NEGLIGENCE CASE AGAINST NASSAU COUNTY ALLOWED TO CONTINUE
After JB was involved in a car accident with a vehicle owned by Nassau County, a personal injury lawsuit was filed. And when the Nassau County Supreme Court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the litigation -- on the grounds that JB hadn’t suffered a “serious injury” as contemplated by the state’s Insurance Law -- an appeal ensued.
On its review, the Appellate Division, Second Department, noted that the County and its co-defendants didn’t meet their burden of proof in this instance. Apparently, they failed to address the plaintiff’s claim that the accident had “exacerbated preexisting injuries to the plaintiff's right shoulder and the cervical and lumbar regions of her spine.”
Since they didn’t satisfy their “burden of proof” in this instance, the AD2 agreed that the denial of the dismissal request was appropriately premised and affirmed the outcome.
Was that a serious decision?
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DECISION
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New York State Insurance Law, Section 5102(d), defines a "serious injury" to include:
- Death
- Dismemberment
- A severe disfigurement
- Fractured bones
- Loss of fetus
- Permanent loss of use of body organ, member, function or system
- Permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member
- A significant limitation of use of a body function or system
- Medically determined injury or impairment of a non-permanent nature which prevents the injured person from performing substantially all of the material acts which constitute such person’s usual and customary daily activities for not less than ninety days during the one hundred eighty days immediately following the occurrence of the injury or impairment