NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION This opinion shall not "constitute precedent or be binding upon any court ." Although it is posted on the internet, this opinion is binding only on the parties in the case and its use in other cases is limited . R. 1:36-3.
SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY APPELLATE DIVISION DOCKET NO. A-1889-24
JUAN MANUEL ARCE CALYECA,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
HYUNYOON JUNG and CALI CARTING, INC.
Defendants,
and
GALAXY TOWERS CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION,
Defendant-Respondent.
Argued May 18, 2026 – Decided June 3, 2026
Before Judges Sabatino, Natali and Walcott- Henderson.
On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Middlesex County, Docket No. L-7795-19. Joseph A. Reardon, III, argued the cause for appellant (Ginarte Gonzalez Winograd, LLP, attorneys; Joseph A. Reardon III, of counsel and on the brief; Robert J. Ciampaglio, Jr., on the briefs).
Danielle M. DeGeorgio argued the cause for respondent (Tyson & Mendes LLP, attorneys; Danielle M. DeGeorgio, on the briefs).
PER CURIAM
Plaintiff, a trash collector, was struck by a car and severely injured in the
course of unloading a dumpster he had wheeled to the street from a tower within
defendant's large-scale condominium complex. The complex had induced
plaintiff's employer to change the designated location where the trash for that
tower had to be unloaded, moving the spot from a previous, safer location.
In this lawsuit, plaintiff contended the complex had negligently taken part
in creating a highly dangerous condition that was a proximate cause of the
collision and his injuries. The motion judge granted summary judgment to the
complex, ruling that it owed plaintiff no legal duty and that there were no
genuine issues of material fact. Plaintiff appeals that ruling.
Having applied to these distinctive circumstances, the general principles
of legal duty set forth in Hopkins v. Fox & Lazo Realtors, 132 N.J. 426, 439
(1993), and viewing the record in a light most favorable to plaintiff, we vacate
the summary judgment order and remand for a jury trial.
A-1889-24 2 I.
Galaxy Towers and its Trash Pickup Arrangements
Defendant, Galaxy Towers Condominium Association ("Galaxy"), and its
members own a large complex known as Galaxy Towers in Guttenberg. The
complex contains three residential towers, two connecting buildings, and a
commercial space called Galaxy Mall. Galaxy Towers consists of 1,075
residential condominiums spread across the three towers and two connecting
buildings. The residents of Galaxy Towers comprise approximately one-third
of the entire population of the Township of Guttenberg.
Co-defendant, Cali Carting, Inc. ("Cali Carting") 1 is a solid waste and
recycling company. Since 2003, Cali Carting has been awarded successive
three-year contracts with the Township to collect all the municipality's solid
waste. These contracts encompassed the waste generated at Galaxy Towers,
where employees from Cali Carting would collect trash from the Towers six
times per week.2 According to the deposition of Cali Carting's president, John
1 Although Cali Carting is named as a defendant, this was only for the purposes of streamlining discovery; plaintiff has recovered benefits from Cali Carting through worker's compensation as an exclusive remedy against his employer. See N.J.S.A. 34:15-8. 2 By comparison, Cali Carting would collect waste from the rest of the Township only twice per week. A-1889-24 3 Cali, the written contract with the Township did not specify the manner in which
Cali Carting was required to collect waste from Galaxy Towers.
When Cali Carting first began collecting trash in 2003, there were only
two pickup locations at the Towers. For both of those locations, Tower One and
Tower Three, Cali Carting employees could park the garbage truck within the
complex, specifically at a loading dock in the complex for Tower Three.
However, according to Cali, in 2019 Galaxy induced Cali Carting to add a third
pickup spot at Tower Two because there was "some kind of equipment issue"
that resulted in Galaxy no longer being able to transport the dumpsters from
Tower Two to the pickup location at Tower Three. Cali clarified this change
was made because the forklift Galaxy had used to transport the dumpsters from
Tower Two to Tower Three was broken.
