After suffering a traumatic accident at work, an American man filled in the appropriate accident report form. According to the claims adjuster, "trying to do the job alone" was not a detailed enough description of how the accident happened. The following account was then given to explain how his injuries occurred:

"When working alone as a bricklayer at the top of a six story building I discovered at the end of the day that I had over 500 pounds of bricks remaining. As opposed to carrying them down the six flights of stairs by hand I concluded I would lower them down using the barrel and pulley attached to the roof.

Once the ropes were secured at ground level I returned to the roof and began to fill up the barrel. I then returned to the ground to free the rope and because the bricks weighed almost 5 times more than I did, I made sure I had a firm grip of the rope before releasing it. As you would imagine I was launched off the ground quite quickly and did not have the common sense to let go of the rope.

I immediately ascended at a rapid rate before making contact with the barrel travelling in the opposite direction roughly in the region of the third floor. This was the cause of my fractured skull and broken collarbone. My ascent continued until I was promptly stopped by the entanglement of my hand in the pulley system.

Luckily at this point I had the common sense to keep hold of the rope despite being less a few fingers. Unfortunately at about the same time the barrel crashed to the ground expelling its contents. With a sudden change in balance myself and the barrel began to swiftly change places which accounts for my two fractured ankles and lacerations to my legs and lower body.

Thankfully the collision was enough to make the remaining three storeys fall less fatal. Unfortunately as I lay on the pile of bricks with three broken vertebrae and the formerly mentioned injuries, I did not have the common sense to continue holding on to the rope...