PERSONAL INJURY CASE AGAINST UNIVERSITY WAS REINSTATED
After CV tripped on some steps, as she was leaving Finlay Hall (at Fordham University) back in July of 2017, she filed a personal injury lawsuit claiming, among other things, that a light outage and the unevenness of the exterior steps triggered her fall.
When the New York Count Supreme Court granted the University’s request for summary judgment – i.e., pre-trial relief in its favor – CV appealed.
And on its review, the Appellate Division, First Department, noted that because the University established that it had no reports of any light outage, and since CV testified that she only noticed the lighting issue right before she fell, that was sufficient to warrant the dismissal of that particular claim..
But because the school’s expert did not contemporaneously inspect the steps -- and was not engaged to do so until three years after the accident occurred – the AD1 thought that the school was unable to establish that the condition was “trivial,” failed to justify dismissal, and reinstated the “unsafe steps” claim as a result.
While CV sought sanctions for spoliation of evidence – i.e., the replacement of the steps in question – the AD1 noted that CV, “never requested to inspect the steps, nor did any of her discovery orders demand their preservation.”
Was that another misstep on CV’s part?
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