FAA Preemption of New York Labor Law Strict-Liability Claims in In-Flight Helicopter Work; Negligence/Labor Law § 200 Survive via Substituted Federal Standard of Care

Case: Fabia v Power Auth. of the State of N.Y., 2026 NY Slip Op 01489 (App. Div. 2d Dep’t Mar. 18, 2026)

I. Introduction

Fabia arises from a specialized utility-repair operation performed from an aerial platform attached to a helicopter working near energized power lines. The plaintiff, Scott Fabia, a licensed pilot and employee of Catalyst Aviation, LLC (“Catalyst”), served as co-pilot on a helicopter transporting linemen employed by Northline Utilities, LLC and Northline Ventures, Inc. (together, “the Northline defendants”). The helicopter contacted power lines owned by the Power Authority of the State of New York (“NYPA”), caught fire, and crashed; Fabia jumped from approximately 75 feet and alleged personal injuries.

Fabia sued NYPA and the Northline defendants asserting common-law negligence and claims under Labor Law §§ 200, 240(1), and 241(6). After discovery, defendants moved under CPLR 3211(a)(7) to dismiss, arguing federal preemption under the Federal Aviation Act (“FAA”) and related regulations—particularly 14 CFR 91.3(a) (pilot-in-command final authority) and 14 CFR 91.13(a) (careless/reckless operation).

The central questions on appeal were:

  • Whether these state-law workplace safety causes of action fall within the FAA-preempted “field of air safety”;
  • Whether they also conflict with federal rules assigning operational responsibility to the pilot in command and setting the operative federal safety standard; and
  • If preempted, whether dismissal is required or whether a federal standard of care can be substituted to preserve some claims.

II. Summary of the Opinion

The Second Department modified the Supreme Court’s dismissal order. It held:

  • Labor Law §§ 240(1) and 241(6) (strict/absolute liability) are preempted and must be dismissed because their liability regime conflicts with federal aviation regulation and cannot be preserved by substituting a federal standard of care.
  • Common-law negligence and Labor Law § 200 are preempted as to the state standard of care, but may proceed by substituting the federal standard of care, principally the “careless or reckless” rule of 14 CFR 91.13(a).

The court expressly rejected the Third Department’s approach in Scaletta v Michels Power, Inc. (236 AD3d 1) on these facts, creating a direct interdepartmental split concerning FAA preemption when aircraft are used as the work platform in elevation-related utility repair.

III. Analysis

A. Precedents Cited (and How They Shaped the Holding)

1. General preemption framework

  • Sharabani v Simon Prop. Group, Inc. (96 AD3d 24) and Wachovia Bank, N.A. v Burke (414 F3d 305): supplied the classic taxonomy—express preemption, field preemption, and conflict preemption—used to structure the opinion’s analysis.
  • New York SMSA Ltd. Partnership v Town of Clarkstown (612 F3d 97): reinforced the Second Circuit framing of implied preemption and informed the court’s reliance on federal appellate standards for discerning congressional intent.
  • Freightliner Corp. v Myrick (514 US 280) and Sutton 58 Assoc. LLC v Pilevsky (36 NY3d 297): provided the conflict-preemption test—impossibility of dual compliance or state law posing an obstacle to congressional objectives.
  • Medtronic, Inc. v Lohr (518 US 470): supplied the presumption against preemption in areas of traditional state police power (here, workplace safety and tort remedies), which the court then weighed against the FAA’s recognized occupation of air safety.
  • Jones v Goodrich Pump & Engine Control. Sys., Inc. (86 F4th 1010): emphasized that the “bottom” question is congressional intent and supplied the “twofold” inquiry for FAA field preemption (what falls in the field of air safety, and whether the state rule sufficiently interferes with federal regulation).

