¿Qué le cayó?

¿Qué le cayó?
 

What does this mean?
It suggests. " What happened to him? " but I don't see how you get that and why would he think the other died, perhaps they usually only employ a new worker when the previous one dies.
Does he mean "fell ill" and unable to work.


Pero era buen trabajador..., uno de los mejores.
-¿Qué le cayó?
-El otro no murió, así que le cayó sólo un año. Seguro que ya está libre

A common expression is me cayó bien/mal,

It usually means it disagreed with me, or it went well with me. So, as you assumed what happened is what it means. A more direct translation might be,
how did things land with him?

"Caer bien/mal" is as Poli said, but here it rather seems to be "how many years he got as a sentence".

I assume there was an accident at work for which two men were responsible. One died and the other had to make time in jail.

It's not the way anyone I know would ask this, but that's what I get from the dialogue.

We'd probably rather ask: "¿cuántos años le cayeron?" or something like that, I think. :thinking:

Without any context, I would have thought that the question would be asking literally what kind of object had (physically) fallen upon the person, or if he had caught some sort of illness.

Thank you both for the responses,
very useful, I didn't notice anything in the text that suggested further clues but perhaps I need to check it again.

Thank you

Angelica,
You are exactly correct, on checking I had forgotten that the fellow had stabbed the other man but not mortally. So it is clear now.

Thanks