To effectuate the change, Cali and his company's night shift supervisor,
Ed Matos, met with a Galaxy representative to review the pickup process at the
new additional location. The Galaxy representative showed Cali and Matos the
room where the dumpsters would be stored and gave them a key to access that
room. Although Cali did not recall an explicit discussion as to where the
garbage truck would need to be parked while the trash was collected at Tower
Two, it was "understood" that there was no room for the truck on the sidewalk.
A-1889-24 4 Consequently, the truck would have to be parked on the public street,
specifically River Road 3, while the trash was collected.
As defendant has stressed in this case, a transfer of the trash to the truck
on the street was not unusual. According to Cali, "[n]inety-five percent of [Cali
Carting's] collection occurs in the public street . . . there is only a very limited
amount of our pickups that are done on private property."
It was Cali's "general assumption at the meeting" that when picking up
trash at Tower Two, Cali Carting employees "would use [their] general company
safety protocols." He saw no need to detail to Galaxy how the trash would be
collected.
According to Galaxy's general manager, William Flemm, Galaxy would
ensure that the dumpsters were placed in the interior room at the Tower Two
location. Employees from Cali Carting would move the dumpsters out onto
River Road, where the truck was parked in the right turning lane, to unload the
waste.
In the rooms where the dumpsters were stored at each of the towers,
Galaxy provided three orange reflective cones for Cali Carting employees to
3 River Road at that location is a four-lane thoroughfare, with a speed limit of thirty-five miles per hour. The road has no shoulders at the pickup spot but does have a third right-hand turning lane there. A-1889-24 5 place behind their truck. The cones were "the normal" height for traffic cones,
roughly one meter tall, and they would usually be arranged at the back of the
truck "like a triangle." On the night of the collision, the furthest cone from the
truck was placed approximately ten meters behind the truck. The rear of the
trucks used by Cali Carting had amber strobe lights along with stationary red
lights, which were operating at the time of the accident.
Plaintiff's Role in the Pickup and May 2, 2019, Collision
Several months after the addition of Tower Two as a pickup spot, plaintiff,
Juan Manuel Arce Calyeca, was part of a three-man team collecting trash on the
overnight shift from 10:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. Plaintiff had been an employee
of Cali Carting since 2014. He stated that aside from being trained on how to
safely lift dumpsters, he was not provided with any traffic safety training from
his employer. Although Cali Carting provided plaintiff with an orange reflective
vest, he was not provided with flashlights or any other traffic safety equipment.
Plaintiff's role on the team was a "loader." He did not drive the truck but
was responsible for emptying dumpsters and trash cans into the back of the truck
and moving the containers back to the curb.
On May 2, 2019, a few months after Cali Carting began collecting from
Tower Two, plaintiff was accompanied by another loader, who was a temporary
A-1889-24 6 employee from an outside agency, and a driver, Miguel Nolasco. After leaving
the facility where Cali Carting kept the trucks, Galaxy Towers was the first stop
on the crew's night-time route, beginning with Tower One. According to
plaintiff, that first stop took fifteen to twenty minutes to complete. At the next
stop, Tower Three, the crew spent twenty-five minutes unloading trash. Hence,
by the time the crew went to pick up the trash at Tower Two, they would have
been on the premises for forty to forty-five minutes.
To collect trash at the final stop, Tower Two, Nolasco parked the truck in
the right-hand lane of River Road next to the room where the waste was stored.
At the time he was struck, plaintiff had finished unloading a container into the
crew's truck and was pulling it backwards towards the sidewalk, facing towards
the truck and away from any oncoming traffic.
Plaintiff did not hear any screeching tires or see any headlights
approaching. Nolasco was inside the trash collection room of Tower Two
moving a glass table with the temporary employee when he heard the sound of
a car crash.
Security footage from the trash room in Tower Two shows Nolasco and
the temporary employee moving a glass table, with plaintiff in the background
moving a dumpster. Several seconds into the video, plaintiff is shown being
A-1889-24 7 struck by a car and pinned against the dumpster. The two other employees in
the trash room immediately dropped the table and ran to assist him.
