrupt stops that throw riders, missing or broken comb plates at the landing that catch feet, side clearances that trap shoes and fingers, and handrails that move at a different speed from the steps. Children are disproportionately injured by escalators. The maintenance and inspection records show whether the specific component had been found deficient and when.

Suppose you were leaving a medical office building when the elevator stopped four inches below the lobby floor. You stepped out, caught your foot on the sill, and fell forward, fracturing your kneecap and wrist. You had surgery on the knee, $52,000 in medical bills, and eight weeks off work.

An attorney sent preservation letters to the building owner and the maintenance contractor the same week, and obtained the city's inspection record, which showed the elevator's certificate was current but noted a leveling deficiency at the prior inspection marked as corrected. The contractor's callback records, obtained in litigation, showed four leveling complaints from tenants in the three months before your fall, two of them closed without a repair.

The owner and the contractor each blamed the other, which is the usual pattern, and both insurers eventually contributed to a settlement for the medical bills, lost wages and the knee injury's lasting effects. The callback history was what moved the claim; without it, the contractor would have argued the misleveling was an isolated, unforeseeable event. All figures are hypothetical.

Elevator claims are won on records the owner and contractor hold, and lost when the equipment is serviced and the records go unrequested.

• Report the injury to building management before leaving, so an incident report exists; ask for a copy or its number.
• Photograph the elevator or escalator, the misleveled car against the floor, the doors, the comb plate or whatever failed, and the certificate posted in the car with its date.
• Note the elevator number and the building address; buildings often have several cars and the records are per unit.
• Get witness names, and ask whether building staff or other tenants had complained about the same car.
• Get medical care the same day and describe the mechanism precisely.
• Have a preservation letter sent within days to the owner, property manager and maintenance contractor for the maintenance log, service tickets, callback records, and any video from the lobby or car.
• Request the state or city inspection history for the unit, which is public in most jurisdictions.

Whether the owner is held to the common carrier standard, the highest degree of care, or to ordinary negligence varies by state, and it affects how much the injured person must prove. Res ipsa loquitur, which lets a jury infer negligence from an accident of a kind that does not ordinarily occur without it when the equipment was in the defendant's control, is applied to elevator cases in many states and shifts the practical burden to the owner and contractor to explain what happened.

Elevator inspection and certification is regulated at the state or city level, and the requirements, the inspection frequency and the public availability of records differ. New York City, Chicago and other large cities have their own elevator codes and violation databases. A lapsed certificate or an open violation at the time of the injury is evidence of negligence in itself in most jurisdictions.

Claims against public buildings, transit systems, airports and public housing authorities are governed by governmental tort claims rules with notice deadlines of 90 days to a year and damage caps in many states. The general injury deadline, one year in Tennessee and Kentucky, two in Texas, California, Florida and Georgia, three in New York and North Carolina, applies against private owners and contractors. Comparative negligence applies to the passenger's conduct, with the contributory negligence states barring recovery for any fault.

Elevator mechanics, construction workers using temporary hoists, and building staff are injured on elevators at a high rate, and their claims differ. An employee's claim against their own employer is through workers' compensation, which pays medical bills and partial wages without regard to fault but does not pay for pain and suffering. A claim against a third party, the building owner, a different contractor, or the manufacturer, is a full injury claim and is the way an injured worker recovers more than workers' compensation provides.

Construction site hoist and elevator shaft injuries, including falls into unguarded shafts, are governed by federal workplace safety standards and, in some states, by statutes such as New York's Labor Law that impose strict liability on owners and general contractors for elevation-related injuries. Those statutes make the third-party claim substantially stronger.

The workers' compensation insurer has a lien on any third-party recovery for what it paid, which is resolved as part of the settlement.

An elevator or escalator claim starts with preserving the maintenance and inspection records before the equipment is serviced and the history becomes harder to establish, and with identifying the owner, the contractor and their insurers, who will each blame the other. The questions to answer early are what the callback and inspection history show, whether the certificate was current, and whether a government notice deadline applies. Most personal injury attorneys work on contingency.

Ask Legal Matters is a free claim-review request service, not a law firm. Requests may be shared with independent attorneys and legal services partners who handle inquiries in your state, and an attorney must evaluate the facts before anyone can say what the claim is worth. If you were hurt on an elevator or escalator, you can request a free claim review before the records are lost.

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• At Fault in a Car Accident? Comparative Negligence Explained
• What Is the Average Car Accident Settlement? What Sets the Value
• Back and Neck Injury Settlement After a Car Accident: Factors
• Bicycle Accident Claim: Hit by a Car While Riding
• Broken Bone Car Accident Settlement: What Drives the Value

Need local rules? Choose your state from the injury law guides hub or read the statute of limitations by state.