Aponte v. City of New York

2016 NY Slip Op 6788, 143 A.D.3d 552, 39 N.Y.S.3d 151

Opinion

Order, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Mitchell J. Danziger, J.), entered June 17, 2015, which denied plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment against defendants on the issue of liability, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur does not apply in this case; the doctrine merely permits an inference of negligence to be drawn by the factfinder and summary judgment is warranted only if the facts are undisputed and the inference of negligence is inescapable (see Morejon v Rais Constr. Co., 7 NY3d 203, 207, 209 [2006]). While plaintiff asserts that defendant City’s paramedics dropped him while he was strapped into a stair chair and being lifted into an ambulance, the paramedics testified that one of them tripped while moving the stair chair toward a stretcher, but that the chair never fell to the ground and plaintiff was not hurt. Since the parties provide conflicting accounts of how the alleged accident occurred and whether plaintiff suffered injury as a result thereof, the court correctly denied plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment (id. at 207, 212).

Concur — Friedman, J.P., Andrias, Saxe, Feinman and Kahn, JJ.