As the video depicts, it is evident that the driver of the car, co-defendant
Hyunyoon Jung, made no attempt to slow down. According to Jung, she "saw
nothing at all" in the right-hand lane of River Road and did not see the truck or
plaintiff before the collision.
Shortly after the accident, police arrived and noted plaintiff was "bleeding
profusely from both of his legs, which appeared to be nearly severed from the
knee." Jung was uninjured. Plaintiff was given medical aid at the scene before
being transported to Hackensack Hospital.
Injuries and Complaint
Plaintiff suffered severe injuries from the crash, most notably an
amputation of his left leg above the knee. He also suffered numerous fractures
in his right leg and a fracture of his spine, which required surgical correction
and resulted in scarring. 4
In November 2019, plaintiff filed a complaint for negligence in the Law
Division against Jung and Galaxy, along with fictitious parties. He amended the
4 The record indicates plaintiff's medical expenses as of January 2023 exceeded $1.2 million dollars. A-1889-24 8 complaint in June 2021 to include Cali Carting as a defendant, solely for the
purposes of discovery.
Galaxy's Summary Judgment Motion and Plaintiff's Motion for Reconsideration
In April 2022, Galaxy moved for summary judgment. Primarily, Galaxy
argued that discovery had not shown any control over the public roadway on
River Road or how the trash would be collected and, therefore, it did not owe a
duty to plaintiff. Galaxy asserted that Cali Carting was responsible for "the
matter, means and method of pickup." Galaxy also urged against creating a
precedent that would make homeowners responsible for the injuries of trash
collectors or mail carriers who operate in the public roads.
In reply, plaintiff contrasted Galaxy Towers from "Mr. and Mrs. Jones
taking a few items out to the curb", underscoring the large number of Guttenberg
residents who reside in the Towers. Plaintiff stressed that, unlike every other
residential premises in the Township, Galaxy Towers required trash collection
services six days a week. Plaintiff also stressed that this collection took up to
forty-five minutes to complete. During that lengthy time, Cali Carting
employees were exposed to the public road. Plaintiff argued the length of time
it took to collect trash was in Galaxy's control, because it chose to store its
dumpsters in an interior room that they had to be moved from in order to be
A-1889-24 9 emptied into an exterior parked truck.
Jung likewise opposed Galaxy's motion. She noted that Galaxy provided
the dumpsters. They were not fitted with any reflecting tape to aid drivers in
being able to spot them, which signified "they were intended to be used at an
off-roadway location."
The motion judge granted summary judgment to Galaxy. The judge
reasoned that Galaxy had not created a dangerous condition on its premises and
was not in control of the manner in which Cali Carting collected trash from
Tower Two. The judge noted Cali's deposition testimony that "ninety-five
percent" of Cali Carting's work is performed on public roads. The judge also
agreed with Galaxy's public policy concerns that, under plaintiff's theory, any
homeowner could be made liable for a third party striking a municipal employee
in the street in front of their residence.
Plaintiff moved for reconsideration. At that oral argument, plaintiff
attempted to ease the court's policy concerns by again pointing to the distinctive
size of the Galaxy complex and the amount of trash it generated as compared to
the average citizen. Plaintiff asserted that, unlike an average homeowner who
may occasionally have a lot of trash, Galaxy Towers required an extensive
pickup procedure all the time.
A-1889-24 10 The trial court remained unconvinced of plaintiff's arguments and denied
reconsideration. Plaintiff attempted to appeal at that point, but we declined
jurisdiction because plaintiff still had open claims against co-defendant Jung.
Jung's Accident Reconstruction Expert
After Galaxy's dismissal, the lawsuit proceeded with Jung as the sole
defendant. Jung presented an expert report of an accident reconstructionist.