2. FAA field preemption and the “air safety” field

  • Tweed-New Haven Airport Auth. v Tong (930 F3d 65) (quoting Air Transp. Assn. of Am., Inc. v Cuomo, 520 F3d 218): grounded the proposition that the FAA created a uniform, centralized regime for safe and efficient use of national airspace.
  • Goodspeed Airport LLC v East Haddam Inland Wetlands & Watercourses Commn. (634 F3d 206): supplied the controlling statement that Congress intended to occupy the entire field of air safety, and the specific analytical approach for determining when state action intrudes on that field.
  • Dinucci v Clifford (2023 WL 3847140, 2023 US Dist LEXIS 98533) and Spinrad v Comair, Inc. (825 F Supp 2d 397): supported the view that FAA preemption reaches claims implicating aircraft “design or operation,” reinforcing the Second Department’s conclusion that claims tied to the helicopter-as-safety-device necessarily touch federally governed air safety standards.

3. Substitution of a federal standard of care (preserving remedies while preempting state standards)

  • Crout v Haverfield Intl., Inc. (269 F Supp 3d 90) and Shupert v Continental Airlines, Inc. (2004 WL 784859, 2004 US Dist LEXIS 6214): supported the doctrinal move the court adopts—preemption may be limited to the standard of care and a federal standard may be substituted, rather than dismissing all state-law causes of action wholesale.
  • In re Air Crash Near Clarence Ctr., N.Y. (2013 WL 5964480, 2013 US Dist LEXIS 160224): supplied the formulation that preemption does not necessarily deprive plaintiffs of “state remedies,” but replaces the “reasonably-prudent-person” standard with an FAA-derived standard.

4. The pilot-in-command rule and responsibility allocation

  • 14 CFR 91.3(a) (quoted in the opinion) is reinforced by Badilla v Midwest Air Traffic Control Serv., Inc. (8 F4th 105), and by district court decisions Zinn v United States (835 F Supp 2d 1280), Jackson v United States (983 F Supp 273), and Davis v United States (643 F Supp 67): these authorities collectively support the principle that the pilot (or pilot in command) bears ultimate responsibility to decide whether and how the flight is safely undertaken—an allocation New York Labor Law duties could undermine if imposed on non-flying owners/contractors.

5. New York Labor Law doctrine (and why some claims cannot be “saved”)

  • Wejs v Heinbockel (142 AD3d 990) and Agosto v Museum of Modern Art (219 AD3d 674): stated the baseline that Labor Law § 200 codifies the common-law duty to provide a safe place to work.
  • Samperi v City Safety Compliance Corp. (225 AD3d 723): reiterated that Labor Law § 200 is the codification of common-law workplace safety principles—important because it made the court’s “substitution” approach feasible for § 200.
  • Archer-Vail v LHV Precast Inc. (168 AD3d 1257) and Baugh v New York City Sch. Constr. Auth. (140 AD3d 1104): were cited for the proposition that Labor Law §§ 240(1) and 241(6) impose nondelegable duties on owners/contractors.
  • Abrams v Bute (138 AD3d 179): provided the ordinary New York negligence standard (“reasonable person under the same or similar circumstances”), which the court found more stringent than the FAA’s “careless or reckless” standard in 14 CFR 91.13(a).
  • Jock v Fien (80 NY2d 965): was pivotal; the Second Department used it to characterize §§ 240(1) and 241(6) as imposing “absolute strict liability,” leading to the conclusion—supported by McAllister v Catalyst Aviation, LLC (2020 WL 13200026, 2020 US Dist LEXIS 263077) and Dinucci v Clifford—that strict-liability claims are preempted “in their entirety” and must be dismissed rather than cured by a substituted standard.

6. Competing authority: the Third Department’s decision

  • Scaletta v Michels Power, Inc. (236 AD3d 1): served as the immediate point of conflict. The Second Department distinguished it (pilot vs lineman; helicopter itself alleged as inadequate “safety device”) and rejected its regulatory-interference analysis, expressly creating a split.

