Who Is Liable for an Elevator or Escalator Injury in Massachusetts?

Usually two parties at once, and they are liable for different reasons. The building owner has a duty to keep the elevator in a safe condition, and under Banaghan v. Dewey, 340 Mass. 73 (1959), that duty survives even when the owner carefully hires an outside maintenance company. The maintenance company answers separately, to riders it never contracted with, for the negligent performance of whatever its contract actually required. Massachusetts also runs a state elevator inspection system under M.G.L. c. 143, secs. 62 to 71, and it generates a paper trail most people never think to ask for: an annual inspection, a written report of every defect filed with the state and with your city or town, and a mandatory accident report that you have a statutory right to request a copy of. If you were hurt on an elevator or escalator, the Jim Glaser Law line at (617) JIM-WINS is answered 24 hours a day, and the first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

Massachusetts Law Never Says the Word “Escalator”

If you search the General Laws for the word escalator, you will come up empty, and that is the first thing worth knowing about this area. The Legislature did not write a separate escalator chapter. It wrote a definition of “elevator” wide enough to swallow one.

M.G.L. c. 143, sec. 71E puts it this way:

As used in sections 62 to 71F, inclusive, the term “elevator” shall include moving stairways, dumbwaiters, moving walks, material lifts, wheelchair lifts, automatic people movers, vertical reciprocating conveyors, orchestra lifts, car lifts, limited use elevators or limited application elevators and other associated devices within the elevator industry recognized by the board of elevator regulations, except inclined stair lifts located and installed in residential homes.

A moving stairway is an escalator. A moving walk is the flat conveyor at an airport. An automatic people mover is the shuttle between terminals. All of them sit inside the same statutory scheme as the passenger elevator in an office tower, which means that when a person is hurt on an escalator at a mall or a transit station, the inspection record, the posted certificate and the accident reporting duty described below all exist for that machine too.

The same section defines the narrower category the statute treats more leniently. A “limited use elevator” or “limited application elevator” is a power passenger elevator with a weight capacity that does not exceed 1,400 pounds, a travel distance that does not exceed 25 feet, and no integration with a fire detection system. That is the residential lift, the small two-stop unit, the wheelchair lift. It gets a longer inspection cycle and a lower penalty ceiling.

The Inspection System, and Why It Matters to a Case

Massachusetts does not leave elevator safety entirely to building owners. Under M.G.L. c. 143, sec. 62, the commissioner “shall cause a system of elevator inspection to be instituted and maintained in the commonwealth”, assign inspectors, and supervise “the installation, alteration, maintenance, inspection and approval of all elevators”. Nothing gets installed or altered until plans are filed and a certificate of approval or a specification of requirements issues.

That machinery produces four documents, and each of them is a potential exhibit.

The acceptance test. Under sec. 63, when installation or alteration work is finished, the manufacturer or the person who did the alterations “shall make a practical test of the safety devices of the elevator in the presence of an inspector assigned by the commissioner”. If the test satisfies the inspector, a certificate approving the elevator and its safety devices issues. So a unit that was recently modernized has a dated, witnessed test on file.

The annual inspection. Section 64 requires that all elevators “be thoroughly inspected and a practical test made of the safety devices required therefor at intervals of not more than one year and at such other times as may be deemed necessary by the inspector”. Limited use units go to intervals of not less than 2 years. Elevators in owner-occupied single family homes, attached or detached, are inspected as needed after a permitted installation, alteration or modernization instead of annually. The inspection itself is performed by a licensed elevator construction man, maintenance or repairman, in the presence of a state inspector. Two sets of eyes, one of them the state’s.

The defect report. This is the sleeper provision. Section 64 continues:

Within ten days after the inspection, said inspector shall file a complete written report of all changes and defects in apparatus or equipment to the commissioner and the chief executive officer of the city or town in which such inspection occurred, upon forms to be furnished by him.

A complete written report of all defects, filed with the state and separately with the mayor or town administrator, every year. If the machine that hurt you had a recurring problem, there is a decent chance somebody wrote it down before it hurt anybody, and that the record sits in two places rather than one.