With regard to Galaxy, the expert noted that designating the pickup spot at
Tower Two meant it was impossible for Cali Carting to park the truck out of the
roadway while collecting trash. The expert opined that the establishment of a
"loading area which necessitates personnel are operating in a travel way" reflects
"a disregard for the risks inherent with completing loading operations on the
road." To avoid this risk, Galaxy should have "transported the dumpsters to
other pickup locations, off the roadways," such as Towers One and Three. In
addition, the expert asserted that Cali Carting's crew should have placed warning
devices such as cones and flares at ten, 100 and 200 feet away from the back of
the truck. He opined that either Galaxy or Cali Carting should have established
a "temporary traffic control area" with cones and flashing lights.
After being served with the expert report, plaintiff moved for the trial
court to reconsider Galaxy's dismissal from the case in light of that report. The
A-1889-24 11 court denied that application, generally reiterating its earlier reasons for finding
that Galaxy did not have a duty to protect plaintiff while he was working in the
street.
Dismissal of Jung and the Present Appeal
In March 2024, plaintiff and Jung entered into a consent order that
stipulated Jung would pay him $100,000, the amount of her insurance policy
limits. However, the consent order was conditioned upon our court rejecting an
appeal of Galaxy's dismissal. Due to the conditional nature of the consent order,
we dismissed the appeal without prejudice, because the appeal was still
interlocutory.
Thereafter, in November 2024, Jung and plaintiff entered into a new
consent order that stipulated Jung would pay him the policy limits with no
conditions. Jung, along with Cali Carting, were accordingly dismissed from the
case with prejudice. This appeal by plaintiff followed.
Before us, plaintiff argues the trial court erred in concluding that Galaxy
owed no legal duty to plaintiff for the injuries he sustained in the crash in the
public roadway adjacent to its premises. Plaintiff contends that Galaxy
insinuated itself into the methods used to pick up trash from Tower Two , and
that it was a substantial causal factor in creating the dangerous condition.
A-1889-24 12 Plaintiff further notes that case law has recognized some instances in which a
landowner may be liable for accidents occurring off its premises.
Further, plaintiff submits that imposing liability on Galaxy would not
offend public policy, given its massive size, the frequency and length of time it
took to collect its garbage, and other distinctive facts that distinguish Galaxy
from an average homeowner.
II.
The pivotal question before us is whether Galaxy could owe plaintiff , a
garbage collector, a legal duty with respect to his safety in removing trash from
its premises and unloading it onto a garbage truck parked, apparently by
necessity, on the adjacent public street. We review that question of law de novo.
Qian v. Toll Bros., Inc., 223 N.J. 124, 135 (2015). As we do so, we consider
the record presented on summary judgment in a light most favorable to plaintiff
as the non-moving party. Brill v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 142 N.J. 520,
536 (1995).
In the domain of negligence law, New Jersey courts have been guided by
a multifactor test in ascertaining whether a legal duty of care should be imposed
under the common law. The Supreme Court expressed that multifactor test in
its seminal opinion in Hopkins, 132 N.J. at 439. The inquiry involves a weighing
A-1889-24 13 of: (1) "the relationship of the parties"; (2) "the nature of the attendant risk";
(3) "the opportunity and ability to exercise care"; and (4) "the public interest in
the proposed solution." Ibid.; see also Est. of Narleski v. Gomes, 244 N.J. 199,
223-27 (2020) (recognizing a defendant's duty of care in an auto accident case
upon applying these four criteria).
Before we analyze the four Hopkins factors, we must dispel the premise
that Galaxy cannot owe a duty to plaintiff because he was injured outside the
perimeter of Galaxy's property. It is undisputed that plaintiff and his crew of
trash collectors were moving dumpsters back and forth from inside the "interior
room" within Tower Two to the adjacent street where the sanitation truck was
parked. There is a close and repetitive nexus of movement on and off the
property.
Case law has recognized that landowners may, at times, owe a duty to
persons who come to their property but are foreseeably injured in nearby
locations. For example, in Nielsen v. Wal-Mart Store No. 2171, 429 N.J. Super.