7. Patchwork concerns and regulatory uniformity

  • French v Pan Am Exp., Inc. (869 F2d 1) and Bradshaw v American Airlines, Inc. (123 F4th 1168): were invoked to articulate the “crazyquilt effect” (patchwork of state laws) that FAA field preemption seeks to prevent—particularly salient where aircraft routinely cross state lines.

8. Preservation of issues on appeal

  • Castillo-Florez v Charlecius (220 AD3d 1): supported the court’s refusal to consider express-preemption arguments raised for the first time on appeal.

B. Legal Reasoning

1. The court’s field-preemption determination turned on “operation/design” linkage

Applying the FAA’s field-preemption framework (as synthesized in Goodspeed Airport LLC v East Haddam Inland Wetlands & Watercourses Commn. and Jones v Goodrich Pump & Engine Control Sys., Inc.), the Second Department treated the accident as falling within the “field of air safety” because it involved an aircraft in flight (citing Dinucci v Clifford). It then focused on whether the pleaded claims, although framed around power-line maintenance and workplace safety, would in substance require adjudicating aviation “design or operation.”

Two pleading admissions were decisive:

  • Fabia alleged negligence “in connection with the aerial work” being performed at the time of the accident; and
  • He alleged the inadequate “safety device” was the helicopter itself.

Given that Fabia was co-piloting the helicopter when it struck the lines, the court held the claims “cannot be divorced from the operation of the aircraft,” and the “helicopter itself” as the purportedly deficient safety device necessarily pulls the case into federally regulated design/operation territory. On that reasoning, all asserted causes of action were deemed field-preempted (at least to the extent they would impose state air-safety standards).

2. Conflict preemption: New York’s duty-allocation and standards of liability collide with 14 CFR 91.3(a) and 14 CFR 91.13(a)

The court then found implied conflict preemption in two related ways:

  • Responsibility allocation conflict: 14 CFR 91.3(a) places final operational authority on the pilot in command. By contrast, Labor Law § 200 (and common-law workplace negligence) imposes safety duties on owners/contractors, and Labor Law §§ 240(1) and 241(6) impose nondelegable duties. Imposing liability on non-flying owners/contractors for on-aircraft working conditions would, in the court’s view, interfere with the federal scheme by incentivizing (or effectively requiring) those parties to direct or second-guess flight-related safety judgments.
  • Standard-of-care conflict: 14 CFR 91.13(a) prohibits “careless or reckless” operation; New York negligence uses a “reasonable person” standard (Abrams v Bute), and Labor Law §§ 240(1) and 241(6) impose “absolute strict liability” (Jock v Fien). The court treated these state standards as inconsistent with the federal aviation standard in this context.

3. Remedy: dismissal for strict-liability statutes, but survival for negligence/§ 200 via substitution

The opinion’s most practically important move is remedial: it distinguishes between (i) claims where preemption merely displaces the standard of care, and (ii) claims whose liability structure (strict/absolute liability) cannot coexist with federal aviation regulation.

  • Labor Law §§ 240(1) and 241(6): dismissed. Because these statutes impose absolute/strict liability, the court followed Dinucci v Clifford and McAllister v Catalyst Aviation, LLC in concluding such claims are preempted “in their entirety” and cannot be saved by substituting a federal standard.
  • Common-law negligence and Labor Law § 200: reinstated. Citing In re Air Crash Near Clarence Ctr., N.Y., Crout v Haverfield Intl., Inc., and Shupert v Continental Airlines, Inc., the court held that plaintiffs may keep state-law causes of action while applying a federal aviation standard of care—here, the operative federal benchmark is 14 CFR 91.13(a)’s careless/reckless prohibition.