The municipal demand. Section 64 also lets the chief executive officer of any city or town require the commissioner to order an inspection of any elevator in that jurisdiction within fourteen calendar days, by writing to the commissioner with the facts and circumstances that make the inspection necessary. If the commissioner does not act inside the fourteen days, the local official may have the inspection done by a state certified elevator inspector and be reimbursed by the Commonwealth. A complaint by a tenant or a rider to city hall can therefore leave a trail of its own.

The Certificate in the Cab

Section 65 is the provision you have already seen without noticing it. If the inspector judges the elevator safe and properly constructed, a certificate issues to the owner or the person in charge, “who shall post the certificate in a conspicuous place in or near the cab or car of such elevator”. That is the framed card behind the glass.

The reverse is more forceful:

If such elevator is judged unsafe, the inspector shall immediately post conspicuously upon the entrance or door of the cab or car of such elevator, or upon the elevator, a notice of its dangerous condition, and shall prohibit the use of the elevator until it has been made safe to his satisfaction

and

No person shall remove such notice or operate such elevator until the inspector has issued his certificate as aforesaid.

Section 65 also states flatly that no elevator licensed under the chapter “shall be operated without a valid inspection certificate”, sets a fine of $100 for each day of operation without one, and caps the accumulated fine at $5,000 for a dumbwaiter, limited use unit or short-travel residential wheelchair lift and $20,000 for everything else. Fines stop accruing on the date the owner or operator requests an inspection in writing.

Be careful about what a current certificate proves. It records one inspector’s judgment on one day, and sec. 64 allows those days to be a full year apart. It is evidence, and the defense will put it in front of the jury, but it is not a finding that the machine was safe on the day you were hurt, and it says nothing at all about the eleven months in between. That gap is why the maintenance records and service call history usually matter more than the certificate does.

The Report After an Accident, and Your Right to Ask for It

Most people injured on an elevator never learn that a report was legally required within hours of the incident. Section 66 requires one, and then gives the injured person a route to it.

If an accident occurs to an elevator, the operator, person in charge or owner having knowledge thereof shall immediately report such accident to an inspector assigned by the commissioner, who shall forthwith inspect such elevator.

The duty runs to the owner, the operator and the person in charge, it is triggered by knowledge, and the word is immediately. The inspector then has to go look at the machine while the condition still exists.

The next sentence is the one to write down:

Upon completion of his inspection, said inspector shall upon request provide a copy of any accident report received by him in accordance with this section to each person who reported, or was involved in the accident so reported, and said inspector shall obtain a receipt for each report so provided.

A person hurt when an escalator lurched, or when an elevator misleveled and they stepped into the gap, was involved in that accident. The statute does not condition the copy on filing a lawsuit, retaining a lawyer, or serving discovery. It conditions it on a request. Make it in writing, make it early, and keep proof of the date, because the inspector is separately required to obtain a receipt for each report provided.

The same section imposes a parallel duty on anyone employed to inspect, repair or install an elevator: report immediately if an accident occurs during that work, or if he thinks the elevator is unsafe. That covers the mechanic who walked away from a service call uneasy.

Answer Capsule

An elevator or escalator injury claim in Massachusetts is usually a claim against two parties for two different failures. The building owner owes a duty to keep the elevator in a safe condition and, under Banaghan v. Dewey, 340 Mass. 73 (1959), cannot escape that duty by carefully hiring an outside contractor. The maintenance company owes riders a separate duty in tort, measured by what its contract with the owner actually obligated it to do. Massachusetts law calls an escalator a moving stairway and regulates it under M.G.L. c. 143, secs. 62 to 71, which require an annual inspection, a posted certificate, a written report of every defect filed with the state and the municipality, and an immediate accident report that an injured person may request a copy of under sec. 66. If this happened to you, the intake line at (617) JIM-WINS is answered 24 hours a day, and the first telephone consultation is free.

Two Defendants, Not One

The single most useful thing to understand about these cases is that the building owner and the elevator company are usually both in them, and neither one is a substitute for the other.

Banaghan v. Dewey, 340 Mass. 73 (1959), is still the Massachusetts case on the point. A passenger elevator in a five story building on Main Street in Worcester fell roughly thirty feet into its pit with three people inside. The interlock system, which was supposed to immobilize the cab whenever a landing door was open, had been disconnected and taped off years earlier. The governor, which was supposed to trigger a safety clamp if the cab overspeeded, was frozen with hardened grease and would not trip even when spun well past its rated speed. The suits went against the building’s trustees and against the elevator company that serviced the machine.

