In Runner v. New York Stock Exch., Inc., 13 NY 3d 599, 604, 922 N.E.2d 865, 895 N.Y.S.2d 279 2009, the Court of Appeals clarified that the dispositive inquiry does not depend upon whether the injury resulted from a "falling worker" or "falling object." According to Runner, "the governing rule is . . . that 'Labor Law 240(1) was designed to prevent those types of accidents in which the scaffold, hoist, stay, ladder or other protective device proved inadequate to shield the injured worker from harm directly flowing from the application of the force of gravity to an object or person'" (id.) Moreover, in a falling object case, the applicability of the statute does not "depend upon whether the object has hit the worker. The relevant inquiry - one which may be answered in the affirmative even in situations where the object does not fall on the worker - is rather whether the harm flows directly from the application of the force of gravity to the object" (id.). The Court determined that liability under section 240 (1) may attach even if a worker does not fall and is not struck by a falling object. There, the Court stated that "we think the dispositive inquiry framed by our cases does not depend upon the precise characterization of the device employed or upon whether the injury resulted from a fall, either of the worker or of an object upon the worker. Rather, the single decisive question is whether plaintiff's injuries were the direct consequence of a failure to provide adequate protection against a risk arising from a physically significant elevation differential" (emphasis supplied). The Court continued, stating that "the governing rule is to be found in the language from Ross . . . where we elaborated more generally that 'Labor Law 240 (1) was designed to prevent those types of accidents in which the scaffold, hoist, stay, ladder or other protective device proved inadequate to shield the injured worker from harm directly flowing from the application of the force of gravity to an object or person'" (id. at 604).