LoGiudice v. Silverstein Properties, Inc.

48 A.D.3d 286, 851 N.Y.S.2d 187

• Court: Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
• Decided: February 14, 2008
• Status: Published

Opinion

Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Louis B. York, J), entered December 18, 2006, which, in an action for personal injuries, denied defendants’ and third-party defendant’s motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

Summary judgment dismissing the complaint is not warranted even assuming, in favor of defendants building owner and management company, that they did not have notice of any defect in the allegedly “curled-up” rain mat over which plaintiff, an employee of third-party defendant building maintenance contractor, tripped upon arriving for work in the early morning, and that fault for the accident can be ascribed only to third-party defendant, whose night-shift employee put the mat down before any of defendants’ employees had arrived for work. For this building that was open to the public, defendants had a nondelegable duty to provide the public, including third-party defendant’s employees, with reasonably safe means of ingress and egress, and can be held vicariously liable for any negligence by third-party defendant that caused the entrance to become unsafe (Backiel v Citibank, 299 AD2d 504 [2002]; see generally Kleeman v Rheingold, 81 NY2d 270, 274 [1993]). Issues of fact exist as to whether, inter alia, the mat made the entrance to the building unsafe. Concur—Andrias, J.P., Friedman, Sweeny and Moskowitz, JJ.