AD1 rejects existential causation in slip-and-fall case

Wood v City of New York, 2012 NY Slip Op 06100 [1st Dept 2012] [available here]

With a glut of law school graduates and not enough work to go around, these are hungry times for lawyers. How else to explain the lawsuit in Wood v City of New York? The plaintiff in Wood "tripped and fell on a crack in the sidewalk and hit his head on a muni-meter." (Wood at *1.) Nothing unusual so far; pretty standard slip-and-fall fair. Only the Wood case did not involve a lawsuit by the plaintiff against the owner of the property responsible for maintaining the cracked sidewalk. Instead, the plaintiff in Wood sued the owner of the next lot down, where some construction work was going on that narrowed the sidewalk in front of the adjacent lot. Note, however, that the plaintiff fell before reaching the narrowed area of the sidewalk.

The plaintiff's theory? In anticipation of the narrowed sidewalk, the plaintiff changed direction, and the owner of the adjacent property should answer in damages because "the narrowing of the sidewalk in front of the construction site directed him toward the cracked sidewalk." (Wood at *1.)

The trial court, being located in plaintiff-friendly New York County, refused to dismiss the complaint. The First Department reversed and tossed the plaintiff's case. Even if the adjacent landowner was negligent in allowing its construction activities to encroach on the sidewalk, it is not enough that an act of negligence is simply a link in the chain of causation. There is not butterfly effect in tort law. The negligence must be the proximate cause of the injury; that is, a fairly direct, substantial cause.

And as the First Department noted, "while the narrowed path may have furnished a setting encouraging plaintiff to step aside to avoid oncoming pedestrians, there were too many intervening facts to find that the construction shed proximately caused plaintiff's injury."

Even as I write this, the plaintiff's attorney is probably bringing a lawsuit against New York City, for not padding the parking meters.