Garmendia Valenzuela v. Kas's Bar & Resturant LLC

S.D. New York

Garmendia Valenzuela v. Kas's Bar & Resturant LLC

DecidedSeptember 8, 2020

Docket7:17-cv-08923

StatusUnknown

This text of Garmendia Valenzuela v. Kas's Bar & Resturant LLC (Garmendia Valenzuela v. Kas's Bar & Resturant LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

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Garmendia Valenzuela v. Kas's Bar & Resturant LLC, (S.D.N.Y. 2020).

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Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK -------------------------------------------------------------x TANIA GARMENDIA VALENZUELA, as administrator of the estate of NELSON OSEGUEDA MARTINEZ,

Plaintiff, OPINION & ORDER

- against - No. 17-CV-8923 (CS) No. 17-CV-9279 (CS) PUTNAM COUNTY and DEPUTY KEITH BLESSING,

Defendants. -------------------------------------------------------------x BUANI NUNEZ, as administrator of the estate of WARNER Z. NUNEZ, and BEATRIZ GRAJALES,

Plaintiffs,

- against -

PUTNAM COUNTY and DEPUTY KEITH BLESSING,

Defendants. -------------------------------------------------------------x

Appearances:

Nadia Lescott Michael B. Ronemus Ronemus & Vilensky, LLP New York, New York Counsel for Plaintiff Garmendia Valenzuela

Edwin Camacho Ventura Law Norwalk, Connecticut Counsel for Plaintiffs Nunez and Grajales James A. Randazzo Drew W. Sumner Portale Randazzo LLP White Plains, New York Counsel for Defendants

Seibel, J. Before the Court are the renewed motions for summary judgment of Defendants Putnam County (the “County”) and Deputy Keith Blessing, (“Blessing”). (No. 17-CV-9279 Doc. 53; No. 17-CV-8923 Doc. 61.)1 For the following reasons, the motions are GRANTED. I. BACKGROUND Facts The following facts are based on Defendants’ Local Civil Rule 56.1 Statement, (Doc. 46 (“Ds’ 56.1 Stmt.”)), the 56.1 Response and Additional Statement of Material Facts of Plaintiff Tania Garmendia Valenzuela as administrator of the estate of Nelson Osegueda Martinez (“Valenzuela”), (Doc. 49 (“V’s 56.1 Resp.”)), the Local Rule 56.1(b) Statement of Plaintiffs Buani Nunez, as administrator of the estate of Warner Z. Nunez, and Beatriz Grajales (“Nunez and Grajales”), (No. 17-CV-9279 Doc. 45 (“N’s 56.1 Stmt.”)), and Defendants’ Counterstatement to Plaintiff’s Additional Statement of Material Facts, (Doc. 51), and are undisputed unless otherwise noted.2

1 Citations to the docket refer to Case No. 17-CV-8923 unless otherwise indicated. 2 Nunez and Grajales’s 56.1 Statement is deficient for two reasons. First, it fails to comply, in part, with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, which requires a party asserting that a fact is genuinely disputed to support that assertion with “cit[ations] to particular parts of materials in the record,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(1)(A), and Local Civil Rule 56.1, which states that “[e]ach statement by the movant or opponent . . . , including each statement controverting any statement of material fact, must be followed by citation to evidence which would be admissible, set forth as required by Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c),” Local Civ. R. 56(d). (See N’s 56.1 Stmt. ¶¶ 7-8.) Where Nunez and Grajales have failed to properly address Defendants’ assertions of fact, those facts are considered undisputed for purposes of the motion. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(e)(2); Local At approximately 4 a.m. on September 3, 2016, Raymond Rivera, Elena Albarran, Warner Nunez, Beatriz Grajales, and Nelson Osegueda left Kas’s Bar and Restaurant in Brewster, New York, in a Nissan Maxima driven by Rivera. (V’s 56.1 Resp. ¶¶ 52-54; see Doc. 1 ¶¶ 17, 26.) At approximately 4:20 a.m., while traveling westbound on New York State Route 6

in his patrol vehicle, Blessing observed the Maxima traveling eastbound with a broken headlight. (V’s 56.1 Resp. ¶¶ 1-3.) Blessing performed a U-turn and followed the Maxima. (Id. ¶ 4.) According to Defendants, Blessing observed the Maxima veering in the roadway, crossing the dividing line of the roadway three times, and going into the opposite lane of travel. (Ds’ 56.1 Stmt. ¶¶ 5, 8.) Valenzuela admits that Blessing claims to have so observed and does not dispute the truth of the observation. (V’s 56.1 Resp. ¶¶ 5, 8.) Nunez and Grajales state that the Maxima “only faintly crossed over the dividing line of the roadway once.” (N’s 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 5.)3

