Over the past few years, I’ve burned more than a few pixels talking about the MTA’s legal liability. Most recently, in December, following a horrific accident involving a passenger and the gap fillers at Union Square, I wondered if the authority needed some tort protection. After all, does it make sense for the taxpayers to subsidize excessive jury awards when oftentimes the victims are contributorily negligent as well?
Yesterday, an Appellate Division state court showed that the system as it is established now seems to have enough legal checks and balances to work well. A Harlem man in 2009 won a $1.8 million verdict from the MTA when a jury determined he wasn’t drunk as he stepped in the path of an oncoming bus while crossing the street. The appeals court though tossed the verdict and ordered a new trial based on clear inconsistencies in the testimony and too much compassion on behalf of the jury. “Albeit very infrequently, juries sometimes make findings that are utterly without foundation in the law or the evidence,” the ruling says. “This is one such case, and the finding of no comparative negligence is so irrational as to require that we unconditionally direct a new trial.”
Usually, the multi-million-dollar awards make headlines, but those awards don’t trigger an instant payment. The MTA is bound to appeal most cases that would require a large outlay, and here, the judicial system functioned as it should. The authority may still wind up on the hook for some damages, but if Claude Williams was indeed intoxicated at the time of the accident, the award will be far smaller than originally assessed.
5 comments
Seems stupidity is not limited to the NYC subway system:
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Litigating that case and brining it through the appeal process has already cost the MTA well into six figures. There’s no way this has been accomplished for a value of less than 100,000 metro card swipes, to put it in context. The next august jury will split liability 90-10 and award 1.6 million. The system needs to snuff out these suits at the complain stage. This is a huge drag on the provision of public services, let alone private commerce.
This is not true. The MTA has in-house counsel whose job it is to defend the agency against lawsuits. It isn’t like the MTA hires white-shoe law firms and has to pay. Even in circumstances in which the technical amount of fees that can be awarded to an agency are high, that does not mean that the litigation “cost” the agency that much (fee calculations rely on the legal fiction that all lawyers work on a law-firm type billing cycle).
And again, if the next jury finds the MTA negligent, then you know what, I’m going to take the word of two sets of juries who have heard all the evidence over your opinion, based on very few facts, that the case is frivolous.
Only frivolous accusations need to be fettered out at the complaint stage via SJ/dismissal with sanctions. The rest of the complaints have two sides to them and this is why we have courts…
Benjamin – as a law student, you have learned to read decisions carefully. You didn’t point out that this decision, by a New York County jury (not known for their generosity or being particularly plaintiff) (in front of a good judge who knows the law), was overturned on liability grounds only. This means that at the retrial, the issue of damages will not be decided. this jury has already decided that and the TA did choose to appeal that. The issue will be that of liablity. the new jury will decided if the TA bus driver was negligent, whether the plaintiff was contributorily negligent and the percentage that each should be held responsible.
As we’ve discussed before, the TA plays many and many games when it comes to litigation. They don’t settle cases that should be settled (clear liability), they withhold evidence to the last possible minute despite numerous court orders and the beneficiary of a judiciary that bends backwards to not rule against the City and TA (argued in the same part).
Clearly, counsel for the Plaintiff has placed his opinion on this page. He currently resides in a housing project that he would like to control. He seems to have a thing for people who are involved in criminal lifestyles and egregious personal behavior.
His client was inebriated beyond walking a straight line and counting backwards from 20. He got hit by a bus because he was drunk. It is cases like these, in which ambulance chasing lawyers find victims of their own stupidity and lack of personal control and/or dignity, that are tying our courts up with frivolous lawsuits conducted by slimey attorneys who want a quick 33.3% payday while the “victims” of accidents want a payday to purchase a brand new Cadillac Escalade and a lifestyle that they will not be able to maintain in 2-3years.
Ezra B. Glaser is AK. He’s a slimeball.