With the start of winter two weeks away, a pair of rulings from a state appeals court in Brooklyn shed light on the obligation of landlords in New York City to keep sidewalks free of ice and snow.
Building owners in the city are required by law to maintain sidewalks adjacent to their properties in a reasonably safe condition, which includes removing snow and ice.
In the first ruling, the court sided with Maria Michalska, who accused the owner of an apartment building in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn with failing to clear the sidewalk outside the premises.
Michalska said she injured herself after slipping on Feb. 4, 2014 at 9:30 p.m. on ice that covered a path that had been shoveled through snow on the sidewalk adjacent to the building. According to Michalska, the sidewalk was slippery when she had used it a night earlier.
A weather report showed that 6.7 inches of snow fell as of 5 p.m. on Feb. 3, about 26.5 hours before Michalska slipped, and that no snow fell on the day of the accident.
Though the building’s superintendent testified that he could not remember whether he removed snow from the sidewalk on either day, the testimony conflicted with an affidavit in which he stated that he personally checked the sidewalk at the end of his shift at 5 p.m. on the day Michalska fell and observed neither snow nor ice.
The evidence “failed to eliminate all… issues… as to whether the [landlord caused or exacerbated the alleged icy condition on the subject sidewalk or had notice of it,” Justice William Mastro wrote on behalf of three of his colleagues in a Nov. 29 ruling that returned the lawsuit to the trial court.
Storm in progress
In a second ruling the same day, the court sided with Toni Maria Pecoraro, who accused the owners of a building in Brooklyn with failing to clear snow that she allegedly slipped on.
The owners cited a rule that relieves an owner of a building from responsibility to remove snow during a storm or for a reasonable time thereafter.
To bolster their claim, the owners presented weather data that they said showed snow falling at the time of the accident, a claim Pecoraro contested.
The court returned the case to the trial court to resolve the differences in their accounts. “The climatological data submitted by [the owners] … contradicted [Pecoraro’s] deposition testimony… as to whether precipitation was falling at or near the time of the accident,” Justice Ruth Balkin wrote on behalf of three of her colleagues.