In Ortiz v. New York City Housing Authority, decided Sept. 11, 2014, the Appellate Division, First Department affirmed the denial of defendant’s motion for summary judgment. In this personal injury slip/trip-and-fall case, plaintiff sued after she was injured after falling on ice on the sidewalk adjacent to defendant’s residential building.
In finding that the trial court properly denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment, the court reasoned:
The climatological records establish that it snowed two days prior to plaintiff’s accident, the temperature fluctuated within a few degrees above and below the freezing point during the interim period, and there was sixteen inches of accumulated snow and ice on the ground from prior recent storms. Defendant’s grounds supervisor attested that the sidewalk had been plowed on the day of the last storm, and that he had last noted icy conditions at 8:00 a.m. the day before the accident. Plaintiff testified, however, that the sidewalk was not cleared of snow and ice, rather, only a relatively narrow path had been partially cleared and large mounds of snow abutted the path on either side. She further testified that the path was dirty and wet due to runoff from the mounds of snow and that while walking in the pathway, she slipped on a hard, gray, dirty patch of ice that had accumulated in a defect in the sidewalk.
Thus, “[a]ccepting plaintiff’s account for the purposes of th[e] motion …, the evidence raises issues of fact as to whether defendant’s procedures either created or exacerbated the icy condition that allegedly caused the accident and whether the condition was present for a sufficient period of time within which it could have been discovered and remedied.”