Crane and Falling Object Accidents in Atlanta: Who’s Liable?

In May 2023, a tower crane failed at a construction site at 1018 West Peachtree Street in Midtown, and part of it came down on the half-built high-rise. Four workers went to the hospital, the apartment building next door was evacuated, and OSHA opened inspections of two companies that had been working on the project (Atlanta News First).

Figuring out who is liable for a crane accident comes down to what failed and whether the injured person was a worker or a passerby. We’ll take those one at a time.

Who Is Liable for a Crane or Falling Object Accident in Atlanta?

Every party on a construction site answers for its own share of the work:

• The general contractor, which is responsible for overall site safety and for making sure every crew follows the rules
• Subcontractors, each within its own scope of work
• The crane operator and the crane or rigging company: setup, rigging, load control
• The property owner, if the owner knew about a hazard and didn’t fix it
• Equipment manufacturers, when a defective crane or part caused the failure (product liability)
• Architects and engineers, if the accident grew out of a design error

A bystander can go after every party on this list, while a worker can reach only some of them. Workers can’t sue their own employer. They get workers’ compensation benefits instead (O.C.G.A. § 34-9-11). That’s the trade-off at the heart of the comp system: benefits without a fight over fault, but no lawsuit against the employer. And for a subcontractor’s employee, the general contractor is almost always a statutory employer. It is liable for benefits owed to the employees of the firms it hires (O.C.G.A. § 34-9-8), and in exchange Georgia courts protect it from those employees’ lawsuits (Wright Associates v. Rieder, 1981). Section 34-9-11 also shields architects and engineers, and the main exceptions are narrow: negligently prepared design plans and specifications, their own conduct on the site that caused the injury, and a written contract in which they took on responsibility for project safety. Third parties are a different matter: a worker can still sue another subcontractor, the crane company, the property owner, or whoever made the defective equipment.

In practice, fault is usually split among several parties, so everyone involved needs to be identified early, before the crane is dismantled. Experienced construction accident lawyers begin by mapping those parties, working backward from the cause.

Common Causes of Crane and Falling Object Accidents

From 2011 to 2017, cranes were involved in 297 workplace deaths in the U.S., an average of 42 a year, and 43% of them happened in private construction (BLS). Once you know the cause of a crane accident, you generally know where to look for a defendant:

• A collapse or tip-over from soft ground, overloading or assembly errors. The usual defendants are the general contractor, which is responsible for ground preparation, and the crane company.
• A load that slips out of its rigging, which most often means a mistake by the rigger or the operator.
• Boom failure during a breakdown or dismantling (the crane company, sometimes the manufacturer).
• Electrocution from a power line. The contractor working near the line is responsible.
• Tools and materials dropped where there was no netting, no toe boards, or no barricade below. That is the territory of the general contractor and the subcontractor working overhead.
• People allowed under a load without hard hats, which puts the question to whoever ran the lift and to the general contractor.

If a crane operating within its working radius could come closer than 20 feet to a power line of up to 350 kV, OSHA requires either a de-energized line or a safe clearance (29 CFR 1926.1408). Georgia’s High Voltage Safety Act adds a second layer. It bars work within 10 feet of a high-voltage line until the contractor has notified the Utilities Protection Center at least 72 hours in advance, excluding weekends and holidays, and the utility has put safeguards in place (O.C.G.A. § 46-3-33, § 46-3-34).

A contractor who breaks that rule is strictly liable for the injury, so you don’t have to prove negligence (O.C.G.A. § 46-3-40).

Crane Accidents vs. Falling Object Accidents: How Liability Differs

Construction accident liability depends on what fell, and just as often on why it fell. If the crane is what failed, the dispute centers on the machine and the people running it: the operator, the rigging company, whoever leased it out and, in some cases, the manufacturer.

When someone is struck by a falling object, the questions tend to land on the general contractor and the subcontractor. OSHA requires employers to provide hard hats and use one of these safeguards: toe boards at least 3.5 inches high, screens or guardrails along the edge, a canopy, or a barricaded zone below (29 CFR 1926.501, 1926.502(j)). In 2024, falling objects killed 55 people working in U.S. construction (BLS).

That same object can also hit a pedestrian on the sidewalk or a driver stopped at a light. If you were just passing by, workers’ compensation has nothing to do with you, and none of the immunities above apply. Your claim is an ordinary negligence or premises liability lawsuit against anyone involved in the project, including the general contractor. Georgia’s building code requires protection for pedestrians, and when construction taller than 8 feet comes close to the property line, that means a barrier plus a covered walkway (IBC 2024, Section 3306).

