Carmen J. Finocchi Jr. of North Buffalo suffered shoulder and knee injuries in 2007 when a 2,000-pound trunk of equipment fell on him following a Genesis concert in the former HSBC Arena.
Finocchi was never again able to work as a stagehand.
This week, 16 years after Finocchi sustained his injuries, Live Nation Inc. settled a lawsuit that accused the company of violating state labor law and federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards by forcing him to help hoist the trunk known as a “Cadillac box” onto a tractor trailer, rather than using a forklift.
Live Nation agreed to pay Finocchi $5.75 million, just days before the case was scheduled to go to trial for damages.
“I had a one-ton box fall on me,” Finocchi said in an interview Thursday. “We used a forklift in the morning, and later that night, the stage manager refused to allow me to use that. He wanted guys to lift 2,000 pounds, and the weight inside shifted, and it caused the box to fall on me.”
The stage manager was in a hurry to get to Pittsburgh for the next concert, and ignored suggestions from four stagehands to use a forklift, Finocchi said.
“I don’t even remember how they got it off me because I was in so much pain. I could hear my knee rip. I hear that rip immediately,” he said.
Finocchi initially lost his case when Erie County State Supreme Court Judge Mark A. Montour ruled in 2020 that Live Nation was not at fault and Finocchi was the “sole proximate cause of his injuries.”
The Appellate Division, Fourth Department overturned Montour’s decision on appeal in 2022.
Finocchi, 69, was represented on the appeal and in the settlement by Buffalo attorneys Terrence M. Connors and Lawlor F. Quinlan.
Finocchi said he started with Stagehands Local 10 union in 1993. Before his injuries, he had planned to work many more years as a stagehand, an exciting job that paid well and allowed him the chance to meet some of the performers in the…
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