Juana Guzman-Martinez v. City of Plainfield

New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division·Decided October 27, 2025·No. A-4064-23·Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION This opinion shall not "constitute precedent or be binding upon any court ."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-4064-23

JUANA GUZMAN-MARTINEZ, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v. CITY OF PLAINFIELD,

Defendant/Third-Party

Plaintiff-Respondent,

and

CITY OF PLAINFIELD DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS,

Defendant-Respondent,

v.

PUBLIC SERVICE ENTERPRISE GROUP D/B/A PSE&G,

Third-Party Defendant.

Submitted September 11, 2025 – Decided October 27, 2025

Before Judges Smith and Berdote Byrne.

On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Union County, Docket No. L-3137-21.

Smith & Schwartzstein, LLC, attorneys for appellant (Andrew B. Smith, on the briefs).

Rainone Coughlin Minchello, LLC, attorneys for respondents (Thomas Schoendorf, of counsel and on the brief).

PER CURIAM Plaintiff Juana Guzman-Martinez appeals a May 30, 2024 order dismissing plaintiff's complaint on summary judgment pursuant to the New Jersey Tort Claims Act (TCA) 1, along with an August 9, 2024 order denying plaintiff's motion for reconsideration.

In a municipal parking lot owned and maintained by defendants, plaintiff tripped over a wire inside a pothole and suffered injury. The trial court initially denied defendants' motion for summary judgment but granted it upon reconsideration. Analyzing N.J.S.A. 59:4-2, the trial court found defendants had no actual or constructive notice of the pothole and that defendants' conduct was not palpably unreasonable. The court then denied plaintiff's motion for reconsideration. We affirm.

1 N.J.S.A. 59:1-1 to 12-3.

A-4064-23

I.

A.

We obtain the facts from the summary judgment record, viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, the non-moving party. Richter v. Oakland Bd. of Educ., 246 N.J. 507, 515 (2021).

On November 25, 2020, plaintiff tripped and fell while traversing Municipal Lot No. 9 (the lot), a permit-restricted parking lot. The lot was owned by the Town of Plainfield and maintained by the Plainfield Department of Public Works (DPW) (collectively, the municipal defendants, or defendants). Plaintiff had been walking to her car in the early morning when she tripped on a wire either just outside or within a pothole measuring approximately ten feet in length and five feet in width. The pothole varied in depth from three quarters of an inch to two inches. The pothole and wire were buried under snow, which in turn was covered in paper, leaves, and garbage. As a result of the fall, plaintiff suffered a left foot fracture which required surgery. At her deposition, plaintiff testified that she did not notice the wire or the pothole on the two prior occasions she had been in the parking lot.

After the accident, plaintiff's daughter took photos of the lot. Plaintiff was not present when the photos were taken, and the photos were not

A-4064-23

timestamped. At her deposition, plaintiff circled one of the photos to mark the pothole's location. However, the record before us contains no photos showing plaintiff's mark, nor does it contain photos which predate the accident.

At his deposition, John Louise, DPW's superintendent during the relevant time, testified about the department's process for handling property maintenance complaints about city property. Complaints were recorded in written form and organized by calendar year. 2 After a search, Louise found no DPW complaints about the lot condition in 2020. He further testified that he was unaware of any complaints regarding snow removal or potholes in the lot on or near November 25, 2020. Additionally, he was unaware of any records which would show that the DPW plowed snow from the lot prior to the accident.

In August 2020, third-party defendant Public Service Enterprise Group (PSE&G) installed a new utility pole adjacent to the lot. Louise also testified that utility companies, including PSE&G, do not notify DPW when they install new poles. There is nothing in the record which shows that defendants' employees were present in the lot at any time during the pole installation.

2 Plaintiff states that DPW's complaint records were never produced "despite repeated requests[.]" Our review of the record revealed no orders of the motion court granting or denying plaintiff relief based on defendants' failure to produce the complaint records.

A-4064-23

Plaintiff's expert, Dr. Donna Ryduchowski, P.E., issued an expert report in which she stated:

The asphalt pavement at the parking lot was observed as heavily deteriorated, with numerous cracks and potholes at intermittent locations (Photos 5, 6). 3 There was a pothole of irregular shape approximately up to 5ft. wide and up to 10 ft. long in the parking lot pavement that the plaintiff identified as the location of her accident (Photos 7 and 8). The pothole, partially filled with loose gravel at unknown time, was of uneven depths that varied approximately from 3/4 inch to 2 inches below the pavement surface (Photos 9, 10 and 11). The photographs of the accident site on or shortly after the fall provided by [p]laintiff show that the site was in a similar condition at the time of the fall, minus the snow and debris . . . .

