Bronx Jury Finds Landlords Liable for Courtyard Hole That Broke a Tenant's Ankle
After trial: The jury assessed damages at $2,375,000, but a high/low agreement signed before the verdict set the recovery at its $775,000 maximum. The defendants were insured, and no appeal has been found.
Won by Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff.
Howard Menifield, 44, tripped in a hole in the paved courtyard of his Bronx apartment building in May 2011 and fractured and dislocated his right ankle. After a three-week trial in March 2018, a Bronx jury found the building's owners liable and assessed damages at $2,375,000. A high/low agreement made before the verdict set the recovery at $775,000, which Menifield received.
What happened
On May 26, 2011, Howard Menifield, then 44, was walking through the courtyard of the apartment building where he lived at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx. His foot went into a hole in the paved surface, roughly 12 to 14 inches across and about 2 inches deep. He fell and badly injured his right ankle.
Menifield suffered a bimalleolar fracture of the right ankle with a dislocation. Doctors performed a closed reduction to set the joint, followed by open reduction with internal fixation and the use of an external fixator. He then went through about 20 weeks of physical therapy. At trial he claimed lasting arthritis in the ankle and a permanent limp.
He sued the building's owner, Belmont Arthur Avenue Local Development Corp., and a previous owner, 1520 Sedgwick NY LLC, which had given up control of the property about 10 months before the fall, in Bronx Supreme Court, claiming the courtyard had been left in disrepair. Both defendants were insured by Mt. Hawley Insurance Co. Their position at trial was that they had no notice of the hole. The building's superintendent testified that he inspected the courtyard twice a month and had never seen it.
Robert Wolff of Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP tried the case for Menifield, with orthopedic testimony from Dr. Leonard Harrison Jr. and Dr. Chaiyaporn Kulsakdinun. Dara L. Rosenbaum of Rosenbaum & Taylor, P.C. defended. Justice Joseph E. Capella presided over a three-week trial before a jury of six.
The jury deliberated for about four and a half hours and rejected the defense that the owners could not have known about the hazard. It found them liable and assessed Menifield's damages at $2,375,000.
Before the verdict, the parties had signed a high/low agreement, a common arrangement in New York trials that fixes a minimum and maximum recovery whatever the jury decides. Because the jury's figure was well above the agreed ceiling, Menifield's recovery was set at the $775,000 maximum. The defendants were insured, and no appeal of the verdict has been found.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff
All Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff proven verdicts →A Bronx jury awarded motorcycle passenger Jose Cabrera $5.1 million after a New York City Transit Authority bus driver merged into his lane and forced the bike into a concrete pillar; the First Department affirmed the liability verdict and pain-and-suffering awards while reducing future medical expenses, bringing the final judgment to $4.7 million.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.