Charles v New York City Tr. Auth.

[*1] Charles v New York City Tr. Auth. 2005 NY Slip Op 52095(U) [10 Misc 3d 134(A)] Decided on December 2, 2005 Appellate Term, Second Department Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. This opinion is uncorrected and will not be published in the printed Official Reports.

Decided on December 2, 2005
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
APPELLATE TERM: 2nd and 11th JUDICIAL DISTRICTS
PRESENT: : GOLIA, J.P., RIOS and BELEN, JJ.
2005-964 K C

Magdalene Charles, Appellant,

against

New York City Transit Authority, Respondent.

Appeal from a judgment of the Civil Court of the City of New York, Kings County (Delores L. Waltrous, J.), entered November 15, 2004. The judgment, upon a jury verdict, dismissed the complaint.

Judgment unanimously affirmed without costs.

Plaintiff brought the instant action as a result of an incident which occurred when she, a passenger on defendant's bus, was injured as the result of the bus' alleged "sudden, violent and short stop." Following a trial on the issue of liability, the jury returned a verdict in favor of defendant. The trial court subsequently denied plaintiff's post-trial motion to set aside the verdict as against the weight of the evidence and for judgment as a matter of law, and entered judgment dismissing the complaint.

In order for a court to determine as a matter of law that a jury verdict is not supported by sufficient evidence, it must conclude that there is "simply no valid line of reasoning and permissible inferences which could possibly lead rational [persons] to the conclusion reached by the jury on the basis of the evidence presented at trial" (Cohen v Hallmark Cards, 45 NY2d 493, 499 [1978]). Furthermore, a jury verdict in favor of a defendant should not be set aside as against the weight of the evidence unless the verdict could not have been reached upon any fair interpretation of the evidence (see Nicastro v Park, 113 AD2d 129, 132-134 [1985]).

Where a plaintiff passenger seeks to establish a case of negligence against a common carrier, the plaintiff's mere characterization of the defendant's vehicle's movement as unusual or [*2]out of the ordinary, without additional objective evidence, is insufficient to establish negligence at the trial level (see Urquhart v New York City Tr. Auth., 85 NY2d 828, 830 [1995]; Taylor v Westchester St. Transp. Co., 276 App Div 874 [1949]). In our opinion, plaintiff's trial testimony did not provide "objective evidence of the force of the stop sufficient to establish an inference that the stop was extraordinary and violent, of a different class than the jerks and jolts commonly experienced in city bus travel and, therefore, attributable to the negligence of defendant" (Urquhart, 85 NY2d at 830). Thus, the jury could have rationally concluded that defendant was not negligent. Furthermore, the jury verdict was supported by a fair interpretation of the evidence. Accordingly, it was appropriate for the trial court not to disturb the verdict.
Decision Date: December 02, 2005