Who Is Responsible When An Automatic Door Malfunctions?
April, 2010
In Singh v. United Cerebral Palsy of New York City, 2010 NY Slip Op 01602 (February 25, 2010), the Appellate Court held that the building owner was not entitled to summary judgment where issues of fact exist as to the applicability of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. In Singh, Plaintiff alleged that she sustained an injury to her shoulders on December 5, 2003, when she walked through the automatic swinging doors in an enclosed walkway between two buildings owned and occupied by Defendant (UCP) when the doors allegedly closed and hit Plaintiff. Plaintiff’s allegation was that the motion sensor, located on top of the doors, was defective as it did not detect her as she walked through the doorway.
Defendant’s maintenance staff was not responsible for repairing either the doors or the sensor mechanism, a fact that was undisputed by the parties. Defendant retained Miric Industries Inc. (“Miric”, Defendant/Third-Party Defendant) to perform work at the building. Miric retained Reliable Door Corp. ("Reliable", Third-Party Defendant) to perform work on the doors and/or sensor mechanism. During the course of discovery, an invoice was obtained that indicated that Reliable did, in fact, adjust the motion sensor on May 14, 2002, prior to the incident at issue.
Plaintiff alleged that Defendant had actual and constructive notice of the alleged defect, and was negligent in failing to inspect the doors on a regular basis, and in failing to maintain proper alignment of the beam that opens and closes the doors. The law in New York states that a property owner is liable for a defective condition on its property if the plaintiff can demonstrate either that the owner created the defect at issue or had actual or constructive notice of the defect. Id. In order for constructive notice of a defect to be applicable, such defect must both be visible and apparent, and must have existed for a sufficient period of time prior to the accident at issue in order to allow the owner’s employees to both notice and remedy the defect. The trial court held that Defendant met its burden of demonstrating that it did not create the defect, did not have notice (actual or constructive) of the defect, and did not have a duty to regularly inspect the sensor mechanism.
Plaintiff also asserted a claim sounding in res ipsa loquitur which stands for the proposition that, where the actual or specific cause of an accident is unknown, a jury may in certain circumstances infer negligence merely from the happening of an event and the defendant’s relationship to it. A plaintiff must establish all three (3) elements in order for the doctrine to apply: (1) plaintiff’s injury does not ordinary occur absent negligence; (2) plaintiff’s injury must be caused by an agency or instrumentality within defendant’s exclusive control; and (3) plaintiff’s injury must not have been due to any voluntary action or contribution by plaintiff. Id. The doctrine is a common-sense appraisal of the probative value of circumstantial evidence that establishes a prima facie case entitling a plaintiff’s case to go to the jury.
The motion court noted that Defendant did not dispute that Plaintiff established the first element of the doctrine. The Court also noted that Defendant failed to prove that Plaintiff contributed to the accident. The Court then held that res ipsa loquitur can apply where more than one defendant could have exercised exclusive control (i.e., UCP and Reliable). The Court noted the fact that UCP and Reliable did not have an exclusive maintenance contract for the doors, which the Court contrasted with the situation in Hodges v. Royal Realty Corp., 42 A.D.3d 350, 839 N.Y.S.2d 499 (1st Dep't 2007), where the court declined to apply the doctrine because the building’s managing agent did not have exclusive control of the elevator and the owner of the building entered into an exclusive service contract with an outside company. Finally, the Court was not convinced by Defendant’s argument that it did not have exclusive control as the doors and sensor were accessible to the public on a daily basis, any of whom could have affected the motion sensor, as the sensor was out of their reach as it was on top of the doors.
The Appellate Court held that Plaintiff raised an issue of fact as to res ipsa loquitur, and, as such, the motion court’s denial of Defendant’s motion for summary judgment was upheld. The Appellate Court also upheld the motion court’s decision which found that Reliable was the only entity that performed any work on the doors and, in fact, performed work on the motion sensor prior to the accident at issue. Based on this fact, as well as Plaintiff's testimony that she observed problems with the automatic doors prior to her accident, the Court held that triable issues of fact existed as to whether Reliable’s negligence was the cause of Plaintiff's accident and its cross-motion was therefore denied.
The Court further held that no evidence was submitted that the actions of Miric or the lack thereof were the cause of Plaintiff's injuries, as Miric’s sole responsibility was to contact Reliable if a problem with the doors and/or sensor was noted. As such, the motion court should have granted Miric’s cross-motion for summary judgment.
Learning Point
In New York, even if the building owner is not responsible for inspecting or performing repairs on the injury causing instrumentality, it can be found to be in exclusive control of that instrumentality, thereby satisfying the ‘exclusive control’ element of the res ipsa loquitur doctrine.
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