The

Big Apple "The Big Apple" is a nickname for New York City. It was first popularized in the 1920s by John J. Fitz Gerald, a sportswriter for the ''New York Morning Telegraph''. Its popularity since the 1970s is due in part to a promotional campaign by th ...

Pothole and Sidewalk Protection Committee is an organization created by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association to map the

sidewalk A sidewalk (North American English), pavement (British English), footpath in Australia, India, New Zealand and Ireland, or footway, is a path along the side of a street, street, highway, terminals. Usually constructed of concrete, pavers, brick ...

s of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

for defects capable of causing

personal injury Personal injury is a legal term for an injury to the body, mind or emotions, as opposed to an injury to property. In common law jurisdictions the term is most commonly used to refer to a type of tort lawsuit in which the person bringing the suit (t ...

.John Eligon. 2009, January 3.
Ruling Deals a Setback to Sidewalk Injury Lawsuits in New York
. ''New York Times''. The maps produced by the Committee and delivered to the Department of Transportation essentially negated the effect of a 1979 change to the city's Administrative Code that barred tort actions against the city unless the city was notified of the defects more than 15 days prior to the accident. The city paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in civil judgments over the next two decades before a 2003 law shifted liability to adjacent property owners. The Committee ceased producing maps after the new law, and the use of the maps in injuries predating the change was substantially limited by a 2008 decision of New York's highest court.

The Code

New York City Administrative Code § 7-201(c)(2), passed in 1979 by the

New York City council The New York City Council is the lawmaking body of New York City. It has 51 members from 51 council districts throughout the five Borough (New York City), boroughs. The council serves as a check against the Mayor of New York City, mayor in a may ...

and codified in 1980, bars personal injury lawsuits against the city arising from sidewalk or roadway defects, unless the city was notified of the defect at least 15 days prior to the injury. The administrative code (as amended in 2006) provides:

The survey

The organization was created in 1982. The maps were prepared annually and submitted to the city's Department of Transportation. The Transportation department initially refused to accept the maps, but was forced to do so by a court order.''Big Apple Pothole & Sidewalk Protection Committee, Inc. v. Ameruso.'', 110 Misc. 2d 688. The city's appeal was denied without opinion. The organization produced an average of 5,000 maps per year, covering all five boroughs and 13,000 miles of sidewalk, and noting more than 700,000 sidewalk hazards. Viewing most of the defects as minor or non-existent, the city began filing the maps away unread, in an attempt to argue in court that the unread maps did not provide "meaningful notice". A 2002 report by Michael Cardozo, a lawyer for the city's corporation states that "Relying on maps that provide hundreds of thousands of squiggles, but no meaningful information about sidewalk defects, plaintiffs have been able to sue the city successfully for even the most trivial sidewalk imperfections."

Use in court

In some cases, courts held that both the current map and earlier maps could be and were admissible in trial as proof of negligence. In other cases, the city was granted a

directed verdict In law, a verdict is the formal finding of fact made by a jury on matters or questions submitted to the jury by a judge. In a bench trial, the judge's decision near the end of the trial is simply referred to as a finding. In England and Wales, ...

when the plaintiff's claim was based on a defect noted in a prior map but not in the most recent. In contrast, in cases where the sidewalk defect was absent from the maps, cases have been dismissed by

summary judgment In law, a summary judgment (also judgment as a matter of law or summary disposition) is a judgment entered by a court A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes ...

. Any ambiguity arising from the symbols on the map has (until 2008) generally been a question for the jury. There were 2,729 sidewalk injury suits against the city in 2006 (resulting in $55.5 million in recovery), compared to 3,482 in 2003 ($68 million). Recoveries between 1997 and 2006 totaled $600 million. Sidewalk injuries are the most common cause of lawsuits against the city.

Since 2003

A 2003 law shifted the liability from the city to the adjacent property owners, substantially decreasing the number of suits filed. The 2003 law applies only to sidewalks; the city remains liable for hazards in streets. The production of maps ceased after the new 2003 law, but—as of 2009—there are still thousands of cases utilizing the maps from injuries predating the law. A December 18, 2008 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals, ''D'Onofrio v. City of New York'', significantly lessened the liability the city faces as a result of the maps.''D'Onofrio v. City of New York'', 901 N.E.2d 744. A 5-2 decision against the combined cases of two plaintiffs written by Judge Robert S. Smith found that the photographic evidence conflicted with the map in one case and that the map symbols were too illegible in the other. The ruling held that for the city to be liable, the marking on the map must match the actual conditions (''e.g.,'' the city would not be liable for a hole if the map denoted a crack). ''D'Onofrio'' substantially decreased the number of cases that would reach a jury: Judge Theodore J. Jones, in his dissent, stated:

Leadership and governance

* Stephan H. Peskin, Esq., President * Andrea Kinloch, Assistant Director

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Official site
Organizations based in New York City Tort law Pedestrian infrastructure in the United States New York (state) law