Practice point: Plaintiff was injured while riding
in an elevator in defendant's apartment building. On her way up to her
fifth-floor apartment, the elevator stopped at the third floor. After a
fellow passenger left the elevator cab, the outer door failed to swing
completely shut. Plaintiff pushed the door open with both hands,
attempting to let the door swing shut on its own, but a gap of
several inches remained between the door and the door jamb. After two
such attempts to close the door proved unsuccessful, plaintiff reached
around the edge of the door with her right hand and pulled it toward
her, whereupon the door swung closed onto her hand, injuring the middle
and ring fingers.
The alleged malfunction of the third-floor elevator door
notwithstanding, the defect was not the proximate cause of plaintiff's
injury, which was the immediate result of her own act of pulling the
door onto her own hand. This act was not foreseeable in the
normal course of events resulting from defendant's alleged negligence. Having no
interior handle, the elevator door is not designed to be pulled inward,
and plaintiff's doing so superseded any defect in the door's condition,
severing the nexus between defendant's asserted negligence and
plaintiff's injury.
Student note: Plaintiff conceded that both a stairway and a second
elevator afforded safe, alternative access to her fifth floor, and she did not face any circumstances that required her to
continue using the defective elevator.
Case: Arbeau v. New York City Housing Authority, NY Slip Op 01773 (1st Dept. 2013).
Here is the decision.
Tomorrow's issue: Labor Law 240(1).
