Bonilla v City of New York
Annotate this CaseDecided on June 12, 2006
Supreme Court, Richmond County
William J. Sosa Bonilla and JOVANNA LEON, Plaintiffs,
against
The City of New York, THE NEW YORK CITY HOUSING AUTHORITY and HERK ELEVATOR COMPANY, INC., Defendants.
12905/00
Philip G. Minardo, J.
Upon the foregoing papers, the motion is granted and the complaint is dismissed.
Adopting the view of the facts most favorable to plaintiffs, it appears that they become stranded during the early morning hours of April 29, 2000, when the elevator in one of the buildings owned by defendant New York City Housing Authority ("NYCHA") came to a stop between the first and second floors. After the automated alarm sounded, the elevator's five occupants waited, at most, 15 minutes before one of them (a non-plaintiff) forced the doors open in an effort to free himself and his fellow passengers. With the assistance of some of the first floor tenants, three of the five individuals were able to extricate themselves safely from the stalled elevator. However, for reasons that are not entirely clear, both plaintiffs fell while attempting to exit, sustaining personal injuries in the process. As the result of prior motion practice, the complaint as against codefendants Herk Elevator Company and the City of New York has been dismissed.
In moving for summary judgment dismissing the complaint as against it, defendant NYCHA contends that plaintiffs' untoward attempt to exit the stalled elevator was an intervening act constituting a superceding cause of their injuries. In support, defendant cites the case of Egan v A.J. [*2]Constr. Corp. (94 NY2d 839).
In the Egan case, plaintiff, a carpenter, became stranded along with 25 to 30 other construction workers when the elevator they were utilizing to reach their work location came to a stop some six feet above the lobby. Notwithstanding that the elevator operator had already telephoned the lobby and requested assistance, two workers standing near the front of the car pried the doors open after only 10 to 15 minutes and jumped safely to the lobby floor. Others followed without incident except for plaintiff, who landed on his heels and sustained a back injury. In reversing the denial of summary judgment on plaintiff's Labor Law §200 and common-law negligence causes of action, the Court of Appeals stated (at 841)
"As a matter of law, plaintiff's act of jumping out of a stalled elevator
six feet above the lobby floor after the elevator's doors had been
opened manually was not foreseeable in the normal course of events
from defendants' alleged negligence. Plaintiff, an experienced
worker, was not threatened by injury while in the stalled elevator,
which had come to a smooth stop and remained motionless, quiet
and lit. Furthermore, he was aware that the elevator operator had
telephoned for assistance. Although plaintiff was inconvenienced,
he had only been on the elevator for 10 to 15 minutes when he decided
to put his safety at risk by jumping, and there is no indication that the
subsequent delay would be inordinately long. Thus, plaintiff's jump
superceded defendants' conduct and terminated defendants' liability for
his injuries" (citations omitted).
As this Court believes that the Egan case is controlling on the facts presented, the motion is granted and the complaint is dismissed.
Here, as in Egan, the stalled elevator had come to a complete stop between floors, where it remained motionless and lit for no more than 15 minutes before plaintiffs' abortive attempt at making an emergency exit. Pertinently, this stop was not characterized as abrupt, nor is there any claim of smoke, fire or other disquieting developments.
Although there appears to have been no response to the automated emergency alarm, it is undisputed that by the time that the doors were pried open, a number of tenants on the first floor of defendant's building had gathered to assist, and were plainly in position, to summon, e.g., "New York's Bravest", to effectuate a prompt rescue. However, even without the tenants' aid, the mere fact that three of the occupants had already made it safely to the first floor virtually ensured plaintiffs' timely rescue. Accordingly, and in the absence of any evidence of an impending emergency necessitating a rapid exit, plaintiffs' ill-fated attempt at self-help can only be characterized as an "intervening act constituting a superceding cause of the accident" (Antonik v New York City Hous. Auth., 235 AD2d 248, 248). In this regard, the Court does not view plaintiff Leon's unsupported claim of "claustrophobia" during her 50-h hearing to be legally sufficient to raise a triable issue. No such claim has been advanced on this motion, nor was any such claim made during her deposition conducted some 18 months later.
Humbach v Goldstein (255 AD2d 420) is not to the contrary. In that case plaintiffs had become stranded in a stalled elevator around midnight and had "pounded on the walls and screamed [*3]for help" without result for an unstated period of time before attempting an escape (id. at 421). Under these circumstances, the Court determined that the forseeability of plaintiff's conduct presented a triable issue of fact.
Finally, as the Court of Appeals aptly noted in Egan (94 NY2d at 842), the fact that others had previously exited the elevator safely did not render plaintiffs' conduct "either less risky or more foreseeable".
Plaintiffs' remaining contentions are without merit.
Accordingly, it is
ORDERED that defendant's motion is granted and the complaint is dismissed; and it is further
ORDERED that the Clerk enter judgment in conformity herewith.
E N T E R ,
J.S.C.
Dated: June12, 2006
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
