In Morales v. New York City Housing Authority, plaintiff sued to recover for injuries he sustained after he slipped on a liquid or slippery substance (possibly urine) and fell down the stairs in a building owned and operated by defendants. The court (New York Supreme Court, Kings County) denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
Initially, it recited the legal principles governing a slip and fall case such as this:
A defendant moving for summary judgment in a premises liability case must make a prima facie showing that it maintained the premises in a reasonably safe condition and that it did not create a dangerous or defective condition on the property or have either actual or constructive notice of a dangerous condition for a sufficient length of time to remedy it. To impute constructive notice to a defendant, a defect must be visible and apparent and it must exist for a sufficient length of time prior to the accident to permit defendant’s employees to discover and remedy it.
A mere general awareness that some dangerous condition may exist does not constitute the notice requisite for premises liability, but a defendant’s actual notice of a recurring dangerous condition left unaddressed presents a factual question that bars granting summary judgment.
Defendants failed to meet this standard:
Here, the NYCHA defendants’ submissions do not suffice to make a prima facie showing warranting summary judgment. They fail to demonstrate, as a matter of law, that they cleaned and inspected the stairwells with sufficient frequency to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition, particularly given their awareness of the ongoing problem of human waste in the Building’s public areas. The NYCHA defendants also fail to make a conclusive showing that notice should not be imputed to them on grounds either that the liquid on the stairs was present for a duration sufficient to create constructive notice or that they had actual notice of a recurring problem of urine in stairwells and responded inadequately.
Therefore, the court denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment in its entirety.