Koff v Lawson
Categories
Attorneys and Parties
Brief Summary
Personal injury / motor vehicle-pedestrian accident liability and summary judgment standards.
The trial court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment and dismissed the complaint.
The Appellate Division reversed the order granting summary judgment, denied defendant's motion, and reinstated the complaint.
Defendant failed to establish as a matter of law that she was not negligent or that any negligence on her part was not a proximate cause of the accident. Her own proof raised triable issues of fact about whether she could have seen plaintiff in time to avoid the collision, despite plaintiff's intoxication and mid-road crossing. The court also held that the emergency doctrine did not entitle defendant to judgment as a matter of law.
Background
Plaintiff sought damages after being struck by, or colliding with, defendant's vehicle while crossing a four-lane roadway late at night after leaving a concert venue. Plaintiff was highly intoxicated and crossed outside a crosswalk. He made it across two eastbound lanes, with one eastbound driver swerving to avoid him, then moved through the median area and into the westbound lanes, where the collision with defendant occurred. The case involved the interaction between a driver's duty under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1146 (a) [motorists must exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian upon any roadway] and a pedestrian's duties under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1151 (b) [a pedestrian may not suddenly leave a curb or place of safety and enter a vehicle's path when it is too close for the driver to yield] and Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1152 (a) [a pedestrian crossing outside a marked or unmarked crosswalk must yield the right of way to vehicles on the roadway].
Lower Court Decision
Supreme Court, Monroe County, granted defendant summary judgment dismissing the complaint, apparently accepting defendant's position that plaintiff's conduct in crossing the roadway while intoxicated made him solely responsible or otherwise defeated the claim.
Appellate Division Reversal
The Appellate Division unanimously reversed. It held that defendant, as the summary judgment movant, had the burden to show either that she was not negligent or that any negligence was not a proximate cause of the accident. Although defendant showed that she was not speeding, was not impaired, and had not violated traffic laws, her submissions also showed that plaintiff had already crossed multiple lanes and that another driver observed him and swerved to avoid him. Because there was no evidence that defendant's view of the oncoming lanes or median was obstructed, her own proof created factual issues as to whether she could have seen plaintiff and exercised due care to avoid the collision. The court further rejected defendant's reliance on the emergency doctrine as a basis for summary judgment, noting that its application is generally for the trier of fact.
Legal Significance
This decision reinforces that in New York pedestrian-vehicle cases, a defendant driver moving for summary judgment must affirmatively eliminate triable issues on negligence and proximate cause; it is not enough to argue only that the pedestrian was at fault. Even where the pedestrian was intoxicated and crossing outside a crosswalk, summary judgment is improper if the defendant's own evidence suggests the pedestrian was visible long enough for evasive action. The case also underscores that the emergency doctrine usually does not resolve such cases as a matter of law because reasonableness in an emergency is ordinarily a fact question.
A driver's clean record of speed, sobriety, and traffic-law compliance does not automatically warrant summary judgment in a pedestrian accident case when the evidence still permits a finding that the driver should have seen the pedestrian and could have tried to avoid the collision.