$1.5 Million Settlement: Woman Tripped on Defective Brooklyn Sidewalk
Won by The Orlow Firm.
A 62-year-old woman tripped over a broken Brooklyn sidewalk section in 2013 and suffered back and ankle injuries requiring multiple surgeries; the firm documented four years of constructive notice using Google Earth imagery and recovered $1.5 million at mediation.
What happened
On July 27, 2013, a 62-year-old woman was walking along a Brooklyn sidewalk with her boyfriend, heading to a nearby store. As she approached a commercial property, a car parked in the driveway ahead partially blocked her path. She glanced toward the obstruction and did not see the broken section of sidewalk underfoot. She tripped and fell hard.
An ambulance transported her to the hospital with pain in her back, ankle, and knee. Imaging revealed disc and ankle damage. Over the years that followed, she underwent multiple back and ankle surgeries.
The firm named both the property owner and the commercial tenant. The defense mounted two lines of attack. First, they filed a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the case outright, and appeals on those rulings were still pending as the matter approached trial. Second, they intended to argue that the plaintiff's back and ankle conditions were the product of age-related degeneration, not the fall itself.
Adam Orlow built the case on two items the defense could not credibly dispute. A routine primary-care visit three days before the fall had documented her musculoskeletal system as completely normal. No pre-existing back problem. No pre-existing ankle problem. That baseline removed the defense's causation argument. The second item was a Google Earth historical-imagery search of the sidewalk location. The same broken section appeared in photographs from June 2009, more than four years before the fall. The defect had been visible and unchanged for years, establishing that the owner had constructive notice and had done nothing.
The case settled at mediation for $1.5 million.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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