Did NYC/DOE Have Actual/Constructive Notice Of Defective Condtion?
Janet Dan, a special education teacher and dean of a Bronx middle school, was helping students enter the school’s main entrance shortly after 8:00 a.m. Dan sued New York City and the Department of Education and alleged that as she pulled open the leftmost of a pair of “very heavy” metal fire doors, the door “swung out” with great force, smashing her left hand against the tile wall.
The City/Doe moved to dismiss Dan’s complaint. The Court granted the motion. Dan appealed.
The door lacked a doorstop to prevent it from opening completely and striking the wall. But Dan believed that the door had an “apparatus” which ordinarily would have prevented the door from quickly opening, but the apparatus was not functioning properly that day. Although she had previously heard the door “crack” as it opened fully against the wall, Dan had never noticed any problems with the door, complained about it, or heard of any incidents involving the door.
The City/DOE met their initial burden to establish that they neither created nor had actual notice of the alleged defect by submitting the testimony of their custodian engineer that there were no prior repairs, complaints, or prior accidents involving the door that allegedly caused Dan’s accident. But they nonetheless failed to meet their burden of showing that they lacked constructive notice of the condition and a reasonable time to correct or warn about its existence.
The City/DOE relied on the testimony of the school’s custodian engineer, who stated that she “usually” conducted daily inspections of the building’s doors, during which she tested the doors to ensure that they were “functioning properly,” “operate[d] safely,” and did not “open or close too quickly.” Viewed in the light most favorable to Dan as the nonmovant, the custodian engineer’s generalized testimony that she would regularly test the door and determine that it was functioning safely and properly, by itself and without any expert analysis, failed to establish, prima facie, entitlement to judgment as a matter of law .
The custodian engineer initially testified without specific recall of the accident. She admitted, however, that her daily logs did not refer to any door inspections. The custodian engineer thus did not establish when the door was last inspected before the accident. Moreover, the custodian engineer conceded that the accident would not have occurred if a doorstop had been installed near the door and admitted that that the doorway’s design placed the door dangerously close to the wall. Coupled with Dan’s testimony that all the other doors in the building had doorstops, an issue of fact existed as to whether the City/Doe should have noticed the visible and apparent condition that the subject door was missing a doorstop, posing a foreseeable risk that the door could slam a person’s hand into the wall.