This case involved a 68 year old woman who tripped and fell over a broken sidewalk in Manhattan in front of a commercial building. Due to changes in the law, the City of New York is no longer responsible for repairing broken sidewalks (except for sidewalks located in front of one family homes) and that responsibility has been shifted to the building owner-landlord. In this case, the building owner did not timely repair the broken sidewalk causing our client's accident. Our client suffered a fractured hip and required surgical repair which was successfully performed at Bellevue Hospital. After a couple of months of rehabilitation, our client fortunately made a full recovery from her injuries and was able to resume all of her pre-accident activities.
A lawsuit was started in the Supreme Court of New York County. During the course of the lawsuit, the defendant building owner alleged that our client was partially at fault for this accident by not paying attention to where she was walking. Under New York State law, an injured victim can be held partially responsible for an accident which could reduce the monetary value of the case. In this particular case, we entered into lengthy settlement discussions and we were ultimately successful in obtaining a $350,000 settlement offer which was an excellent result for this type of case.
