Petrucci v. City of New York

167 A.D.2d 29, 569 N.Y.S.2d 624, 1991 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5567
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedMay 7, 1991
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 167 A.D.2d 29 (Petrucci v. City of New York) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Petrucci v. City of New York, 167 A.D.2d 29, 569 N.Y.S.2d 624, 1991 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5567 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1991).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Ellerin, J.

Plaintiff, who suffered personal injuries on February 14, 1984, as a result of a trip and fall on a defective sidewalk, commenced this action against, inter alia, the appellant, City of New York (City), on the ground that it had failed to maintain the sidewalk in a reasonably safe condition, and against respondent, New York City Transit Authority (Transit), based upon allegations that the hazardous condition had been caused by vehicles belonging to Transit at some time prior to the date of the accident. In April 1985, the defendant City cross-claimed against the codefendant Transit for indemnification and/or apportionment of damages. Subsequently, Transit successfully moved to dismiss plaintiff’s claim against it for failure to state a cause of action. In granting that motion, the court, after noting that an affidavit had been submitted by Transit stating that it had had no vehicles in the vicinity at any time between September 1983 and February 14, 1984, found that the submissions by plaintiff, asserting that Transit equipment had caused the damage to the sidewalk some 2 to 2Vi years before the accident, mandated a finding of no causal connection or actionable tort, as a matter of law. The court also found, as a further basis for dismissal, that both the notice of claim and action were untimely. That decision was not appealed.

Transit thereafter moved for dismissal of the City’s cross claim against it pursuant to CPLR 3211 and 3212. The IAS court, observing that the facts alleged appeared to be consistent with a theory of contribution rather than indemnification, granted the motion for dismissal on the ground that Transit bore no duty to maintain the sidewalk and that since any damage it may have caused to the sidewalk occurred some 4 or 5 years earlier, the Statute of Limitations had run and the City’s claim was untimely. It is the City’s appeal from that dismissal that is now before us.

As a threshold issue, we find that the court erred in dismissing the City’s claims against Transit as untimely. It is well established that claims for contribution do not accrue for purposes of the Statute of Limitations until the party seeking contribution has made payment to the injured party (Bay [33]*33Ridge Air Rights v State of New York, 44 NY2d 49, 53; Woolworth Co. v Southbridge Towers, 101 AD2d 434, 440). While we agree that claims against the New York City Transit Authority are subject to the requirements of General Municipal Law § 50-i, which requires that any action be commenced within 1 year and 90 days of the event upon which the claim is based, that section applies only to actions for "personal injury, wrongful death or damage to real or personal property”, and has no application to an action for indemnification and/or contribution (see, Vine v Manville Sales Corp., 158 AD2d 842, 843, n; Dutton v Mitek Realty Corp., 95 AD2d 769). Accordingly, to the extent that the IAS court’s dismissal was based on untimeliness, it was in error.

Turning to the merits, the City argues that the pleadings and the affidavits submitted to the IAS court were sufficient, both with respect to indemnity and contribution, to withstand Transit’s motions to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action and for summary judgment.

While the City’s pleading of its cross claims, in obviously boilerplate language, does include talismanic references to the words "apportionment”, "indemnification” and "contractual indemnification” and alleges the City’s entitlement thereto, the pleading is otherwise sadly bereft of any enlightenment as to the factual basis on which such relief is to be predicated. It is evident from the record, however, that while there are allegations that the defendants collectively failed to repair the sidewalk and permitted it to remain in an unsafe condition, the thrust of the claim against Transit is based upon its alleged conduct, sometime prior to the accident, in causing damage to, or creating a dangerous condition on, the sidewalk where plaintiff was injured. It is clear that Transit’s conduct in creating the defective condition on the sidewalk, which remained unrepaired, does not provide a valid predicate for common-law indemnification of the City. Whatever the law may have been prior to the watershed decision in Dole v Dow Chem. Co. (30 NY2d 143), it is now well established that when the City is held liable for breaching its own independent duty to keep the public sidewalks in a reasonably safe condition of repair, it is not entitled to common-law indemnification, which requires that the one claiming indemnification has committed no wrong and is being held liable solely "by virtue of some relationship with the tort-feasor or obligation imposed by law” (D’Ambrosio v City of New York, 55 NY2d 454, 461).

Nor is the City entitled to indemnification pursuant to [34]*34Administrative Code of the City of New York § 19-107, which provides that: "In all cases where any person shall perform any of the work mentioned in section 19-106 of this title, either under contract with the city or by virtue of permission obtained from any agency of the city, such person shall be answerable for any damage which may be occasioned to persons, animals or property by reason of carelessness in any manner connected with the work.” Neither plaintiff nor the City has made any allegations which would bring the work alleged to have been done by Transit within the purview of this section. There is no indication in either the complaint or the cross complaint that Transit was under contract to the City or had received its permission to perform the work, or that the work involved any of the activities, such as digging down, paving or obstructing a public street, described in section 19-106.

Moreover, even if it were shown that Transit came within the purview of section 19-107, that provision cannot be construed as imposing an obligation upon the contractor to indemnify the City for damages occasioned by the City’s own negligence in failing to fulfill an independent duty which it owed to third parties such as plaintiff. Instead, the statutory language demonstrates an intent to render the contractor responsible for those damages actually caused to injured third parties or property by its own negligence or carelessness. The provision does not contain the kind of broad expansive language that readily indicates that indemnification of another co-tort-feasor for its own negligence is contemplated (see, e.g., Levine v Shell Oil Co., 28 NY2d 205) and the words used should not be enlarged to read into them a duty to indemnify which was not clearly intended (cf., Hooper Assocs. v AGS Computers, 74 NY2d 487). Therefore, the dismissal of the City’s cross claim by the IAS court was proper insofar as it relates to a claim for indemnification.

With respect to the claim for contribution, however, a different situation prevails. A claim for contribution and apportionment of liability would properly lie in this case upon a showing that Transit breached a duty to either plaintiff or the City and thereby contributed to plaintiff’s injuries (Schauer v Joyce, 54 NY2d 1, 5; Trustees of Columbia Univ. v Mitchell/Giurgola Assocs., 109 AD2d 449, 454). In arguing that the City has failed to set out these elements, Transit primarily relies on the dismissal of plaintiff’s claim against it to demonstrate that it did not, in fact, breach any duty to [35]*35plaintiff.

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Bluebook (online)
167 A.D.2d 29, 569 N.Y.S.2d 624, 1991 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5567, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/petrucci-v-city-of-new-york-nyappdiv-1991.