Articles Posted in Uncategorized

While walking on the sidewalk, a man allegedly had a trip and fallaccident on a portion of the sidewalk near the City Library which rests against metal grating. As a result of the accident, Gray sustained injuries to his left hand, his left forth finger, and to other parts of his body. He filed summons and complaint against five defendants. The action is to recover monetary damages for personal injuries sustained.

Sources revealed that Defendant A is a City in the U.S, Defendant B is a City Transit Authority, Defendant C is a Metro Transit Authority, Defendant D is an electric service provider and Defendant E is a public library. Defendants B and C requested to dismiss the complaint and all cross claims made against them. They contend that the plaintiff and the co-defendants have failed to state a cause of action as against them and that there are issues capable of trial in dispute as they do not own, maintain, operate or control the sidewalk or the grating where plaintiff fell. Defendant A argued that it is neither the owner of the subject sidewalk, nor is responsible for its maintenance. Defendant D argues that a question of fact exists whether it was responsible for maintaining the sidewalk as the Library has admitted in a previous case that it entered into a contract with a construction company for its rehabilitation and replacement.

The Plaintiff claims that the contractors previously performed work on behalf of the Library at the location of the accident.

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A widow of a deceased employee found herself responding to the appeal made by his deceased husband’s employer and its insurance carrier. The sudden death of her husband while on a business trip is in question.

On the morning of March 1972, as the now deceased man was in the process of checking out at the front desk of an Inn and Country Club. While on the front desk, he suddenly fell and struck his head on the floor. He came home to New York but unfortunately died one week later. His medical records revealed that the cause of his death is head injury and skull fracture. The said man is the Director of sales training for the employer in New York. He left New York on a business trip to Florida. The evidence discloses that the main objective of the trip of the now deceased man was to give the opportunity to carry on business discussions with customers of the employer and ultimately to address a sales meeting in Florida. All of the expenses of the trip were paid by the employer.

The employer and its insurance carrier appeal from the decision of the board which affirmed an award for death benefits allowed to the widow of the deceased employee based upon findings that the deceased had suffered a compensable accidental fall which resulted in his skull fracture and resultant death and that said accident arose out of and in the course of his employment. The widow claims that his husband did not have an accident arising out of the employment and that the damage was not occasioned by the willful intention of the employee. If the deceased man’s injury was occasioned by intent, he would, of course, be barred from compensation.

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An employee in a construction site summoned the property owner, the general contractor, the subcontractor and his employer. The parties were engaged in the construction/renovation of a condominium. A subcontractor was hired to provide the pre-fabricated exterior panels for the building. They subcontracted the installation of the exterior panels to an erector company. The Plaintiff was an employee of the erector company at the time of his accident.

Sources revealed that the purpose of the construction/renovation was to transform an existing eight-story building into a higher one, suitable for condominiums. The additional floors were set back from the original eight, creating a ledge on the ninth floor (formerly the roof). It was on the ninth floor that plaintiff suffered his accident.

It is uncontested that on the day of the accident, the ninth floor of the site was littered with construction debris, and had been so cluttered for some time. In fact, the erector’s owner wrote to the subcontractor’s project manager, complaining of the unsafe and deplorable conditions at the job site, including materials and debris everywhere left from other contractors. The day before, the erector’s owner had also written to the project manager complaining that on the 9th floor roof, there are many safety hazards and material and debris everywhere. At his deposition, the erector owner testified that between December 2002, when the letters were written, and February 26, 2003, the date of the accident, the debris problem on the ninth floor got worse because the interior of the building was getting finished, so all the stuff that was laying in there, they kept pushing out into the areas so they could finish the interior of these apartments. Everybody was putting a lot of the debris there because they were trying to finish the apartments. In short, the trades working on the interior portions of the ninth floor were using the terrace essentially as a dump for debris.

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A man, his wife and his two children watched a concert at an indoor arena in New York City on May 28, 2005. On their way out of the venue at the end of the concert, they were all coming down the stairs: the mother in front, nearest the left railing, the father right behind the mother and their two daughters behind.