How Georgia Law Affects Your Claim

Georgia follows modified comparative negligence. Your compensation is reduced by your share of the fault, and at 50% or more you recover nothing (O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33). Defendants on construction sites lean on this rule a lot: the worker stepped under the load, the pedestrian walked around the barricade. To be fair, sometimes that’s true. The same statute also lets them assign part of the fault to people who aren’t in the lawsuit, including an employer with immunity, and that share drops out of the recovery.

A personal injury claim must be filed within two years of the accident (O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33). For wrongful death it’s also two years, counted from the date of death.

If the crane itself, its load limiter, or a sling failed, you can sue the manufacturer, but only within 10 years of the first sale (O.C.G.A. § 51-1-11).

An OSHA violation doesn’t create a lawsuit by itself (29 U.S.C. § 653(b)(4)), but Georgia courts accept it as evidence of negligence. Its weight depends on who you are to the violator, since OSHA rules were written to protect employees.

Say a worker collects workers’ compensation and also sues a third party. The employer’s insurer can take back what it paid out of the settlement or verdict, but only if the worker has been fully compensated for every loss (O.C.G.A. § 34-9-11.1). So the worker gets made whole first, and only then does the insurer get its money back. We walk through how these cases work in our guide to a third-party lawsuit after a construction injury in Atlanta.

What to Do After a Crane or Falling Object Accident in Atlanta

The first steps match our SAD™ System (Safety, Ambulance, Document), plus a few items specific to construction sites:

• Get medical care right away (in Atlanta, serious trauma cases go to Grady Memorial, a Level I trauma center).
• Report the accident to the site supervisor: a worker has 30 days to do this for workers’ compensation.
• Photograph the scene, the crane or the object that fell, and the barricades.
• Write down witnesses’ names and contact information.
• Demand in writing that the crane, slings, and inspection logs be preserved unchanged.
• Don’t give insurers a recorded statement.
• Bring in a lawyer who handles construction cases as early as possible.

Honestly, the evidence item is the one people tend to underestimate. After a crane accident, crews take the equipment apart fast, and OSHA requires monthly inspection records to be kept for only three months (29 CFR 1926.1412). Under Phillips v. Harmon (2015), a company must preserve evidence as soon as a lawsuit is reasonably foreseeable, or it risks sanctions for spoliation. A written demand still makes sense, because it takes away any argument that the company didn’t see a claim coming.

How an Atlanta Construction Accident Lawyer Can Help

Almost all the evidence in a crane case is in the defendants’ hands: inspection and maintenance logs, the lift plan, rigging records, OSHA inspection files. A lawyer pushes to have that evidence preserved and walks the site with an engineering expert, then traces every contractor in the chain before negotiating with several insurers at once. It’s slow, frankly unglamorous work, but most of the case gets built here. An experienced crane accident attorney knows which records have to exist. Since 2019, for example, employers have been required to document an evaluation of each operator’s skills (29 CFR 1926.1427).

Kermani LLP takes these cases on a contingency fee basis: you pay nothing unless you receive compensation. Our Atlanta construction accident lawyers follow the Kermani Method, which means we investigate what happened ourselves instead of relying on the insurer’s account. The team is multilingual and available 24/7. Call for a free consultation, and we’ll review your case.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is liable if a crane drops a load on me?

Most often it’s the operator or the company that rigged the load, plus the manufacturer if the crane or a sling failed. The general contractor answers for site safety, but as a statutory employer it is generally shielded from lawsuits by subcontractors’ employees. A bystander faces no such bar.

Can I sue if I was hit by a falling object as a bystander?

A bystander struck by a falling object can sue the general contractor, whichever subcontractor was working overhead, or the property owner in an ordinary negligence or premises liability claim. Workers’ compensation rules don’t apply to bystanders, and Georgia gives them two years to file.

Is the crane operator or the crane company liable?

Often both. The operator answers for their own mistake, the company for training, upkeep, and the way the lift was planned. But if the rental agreement placed the operator under the general contractor’s full control, Georgia courts may shift responsibility for the operator’s conduct to that contractor (Tim’s Crane & Rigging v. Gibson, 2004). That’s why the rental agreement belongs near the top of any document request.

What if I was partly at fault?

You can still recover as long as your share of the fault is under 50%. The award shrinks with your share, so at 20% fault on $500,000 in damages you’d receive $400,000. At 50% or more, a Georgia court awards nothing.