Civ. R. 56.1(c)-(d); Cruz v. Wyckoff Heights Med. Ctr., No. 13-CV-8355, 2016 WL 4533568, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. July 19, 2016); Dasrath v. Stony Brook Univ. Med. Ctr., No. 12-CV-1484, 2015 WL 1223797, at *1 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 17, 2015); see also Amnesty Am. v. Town of W. Hartford, 288 F.3d 467, 470 (2d Cir. 2002) (Rule 56 “does not impose an obligation on a district court to perform an independent review of the record to find proof of a factual dispute”); Holtz v. Rockefeller & Co., 258 F.3d 62, 74 (2d Cir. 2001) (“The purpose of Local Rule 56.1 is to streamline the consideration of summary judgment motions by freeing district courts from the need to hunt through voluminous records without guidance from the parties.”). Second, it does not comply with item 2.C.i of my Individual Practices, which requires the opposing party to reproduce each entry in the moving party’s Rule 56.1 Statement before setting out its response thereto. Nunez and Grajales’s failure to reproduce the moving party’s Rule 56.1 Statement defeats the purpose of my individual practice, which is designed to prevent the Court from having to go back and forth between the two Rule 56.1 Statements. 3 Nunez and Grajales fail to cite to admissible evidence in response to Defendants’ statement in ¶ 8 that Blessing saw the Maxima veering and crossing the dividing line into the opposite travel lane, (N’s 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 8), and thus I consider Defendants’ statement in that paragraph to be undisputed for purposes of Defendants’ motion in No. 17-CV-9279. See note 2 above. Video from Blessing’s dashboard camera, (Doc. 45 (“Randazzo Decl.”) Ex. C (“Dash- Cam Video”)), shows the Maxima touching the dividing line of the roadway at 4:19:33 and According to Defendants, about five to fifteen seconds after making the U-turn, while traveling at about 40 miles per hour, Blessing activated his vehicle’s emergency lights and attempted to initiate a motor vehicle stop based upon his observations of the broken headlight and erratic driving and his suspicion that the Maxima’s operator might be intoxicated or

impaired. (Ds’ 56.1 Stmt. ¶¶ 6-7, 9, 11.) Valenzuela does not dispute these facts. (V’s 56.1 Resp. ¶¶ 6-7, 9, 11.) Nunez and Grajales state that Blessing followed the Maxima for approximately 50 seconds before activating the emergency lights. (N’s 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 6.)4 Rivera did not pull over in response to the lights. (V’s 56.1 Resp. ¶ 10.) Seconds later, while traveling about 45 miles per hour and keeping a steady distance behind the Maxima, Blessing activated his vehicle’s siren. (Id. ¶¶ 12-13; see Dash-Cam Video at 4:19:57-4:20:12.) Rivera accelerated and Blessing, while radioing the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department (“PCSD”), accelerated to about 50 miles per hour. (V’s 56.1 Resp. ¶¶ 14-17.) Blessing gave PCSD dispatch his location and a description of the Maxima including its license plate number, and told dispatch that the Maxima failed to comply with his order to pull over and that they were approaching the

Connecticut state line. (Id. ¶¶ 15, 18-19.) He asked dispatch to notify the Danbury Police Department. (Id. ¶ 19.) Blessing testified that in deciding to pursue the Maxima, he considered factors set forth in the PCSD’s Policies and Procedures, including that State Route 6 is a straight roadway, the roadway conditions were relatively dry, vehicular and pedestrian traffic along the route of the

crossing it at 4:19:52.

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