The mother tripped and fell while going down the steps. She tried to grab the railing on her left but was unable to and she sustained injuries. As the wife was falling, the husband tried to reach his wife to keep her from falling but the husband also had a trip and fall on the same step. He bounced on his bottom down three or four steps of the stairs.

The man and his wife then sued the arena. During discovery, the couple testified with the aid of a Spanish interpreter. They testified that immediately after the accident the couple was in pain that they did not look at the steps of the stairway to determine exactly what caused them to trip and fall. It was only six months after the accident that the husband went back to the arena to inspect the stairs and found that the defect was a semi-circle shaped chip or wear on the concrete step.

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A woman was walking on the sidewalk on 20th Street in New York City at around 6:30 p.m. When she reached the sidewalk just outside the premises of 326 West 20th Street, her foot got caught on a crack in the sidewalk that had caused a portion of the sidewalk to be raised by at least an inch. This crack caused her to trip and fall and she sustained injuries.

On the premises of 326 West 20th Street is a row house where a family has resided since 1979. They owned the premises and they have had it repaired two times since then. The first repair work was done in 1988 and involved the sidewalk flag where the lady tripped and fell. The second repair work was made in 1998. To accomplish the repair work, the owner of the premises, he hired a plumber. At his deposition, the owner of the premises did not give the name of the plumber and merely stated his opinion that it might have been the plumber who made the repairs on the sidewalk and caused the creation of the crack.

The owner of the premises testified also that he did not know how long the crack on the sidewalk had existed but he stated that the crack probably grew larger because a tree growing on the sidewalk had caused the crack to grow larger.

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A lady had been a regular customer at a deli for ten years. She claims to have regularly visited the deli to purchase food from there between 2-3 times every week. One day, she entered the deli to buy a sandwich and a cup of coffee. She exited the deli with the sandwich in one hand and the cup of coffee in the other. She was also wearing shoes with 2 inch heels. As she put one foot outside of the deli, her right foot felt like the heel of her shoe snagged on the rubber mat of the deli. She tripped and fell.

She brought a suit in damages for the trip and fall and for the personal injury caused her by the incident. She claims that the deli owner had covered the entrance of the deli with a rubber mat to hide the uneven level between the door and the pavement. The gap between the door and the pavement constituted a defect and a condition where her heel snagged and that caused the lady’s trip and fall.

For his part, the owner of the deli said he was at the store tending to customers on the day of the incident. He didn’t see the lady trip and fall. He claims to have seen no difference in the mat or on the doorway before the accident and after the incident.

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Whether one suffers from a simple broken bone, head injury, or as complicated as a brain injury which could lead to wrongful death because of the mistake or the carelessness of others, one always has recourse with the courts.

According to a Lawyer, a woman ultimately wins her case against a housing corporation landowner whose premises were abutting the sidewalk where she sustained injuries from a trip and fall incident in 2008.

The woman was walking on the sidewalk of a restaurant when she tripped and fell on the raised sidewalk. The woman at once went after the abutting landowner for failure to keep the sidewalk in “a reasonably safe condition” pursuant to NYC Administrative Code § 7-210 or simply “the Sidewalk Law”, but the landowner denied any liability.

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Around October 12, 1955, a boy around ten years of age was playing with a ball when it rolled into an adjacent yard. The boy went in to the back yard to reclaim his ball and noticed a boxer breed dog on a chain in the yard. When the dog saw the child, he became aggressive. On the boy’s second attempt to retrieve his ball, the dog broke the harness that he was wearing. He lunged against his chain and ultimately broke loose of the harness that he was wearing. The dog chased the boy back in to the adjoining yard and bit him.

The boy’s father filed a lawsuit against the owners of the property. This lawsuit maintains the property of the policy holder, i.e. the dog and his harness, were not maintained properly. It cites that it was negligent of the property owners to place a vicious dog on an inadequate harness. He further states that placing the vicious dog in the inadequate harness constitutes an act of negligence. The owners of the property notified their insurance carrier of the suit. The insurance carrier then told the dog owners that they would not be covered under the guidelines of the policy. The insurance company informed the property owners that there was a special policy that covered injury caused by dogs and horses. The company informed them that since they had not purchased that additional policy, that they would not be covered by a defense action in this law suit.