4. The court’s explicit break from Scaletta v Michels Power, Inc.

The Second Department’s disagreement with Scaletta is both factual and conceptual:

  • Factual distinction: Scaletta involved a lineman working outside the helicopter; Fabia involved a co-pilot inside the helicopter at the moment of contact, and the helicopter itself was alleged to be the inadequate safety device.
  • Regulatory-interference concept: The Second Department reframed the relevant question as interference with federal regulation (citing Jones v Goodrich Pump & Engine Control Sys., Inc.), not merely whether the defendant’s liability would “interfere with air safety” in some colloquial sense. It reasoned that extending New York Labor Law duties to non-flying contractors creates pressure for those entities to control or influence onboard operational choices, undercutting 14 CFR 91.3(a)’s allocation of final authority to the pilot.
  • Uniformity/patchwork concern: The court emphasized the “crazyquilt effect” (French v Pan Am Exp., Inc.) and “patchwork of state laws” (Bradshaw v American Airlines, Inc.) that would arise if each state applied distinct workplace strict-liability regimes to aircraft-based repair operations.

C. Impact

  • Constrains Labor Law §§ 240(1) and 241(6) in aircraft-based work: For accidents tied to the in-flight operation/design of aircraft used as work platforms (not just transportation), strict-liability “Scaffold Law” and § 241(6) theories face dismissal in the Second Department due to FAA preemption.
  • Preserves a pathway for recovery under negligence/§ 200—but with an FAA-shaped standard: Plaintiffs may still sue owners/contractors under common-law negligence and Labor Law § 200, yet must prove breach under a federal aviation standard (not New York’s ordinary reasonable-care or construction-safety frameworks).
  • Creates an interdepartmental split: The opinion expressly diverges from Scaletta v Michels Power, Inc., increasing the likelihood of Court of Appeals review (or further federal-court divergence) on how FAA preemption interacts with state workplace safety statutes when aircraft are integrated into the work method.
  • Influences contracting and risk allocation for utility/aviation hybrid work: Owners and general contractors may push aviation safety compliance and operational risk back onto aviation vendors and pilots, while still facing negligence/§ 200 exposure evaluated under federal aviation standards.

IV. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • CPLR 3211(a)(7): a motion to dismiss for “failure to state a cause of action.” The court asks whether the pleaded facts, if true, fit a legally recognized claim.
  • Field preemption: Congress so thoroughly regulates an area that states cannot add their own rules in that “field.” Here, the “field” is “air safety.”
  • Conflict preemption: even if a state can generally legislate in an area, a specific state rule is invalid if it conflicts with federal law or obstructs federal objectives.
  • Standard-of-care substitution: rather than eliminating state tort remedies, a court may keep a negligence claim but replace the state duty/standard (e.g., “reasonable care”) with a federal one (e.g., FAA “careless or reckless” operation).
  • Strict/absolute liability under Labor Law § 240(1) and § 241(6): liability can attach without the same fault-based showing required in negligence. The Second Department viewed that structure as incompatible with the FAA scheme in this context, so it could not be “fixed” by substituting a federal standard.
  • Pilot-in-command final authority (14 CFR 91.3[a]): federal law makes the pilot the final decision-maker for aircraft operation. The court reasoned that imposing state-law duties on non-pilots for in-flight conditions risks conflicting commands and undermines this federal allocation.

V. Conclusion

Fabia v Power Auth. of the State of N.Y. sets a clear Second Department rule for aircraft-integrated work accidents: when the pleaded theory necessarily implicates aircraft operation/design—especially where the plaintiff is part of the flight crew and the aircraft is alleged to be the relevant “safety device”—the FAA preempts New York’s construction strict-liability statutes (Labor Law §§ 240[1] and 241[6]) and displaces New York’s negligence/§ 200 standards of care. Yet the decision also preserves a plaintiff’s core remedy by allowing common-law negligence and Labor Law § 200 claims to proceed under a substituted federal aviation standard, principally 14 CFR 91.13(a).

In practical terms, the opinion narrows New York’s workplace-elevation statutory protections in the aviation-work-platform setting while keeping fault-based claims alive—now judged through the lens of federal aviation safety regulation rather than New York’s traditional construction-safety standards.