On the trustees, the Supreme Judicial Court disposed of the delegation defense in two sentences:

The trustees sought a ruling that they were not liable if they exercised care in selecting a reputable independent contractor to maintain the elevator. The short answer to this contention is that the jury could find that the trustees themselves were under an admitted duty to keep the elevator in a safe condition, and are liable even for the negligence of an independent contractor carefully selected by them.

and then explained why:

Negligently maintained, the elevator becomes inherently dangerous.

Hiring a maintenance company moves the work. It does not move the duty. An owner who says it has a service contract with a national elevator company has described its arrangement, not its defense.

On the elevator company, the court set out the rule that has governed ever since. Its “obligation is measured by the terms of its contract with the trustees”, and if the contract put it under a duty to maintain the elevator in a safe condition or to inspect it for defects, then it answers to riders who never signed anything. The Supreme Judicial Court restated that language in Parent v. Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., 408 Mass. 108, 113 to 114 (1990), holding that a defendant under a contractual obligation

is liable to third persons not parties to the contract who are foreseeably exposed to danger and injured as a result of its negligent failure to carry out that obligation.

and quoted it again in LeBlanc v. Logan Hilton Joint Venture, 463 Mass. 316 (2012). The rule is not a 1959 curiosity. It is current law.

Why the Maintenance Contract Is the First Document to Get

Because the elevator company’s duty is measured by its contract, the contract decides how big the case against it is. A full maintenance agreement that promises to keep the unit in safe operating condition creates a wide duty. A lubrication-only agreement creates a narrow one.

Banaghan shows the fight this produces. The company’s vice president testified that the agreement was limited to greasing and oiling, and that its inspections were merely to see whether the elevator needed lubrication. There was other evidence that the company had agreed to keep the machine in safe condition, had replaced cables, repaired the control board, brakes and door latches over the years, and billed monthly for oiling and inspection. The court held that the jury “need not have believed” the vice president, and that “It was for the jury to determine, upon conflicting evidence, what the agreement was.”

So the early document requests are not subtle. The maintenance contract and every amendment. The service call log for the unit. The invoices, because what a company actually billed for tends to describe what it actually did. The state inspection reports under sec. 64. And, if an accident report exists, the sec. 66 request described above.

There is a corresponding limit worth knowing before anyone gets excited about a contract breach. In LeBlanc, the Supreme Judicial Court explained that where a contractual relationship creates a duty of care to third parties, the duty rests in tort and not in contract, so a breach is committed only by negligent performance of that duty and not by a mere contractual breach. Proving the company skipped a contractual step is the beginning of the argument. Proving that skipping it was unreasonable, and that it caused the injury, is the argument.

A Rule Violation Is Evidence, Not an Automatic Win

Massachusetts does not treat a safety statute or code violation as automatic liability. It is evidence of negligence that the jury may weigh along with everything else. That principle runs through this library’s coverage of code violations in rental housing, and the analysis is the same when the rule broken is an elevator rule rather than a building rule; the landlord safety and code violation article sets it out at length.

Notice also who the elevator chapter’s penalties run to. Section 71 punishes a violation of secs. 62 to 70 with a fine of not more than five hundred dollars, and sec. 65’s daily penalty is payable to the Commonwealth. None of that money reaches an injured person. The value of those provisions to a claim is indirect but real: they are the reason the inspections happen, the reason the defect reports exist, and the reason there is something in writing to compare against what the owner says it knew.

Beneath all of it sits the ordinary Massachusetts premises duty of reasonable care that the slip and fall and premises liability article covers, and the ordinary rules on how a jury splits responsibility when the defense argues the injured person was partly at fault, which the comparative negligence article explains. Where the injury came from a third party’s conduct rather than from the machine, the duty analysis moves to the ground covered in the negligent security article. And where the theory is that the equipment itself was defectively designed or built, the warranty framework in the defective product article is the one that applies.