Dr. Ryduchowski opined that:

It may be assumed that the asphalt pavement's deterioration, which resulted in the potholes formation at the [lot], was due to loads impacted by the parking lot patrons' vehicles traffic over a period of years. In addition, poor design, construction practice and materials quality used in the past for the parking lot pavement construction might possibly have been contributing factors to the asphalt deterioration resulting in the potholes formation. This condition was there long before the accident and was noticeable by simple observation, and [it] should have been addressed by the City of Plainfield. Finally, it can be further assumed that no successful effort has been made by the property owner, the City of Plainfield, to properly

3 The photos referenced in the Dr. Ryduchowski's expert report are not contained in the record before us.

A-4064-23

repair or replace the damaged, filled with potholes, deteriorated asphalt pavement.

[(Emphasis added).]

In her certification, Dr. Ryduchowski stated that "the 'heavily deteriorated'

pavement did not happen overnight. A pothole of that size would have been formed and/or made visible for years prior to the accident at issue here."

B.

Plaintiff sued defendants on September 10, 2021. Plainfield answered and filed a third-party complaint against PSE&G. Plaintiff amended her complaint in April 2022, alleging that defendants' and PSE&G's negligent maintenance, cleaning, barricading, and posting of warnings caused plaintiff to be injured. The municipal defendants, along with PSE&G, moved for summary judgment on February 15, 2024. On March 21, the trial court granted summary judgment dismissing PSE&G, but denied the motion as to the municipal defendants, making findings in a written statement of reasons. Concerning the municipal defendants, the court found there were genuine issues of material fact about whether: the lot constituted a dangerous condition under the TCA; plaintiff's injury was proximately caused by the alleged dangerous condition; defendants' employees' acts or omissions created the alleged dangerous condition; the alleged dangerous condition created a foreseeable risk of injury; defendants had A-4064-23

constructive notice of the alleged dangerous condition; the alleged dangerous condition caused plaintiff's injuries; and whether defendants' conduct was palpably unreasonable.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Juana Guzman-Martinez v. City of Plainfield, (N.J. Ct. App. 2025).

Juana Guzman-Martinez v. City of Plainfield (Juana Guzman-Martinez v. City of Plainfield) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

D'Atria v. D'Atria
576 A.2d 957 (New Jersey Superior Court App Division, 1990)
Palombi v. Palombi
997 A.2d 1139 (New Jersey Superior Court App Division, 2010)
Chatman v. Hall
608 A.2d 263 (Supreme Court of New Jersey, 1992)
Muhammad v. New Jersey Transit
821 A.2d 1148 (Supreme Court of New Jersey, 2003)
Lodato v. EVESHAM TP.
909 A.2d 745 (New Jersey Superior Court App Division, 2006)
Sims v. City of Newark
581 A.2d 524 (New Jersey Superior Court App Division, 1990)
Kolitch v. Lindedahl
497 A.2d 183 (Supreme Court of New Jersey, 1985)
Milacci v. Mato Realty Co., Inc.
525 A.2d 1120 (New Jersey Superior Court App Division, 1987)
Petersen v. Falzarano
79 A.2d 50 (Supreme Court of New Jersey, 1951)
Yuhas v. Mudge
322 A.2d 824 (New Jersey Superior Court App Division, 1974)
In Re Donohue
748 A.2d 598 (New Jersey Superior Court App Division, 2000)
Brill v. Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America
666 A.2d 146 (Supreme Court of New Jersey, 1995)
Edward McGlynn, Jr. v. State of New Jersey
82 A.3d 252 (New Jersey Superior Court App Division, 2014)
Christina Silviera-Francisco v. Board of Education of Elizabeth(074974)
129 A.3d 1032 (Supreme Court of New Jersey, 2016)
Fine v. City of Margate
48 F. Supp. 3d 772 (D. New Jersey, 2014)
Nicholas v. Mynster
64 A.3d 536 (Supreme Court of New Jersey, 2013)
RSI Bank v. Providence Mut. Fire Ins. Co.
191 A.3d 629 (Supreme Court of New Jersey, 2018)