Applying recent precedent

I was one of many attorneys to blog about Rodriguez v. City of New York when the Court of Appeals decided the matter in April of this year. This case, of course, is the one which finally, conclusively held that comparative negligence by a plaintiff is irrelevant in determining the defendant’s negligence as a matter of law. In the few months since that decision has come out, my arguments invoking it have lead to two very nice outcomes for injured plaintiffs. 

Summary Judgment

In one of these cases, a driver decided to reverse his car into a crosswalk where a pedestrian was walking, with the light in her favor. And, predictably, he hit her and knocked her down. 

I wrote the papers on the pedestrian’s motion for summary judgment, pointing out different violations of the traffic code and noting that the driver failed in his duty to see the plaintiff, who was in plain sight. 

The driver’s opposition was written before Rodriguez and didn’t dispute any of this. Instead, it argued that even with these violations, there was still an issue of fact as to the pedestrian’s own negligence. (There really wasn’t, but we all have to represent our clients…)

After that is when Rodriguez was decided, and after that is when our reply was due. Easiest reply I’ve ever done — we didn’t do much more than provide the citation, recite the facts and holding, and leave it there. This was enough to knock down the defendant’s claims and win summary judgment on liability.

Settlement

This case concerned a septuagenarian NYC bicyclist who would cruise along at a top speed of 4 mph. While riding in a Manhattan bike lane, he entered an intersection intending to go straight through it. A truck alongside him, in the left turn lane, failed to see him (even though he had the right of way, as he was going straight) and began turning left in front of him. The cyclist, quite reasonably, stopped his bike and backed up as far as he could go into a striped safety area of the pavement. Unfortunately, he couldn’t back up far enough, and the truck caught his bike and knocked him down.

The cyclist moved for summary judgment but it was denied since this was before Rodriguez and the motion court construed the evidence to show some questions of fact as to the cyclist’s own negligence. 

When the case got to me on the appeal, we already had a solid basis to reverse the denial because there was no evidence of this alleged contributory negligence in the record. But once Rodriguez was issued, I got to experience that exceptional moment when a very good chance becomes a virtual slam dunk.

And indeed, with Rodriguez as our first point in the brief (followed of course by alternative arguments challenging the motion court’s view of the evidence), the case quickly settled. When so many fellow cyclists never see any compensation for their injuries, it was incredibly gratifying to help recover a tidy sum in this case.

Both these cases stood a solid chance of seeing a positive result even without Rodriguez — but awaiting the outcome would have been much more stressful, and possibly it wouldn’t have gone our way at all. Reviewing recent case law can be tedious but it pays great rewards when I can make my clients’ cases easier.