Cividanes v. City of New York

981 N.E.2d 281, 20 N.Y.3d 925

• Court: New York Court of Appeals
• Decided: November 29, 2012
• Status: Published

Opinions

OPINION OF THE COURT

Memorandum.

The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed, with costs, and the certified question answered in the affirmative.

Plaintiff Kendra Cividanes testified at a General Municipal Law § 50-h hearing that she injured her left ankle when she “stepped off the last step into a hole and fell” as she exited the rear of a bus owned and operated by defendants New York City Transit Authority and Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority. The Appellate Division properly held that the No-Fault Insurance Law is inapplicable because plaintiffs injury did not arise out of the “use or operation” of a motor vehicle (Insurance Law § 5104 [a]). The “use or operation” of the bus was neither a “proximate cause” nor an “instrumentality” that produced plaintiffs injury (see Walton v Lumbermens Mut. Cas. Co., 88 NY2d 211, 214 [1996] [noting that the No-Fault Insurance Law’s scope of coverage should be interpreted to “reflect the Legislature’s intent to draw a line between motor vehicle accidents and all other types of torts and to remove only the former from the domain of common-law tort litigation”]). Manuel v New York City Tr. Auth. (82 AD3d 1059 [2d Dept 2011]), which held on similar facts that the No-Fault Insurance Law’s restrictions on tort liability were applicable, should not be followed.