We are pleased to report that Freehill partner Ryan Byrnes and associate Jason Kramer successfully obtained summary judgment of a personal injury matter in the Supreme Court of New York, Queens County. In the case of Velasquez v. 88 Cypress, LLC, the plaintiff alleged that he sustained an ankle fracture due to a purported slip and fall resulting from an allegedly defective sidewalk in front of the landowner defendant’s premises in Queens, NY. Bolstered by the deposition and affidavit testimony obtained from the premises owner as well as its commercial tenant in tandem with the opinions offered by our engineering expert, we argued that the plaintiff had failed to establish the existence of any defective condition, that there was no evidence in the record to demonstrate that our client created the condition and that no evidence supported that our client had actual or constructive notice of the alleged defect. Moreover, we argued that the opinions offered by the plaintiff’s expert failed to raise a triable issue of fact insofar as they were so lacking in support so as to constitute mere speculation.
In a decision issued by the Honorable Cassandra A. Johnson, the Court found that the defendant adequately demonstrated that it had neither actual notice nor constructive notice of the condition which the plaintiff alleged to have been the proximate cause of his injury. The Court further agreed with our position that the plaintiff expert’s speculative conclusions failed to raise a triable issue of fact. Accordingly, the Court granted summary judgment in our client’s favor and dismissed the plaintiff’s Complaint. A copy of Judge Johnson’s decision can be viewed here.