Who Owns the Building Changes the Deadline

Escalators and elevators cluster in exactly the places likeliest to be publicly owned: transit stations, courthouses, city halls, public hospitals, state office buildings, public parking garages. That makes ownership the first question, not the last, because the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act runs on its own clock and its own procedure. Written presentment to the proper executive officer within two years of the incident is a precondition to suit, and the suing a city, town or state agency article walks through who counts as the proper officer and what the letter has to contain.

Against a private owner and a private elevator company, the ordinary three year deadline in M.G.L. c. 260, sec. 2A applies, as described in the personal injury statute of limitations article. The deadline by claim type reference is the place to check when more than one theory is in play, which is common here, because the same fall can generate a claim against an owner, a maintenance company, a manufacturer and a public body, each on a different track.

Two more ownership wrinkles come up often enough to flag. If you were hurt while working, the workers’ compensation system may be your exclusive remedy against your own employer while leaving a third party claim against the building owner or the elevator company fully alive; the workers’ compensation medical bills article explains how that interacts. And if the injury happened during construction or a modernization, the construction site injury article covers the general contractor and site control questions that layer on top.

What Actually Preserves an Elevator Case

Elevator and escalator cases are won on records that stop existing quickly, and lost when nobody asked for them in time.

Report the incident to the building, in writing, and get the name of the person you told. Section 66’s reporting duty is triggered by the owner’s knowledge, so creating that knowledge on a dated record matters. Photograph the machine, the posted certificate with its date and number, the landing, the gap, the tread, the handrail, and any warning cone or out of service sign. Note the elevator’s identifying number, which is usually on the certificate. Get names of witnesses before the crowd disperses. If an ambulance came, the run report will fix the time.

Then move on the paper. Ask in writing for the sec. 66 accident report. Ask the building for the inspection certificate and the maintenance records. Video from lobby cameras is often overwritten inside days or weeks, so a written preservation demand should go out early rather than after the first offer.

Serious elevator injuries tend to concentrate at the severe end, because the mechanisms involved are falls down a shaft, entrapment, crushing at a door or comb plate, and misleveling falls. Where the outcome is a head injury or a spinal injury, the case value and proof questions are covered in the traumatic brain injury article and the spinal cord injury article. Where someone died, the claim changes shape entirely and is governed by the rules in the wrongful death article. Where the injured person is a child, any settlement raises the separate questions handled in the child settlement article. And the fee structure that applies to all of these is set out in the attorney fees article.

Realistic Massachusetts Scenarios

The following are illustrations of how the rules interact, not predictions about any real case or any promise of a result. Every situation turns on its own facts.

A shopper steps onto an escalator at a mall and the step collapses under her. The mall’s certificate is current and dated four months earlier. That certificate does not answer the case. The sec. 64 inspection report from four months earlier, which had to list all changes and defects and had to go to the town as well as the state, might. So might the service call log, if the same escalator had been shut down twice that quarter.

An office worker steps into an elevator that has stopped six inches below the landing and falls. The building points to its national maintenance contractor. Under Banaghan, that pointing does not work as a defense for the building, because the duty to keep the elevator in a safe condition sits with the owner regardless of who was hired to do the work. It does, however, identify a second defendant, whose exposure will be measured by what its contract with the building actually required.

A passenger is hurt on an escalator inside a transit station. The ownership question now controls the calendar, because a public body’s involvement pulls in the Tort Claims Act presentment requirement and its two year window, which is shorter than the ordinary three years and has a step that has to happen before any complaint is filed.

What This Article Does Not Decide

Two limits are worth stating plainly rather than papering over.

First, the elevator chapter delegates a great deal to the regulations of the board of elevator regulations, which sec. 68 empowers to set rules on construction, installation, alteration and operation, on shafts and enclosures, on safety devices, gates and other safeguards, and on making inspectors’ work uniform. Those regulations, not the statute, contain the technical standards a case often turns on. They are published by the Commonwealth and were not quoted here, and no claim is made in this article about their contents.

Second, whether any particular certificate, report or contract exists for a particular machine is a factual question that only a records request will answer. The statutes described above say what the law requires. They do not promise that every owner complied.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does Massachusetts law cover escalators, or only elevators?