The property/dog owners disagreed. They put the company on notice that they felt that this incident had arisen out of a negligence action which was covered by the policy. They advised that because the accident began on their property where the dog was not tied up sufficiently, that the insurance company was liable to cover it whether or not they specifically had a dog hazard on the policy. The insurance company promptly refused to defend them in the law suit. The property owners then initiated an action requiring the insurance company to represent them in the lawsuit based on a portion of their insurance policy called Division 2. The Dogs and Horses division of the policy is specifically listed as Division 5 which the policy holder/property owner/dog owner did not pay extra for.

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A lady member of a biking club in the town of Southampton went with her husband and seven other members of the biking club for their customary 100-mile weekend bike run early on the morning of July 27, 2002. She was an advanced intermediate bicyclist as were all the other eight bicyclists who were with her. The lady was the last biker in the single file of bikers. She was closely following a male friend of hers who was about three to five feet in front of her. Her husband was in front of her male friend and they were all riding between twelve to seventeen miles per hour on the right hand side of Deerfield Road in Southampton very near the corner of Woodthrush Lane. They were on the southbound lane.

She saw the first two bikers bunny hop on their bikes to avoid something on the road as did all the other bikers that followed. She noticed from afar that the concrete road had a black asphalt overlay on it in the middle which appeared like a shallow crater on the road. There were no traffic cones or signs on the road alerting passersby of the uneven state of the road. There were no shoulders abutting the road so they had to stay on the uneven road. She saw her husband bunny hop in front of her to avoid the ridge that was created by the uneven asphalt overlay on the road but her male friend who was biking just three to five feet away from her just suddenly tipped over and he fell on the road. It looked like the wheels of his bike got caught on a groove in the road and this caused his bike to trip and fall.

The lady cyclist had to avoid hitting her friend so she veered toward the middle of the road. She passed her fallen friend but she hit the uneven asphalt overlay in the middle of the road which was not flush with the rest of the roadway. She skidded, fell from her bike and slid underneath a car which was going northbound on the opposite direction that she was cycling on.

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A woman summoned a property owner to recover damages for the personal injury she allegedly sustained as the result of an accident on the sidewalk in front of the premises leased by the defendant, and subleased by an auto service station. The property owner made a request to dismiss the complaint, alleging that the woman is unable to identify the cause of her fall and there is no notice of any defect and that dismissing the complaint is but reasonable.

Sources revealed that the Defendant property owner submitted the testimony of the woman plaintiff in which she testified that she fell on a raised portion of the sidewalk. The property owner alleges that woman does not know how she tripped, is unable to give any specifications as to the defect, never looked at the sidewalk to see how far it was raised, and failed to take measurements of the alleged differential. The property owner contends that plaintiff is not able to identify any defect which caused her accident, and any differential in the sidewalk is trivial and further claims that a property owner may not be held liable in damages for trivial defects, not constituting a trap or nuisance, over which a pedestrian might merely stumble, stub his or her toes, or trip. The property owner established its right to judgment by demonstrating that, under the circumstances, the 3/4 of an inch difference in the height elevation between the edge of the concrete slab which had caused the plaintiff to fall and the adjacent concrete slab was too trivial to be unlawful. The Plaintiff is unable to support any argument that the sidewalk in question is greater than 3/4 of an inch and this is not a trivial defect.

The request to dismiss a complaint should be granted when there is no doubt as to the absence of issues capable of trial. The function of the court on the instant motion is issue finding and not issue determination. The one who requests for complaint dismissal must tender admissible proof eliminating any material issues of fact from the case. If the person requesting the complaint dismissal succeeds, the burden shifts to the party opposing the motion, who then must show the existence of material issues by producing admissible proof in support of his position.

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