This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I am fascinated and amazed by the unique, strange, curious – and often bizarre – facts that often lead to litigation. Some examples follow: A suit for burn injuries where a tenant tried to light a burner on the top of her gas stove; proceedings involving the application of force majeure when a wedding venue was closed pursuant to a vacate order; a claim that oysters served at a restaurant were contaminated; a negligence suit by a person injured by a piece of fish bone left in her filleted flounder; a suit claiming that a leak in home heating oil tanks violated the Navigation law; a dispute over a $5,000 bar mitzvah “gift”; a “road rage” claim against an off-duty police officer; a dispute whether a bus jerked or lurched “in an unusual and violent manner”; a claim against FedEx for failure to timely ship a bow and arrow to a hunting lodge; a suit about whether water on the tile floor of a locker room was “necessarily incidental” to the use of that area; an action to determine whether a person found not guilty of murder by reason of mental disease or defect could nevertheless be held civilly liable for his actions; a claim that a plaintiff could not appear for deposition in New York because she would not be able to take care of her pet cats; a personal injury claim by a 17-year-old who was hit by a train while crouching on the tracks; and adjudication of the liability of the owner of a building that contained a psychiatric suite for a murder committed by a former patient of one of the tenants.
Rivera v. St. Nicholas 184 Holding, LLC, 2016 NY Slip Op 00120 (App. Div. 1st Dept. January 12, 2016) Continue reading