251, 265 (App. Div. 2013), we held that a property owner owed a duty to a
contractor who slipped on loose gravel on the outside perimeter owned by the
site's developer. The plaintiff was an exterminator who fell on the perimeter of
a Wal-Mart store while in the process of providing services there. Id. at 254-
A-1889-24 14 55. The Wal-Mart owned only a unit in a larger commercial plot, and according
to the master deed was not contractually responsible for maintaining the exterior
area, which was owned by the developer. Ibid. Even so, we held the Wal-Mart
owed a duty of care because the store was "well-known to the plaintiff" and the
plaintiff was specifically present to exterminate pests for its benefit. Id. at 261.
Furthermore, Wal-Mart had directed the plaintiff to perform his work outside of
the perimeter of the store, rather than moving through the interior, meaning it
had placed him at risk of encountering a dangerous condition, loose sand and
gravel, without any warning. Id. at 263.
Here, plaintiff argues that Galaxy comparably was familiar with—and
benefited from—the garbage crews who came to service their complex six times
each week. According to plaintiff's interpretation of the events, Galaxy was the
catalyst that ended the safer previous means of Tower Two trash pickup from
within the premises, and which caused Cali Carting to have to upload the
dumpsters on the adjacent public street.
We have also recognized a landowner's duty in a context in which a
plaintiff was harmed by a third-party driver on a nearby public street. See
Mulraney v. Aueltto's Catering Nat. Valet Parking Servs., 293 N.J. Super. 315,
318 (App. Div. 1996). Mulraney concerned a pedestrian who was struck and
A-1889-24 15 killed by a car after she had parked across the highway from a venue. Ibid. The
venue had been aware that for particularly busy events, patrons often parked
across the highway and had even put up signage on some of these occasions, but
not the occasion when the pedestrian was killed. Id. at 318-19. We concluded
that because the venue was aware of the dangerous condition and had "the ability
to illuminate an area where pedestrians are likely to cross and/or provide
warnings," it was "fair and just" to impose a duty on the venue to mitigate against
this risk. Id. at 322. We deemed particularly important to our analysis, the fact
that the venue had "created" the dangerous condition "by its own business
operation" in hosting large events with the knowledge that some guests would
have to park "on the opposite side of a poorly illuminated county highway that
had no crossing for pedestrians." Id. at 323.
By comparison, we reached an opposite conclusion in Brierly v. Rode,
396 N.J. Super. 52, 57 (App. Div. 2007), which we decided after Mulraney. We
declined in Brierly to impose a duty of care on a defendant business that knew
patrons of a tavern across the street would use its parking lot outside of business
hours, after a patron of the tavern had been struck by a car crossing the street.
Ibid. We noted in Brierly that tavern patrons had used the defendant business's
parking while it was closed, signifying that the defendant was "far less able to
A-1889-24 16 assess or ameliorate the specific hazards" created by the tavern's operations.
Ibid.
On this record, we are satisfied that the trial court analytically erred in
placing such strong emphasis on the fact that plaintiff was struck and injured
while standing on a public street, steps away from the ingress and egress to
Tower Two. There is a sufficient nexus for a duty to be imposed in the
circumstances presented, which are more akin to the circumstances in Nielsen
and Mulraney and less comparable to Brierly.
That said, we proceed to discuss the four Hopkins factors as they may bear
upon to this case. We do so subject to the amplified or clarifying evidence that
may emerge at trial, and which may affect the ultimate duty analysis. Based on
the present record, the four factors collectively support the recognition of a duty
owed by Galaxy to plaintiff in the distinctive circumstances involved here.
1. The relationship of the parties. As we have pointed out, plaintiff and
his fellow trash collection crew members were frequently on the premises, as
many as six times per week. It took the crews forty or more minutes to collect
the refuse from the dumpsters in all three towers. They were present to provide
a service of considerable benefits, including but not limited to sanitation
benefits, to Galaxy and its residents. We need not classify whether plaintiff was
A-1889-24 17 an "invitee" or whether some other term better describes his status in routinely
coming to and from the premises and spending many work hours there. Hopkins,
132 N.J. at 438 (eschewing rigid categorical classifications such as invitees and
licensees).