A: It covers escalators, but it never uses that word. M.G.L. c. 143, sec. 71E provides that the term “elevator” shall include “moving stairways, dumbwaiters, moving walks, material lifts, wheelchair lifts, automatic people movers, vertical reciprocating conveyors, orchestra lifts, car lifts, limited use elevators or limited application elevators and other associated devices within the elevator industry recognized by the board of elevator regulations, except inclined stair lifts located and installed in residential homes.” A moving stairway is an escalator. So the same inspection, certificate and reporting rules that apply to a passenger elevator apply to the escalator in a mall, a transit station or a department store.

Q: How often does an elevator have to be inspected in Massachusetts?

A: At least once a year for an ordinary elevator. M.G.L. c. 143, sec. 64 requires that all elevators “be thoroughly inspected and a practical test made of the safety devices required therefor at intervals of not more than one year and at such other times as may be deemed necessary by the inspector”. A limited use or limited application elevator, which sec. 71E defines as one carrying no more than 1,400 pounds and travelling no more than 25 feet, is inspected at intervals of not less than 2 years. Elevators in owner-occupied single family residences are inspected as needed following a permitted installation, alteration or modernization rather than on the annual cycle.

Q: Is there a report after an elevator accident, and can I get a copy?

A: Yes to both, and this is the part most people do not know. Under M.G.L. c. 143, sec. 66, when an accident occurs to an elevator, “the operator, person in charge or owner having knowledge thereof shall immediately report such accident to an inspector assigned by the commissioner, who shall forthwith inspect such elevator.” The same section then provides that the inspector “shall upon request provide a copy of any accident report received by him in accordance with this section to each person who reported, or was involved in the accident so reported”. A person injured in the accident was involved in it. The request should be made in writing and early, while the inspection is fresh.

Q: The elevator had a current inspection certificate. Does that end my claim?

A: No. A certificate under M.G.L. c. 143, sec. 65 records an inspector’s judgment on the day of the inspection, and sec. 64 puts that inspection as much as a year apart. It is evidence, and the defense will use it, but it is not a finding that the elevator was safe on the day you were hurt. It also says nothing about what happened in between, which is where the maintenance records, the service call history and the defect reports filed under sec. 64 do the real work.

Q: Can I sue the elevator maintenance company if my contract is with nobody?

A: Yes, if the company’s contract with the building owner obligated it to maintain or inspect the elevator. The Supreme Judicial Court held in Banaghan v. Dewey, 340 Mass. 73 (1959), that an elevator company’s “obligation is measured by the terms of its contract with the trustees”, and that a defendant under such a contractual obligation “is liable to third persons not parties to the contract who are foreseeably exposed to danger and injured as a result of its negligent failure to carry out that obligation”. That language was quoted again by the Supreme Judicial Court in Parent v. Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., 408 Mass. 108, 113 to 114 (1990), and again in LeBlanc v. Logan Hilton Joint Venture, 463 Mass. 316 (2012).

Q: Can the building owner blame the maintenance company and walk away?

A: Generally no. Banaghan v. Dewey rejected exactly that argument. The building’s trustees asked for a ruling that they were not liable if they had carefully selected a reputable independent contractor, and the Supreme Judicial Court answered that “the jury could find that the trustees themselves were under an admitted duty to keep the elevator in a safe condition, and are liable even for the negligence of an independent contractor carefully selected by them.” The court added that “Negligently maintained, the elevator becomes inherently dangerous.” Hiring a contractor moves the work, not the duty.

Q: Does breaking an elevator rule automatically mean the owner loses?

A: No. Massachusetts treats the violation of a safety statute or code as evidence of negligence that a jury may weigh, not as automatic liability. The penalties in the elevator chapter run to the state, not to you: M.G.L. c. 143, sec. 71 sets a fine of not more than five hundred dollars for violating secs. 62 to 70, and sec. 65 adds a fine of $100 for each day an elevator runs without a valid certificate. Those provisions matter to your case because they force the paper trail into existence, not because they decide it.

Q: How long do I have to file an elevator or escalator injury claim in Massachusetts?

A: The general personal injury deadline is three years under M.G.L. c. 260, sec. 2A. The deadline is shorter and structured differently if the building belongs to a public body, because the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act requires written presentment to the proper executive officer within two years of the incident before suit. Because an escalator in a transit station or a courthouse is often publicly owned, the ownership question should be answered first, not last.