Moreover, Galaxy initiated the change of pickup location, and it supplied
Cali Carting with the traffic cones that were used as (what proved to be
inadequate) a means of traffic control. See, e,g., Sanna v. Nat'l Sponge Co., 209
N.J. Super. 60, 68-69 (App. Div. 1986) (in which the landowner's provision of
equipment used by the plaintiff to create a scaffold was a factor in imposing a
duty).
In recognizing a potential duty of care owed by Galaxy, we are mindful
of the role of plaintiff's employer—who he cannot sue in tort—as arguably being
in a position to reduce the chances of a motor vehicle collision on River Road
with one of its workers while unloading a dumpster from Tower Two. For
instance, the employer might have deployed brighter and bigger warning signs,
used a flagman to divert traffic, or arranged police protection from the Township
while the unloading from that tower was taking place. But the possibility of
such measures does not eliminate a claim that Galaxy was a concurrent and
substantial cause, if not the main one, in endangering plaintiff. See Conklin v.
A-1889-24 18 Hannoch Weisman, 145 N.J. 395, 417 (1996) (addressing situations in which a
defendant’s negligent conduct combines with other causes that lead to a
plaintiff’s injury or harm); Camp v. Jiffy Lube No. 114, 309 N.J. Super. 305,
309 (App. Div. 1998) (same); see also Model (Civil) Jury Charge, 6.12
"Proximate Cause – Where there is Claim That Concurrent Causes of Harm
Were Present" (Rev. Nov. 2023).
2. The nature of the attendant risk. The risks of severe injury in wheeling
dumpsters from the designated room out to River Road (a busy street), and back
are considerable. The risk was increased substantially when Galaxy declared
that the trash from Tower Two could no longer be picked up at the previous safer
location.
3. The opportunity and ability to exercise care. Viewing the record in a
light most favorable to plaintiff, there appear to be several plausible ways in
which Galaxy might have been able to reduce the risk of ham. The most
effective of these means, of course, was for Galaxy to allow the former means
of trash pickup to continue. Beyond that, Galaxy might have provided Cali
Carting with better equipment such as dumpsters with reflective tape, larger
traffic cones than the three provided, or other measures such as an illuminated
A-1889-24 19 sign or an employee holding a flag.5 We recognize that plaintiff's employer
would have the primary responsibility to make the means of pickup safer. But
Galaxy arguably had an important role as well, particularly in eliminating the
former, safer method of removing Tower Two refuse.
4. The public interest in the proposed solution. We respectfully part
company with the trial court on this factor. We acknowledge that our case law
has declined, by analogy, in sidewalk liability cases to impose high duties of
care on residential homeowners with regard to maintaining public sidewalks
adjacent to their premises. Stewart v. 104 Wallace Street, Inc., 87 N.J. 146, 159
(1981); Padilla v. Young Il An, 257 N.J. 540, 562-63 (2024). Although Galaxy
Towers is a mixed-use property with both residential units and businesses, the
dominant use of the property is residential. See Luchejko v. City of Hoboken,
207 N.J. 191, 211 (2011) (treating a mixed-use condominium project as
residential for sidewalk liability purposes).
Nonetheless, the imposition of a duty of care on Galaxy in the distinctive
circumstances presented here would not have to extend such a duty to average
5 Out of fairness to Galaxy, we do not rely on any of the safety suggestions identified by Jung's accident reconstruction expert. By the time his report was tendered to the trial court, Galaxy had already been dismissed from the case and had no opportunity to depose the expert or counter his opinions. A-1889-24 20 homeowners. As noted above, Galaxy has over 1,000 units, over 3,000
residents, and comprises about one-third of the Township's population. Its
dimensions along with the frequency and duration of trash pickup are unlike that
of the average homeowner. The recognition of a duty here could be confined to
this particular and unique setting, and finding such a duty could help prevent
future injuries.
In sum, the trial court's summary judgment order must be vacated, and its
categorical rejection of a duty reversed. The contours of a duty can be finalized
in the jury charge in light of the actual evidence adduced at trial.
Vacated in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further proceedings.
We do not retain jurisdiction.
A-1889-24 21