Skip to main content

Recent Developments: Appeals Court Makes Unusual Finding of Fact as "a Matter of Law" in Motor Vehicle Case

From the facts of the case, this is what sounds like happened:  The injured plaintiff was a passenger in an SUV. The SUV was behind a big tractor trailer that was carrying a load of gravel. The driver (I'm guessing) got annoyed about being behind a big, slow truck. So, the SUV passed the truck on the left.

The problem is that the exit the SUV driver wanted to get off on was coming up quickly, so the SUV swerved back in front of the tractor trailer. The truck driver slammed on his brakes, but still hit the SUV, sending it over an embankment.

The truck driver and the company that owned it moved for summary judgment to dismiss the case on the grounds that the truck driver had been confronted with a "sudden and unexpected circumstance, not of [his] own making", that he had no time to react otherwise than how he did, and that he acted reasonably under the circumstances.

The court acknowledged that it is normally up to a jury to decide who was at fault in such a situation.  But it then went ahead and said, however, we find ("as a matter of law"--because courts can normally only decide questions of law, not of fact) that, given the facts, the SUV driver was basically reckless, and the truck driver cannot be held at fault.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being Fired for Things an Employee Did On Their Own Time, Outside of Work: Legal or Not?

New York is an "at will" employment state, meaning that, in the absence of a contract, you can be fired at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all, unless the reason is based on something like age, race, religion, disability, etc. (just a handful of categories). (Government employees have more protections than private-sector employees, such as First Amendment protections.) One of the few exceptions to the at-will employment rule is New York Labor Law §201-d. The statute is lengthy and has lots of caveats and qualifiers and defenses (for the employer). But the gist of § 201-d is that an employee can't be disciplined or fired (or not hired) for something they do on their own time, away from work, that is legal, and that is not against the employer's interests.  The statute and the reported cases mostly deal with "recreational" and "political" activities, and the cases can turn on whether something was a "recreational activity...
Post a Comment
Read more

Insurance Companies Trying to Gag Superstorm Sandy Victims?

As reported in several news articles ( this one  is free), in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, engineering firms were hired by insurance companies to inspect the homes of people making claims for flood damage.  There have been allegations that two of the engineering firms, U.S. Forensic out of Louisiana, and GEB HiRise out of Uniondale, forged property damage reports in order to deny claims. The NY State Attorney General is investigating those allegations and wants to talk to the homeowners.  At the same time, there are about 1,800 lawsuits in federal court involving the insurance coverage claims. A three-judge panel is trying to expedite resolution of the cases.  Last week it was revealed that one of the insurance companies, The Standard Fire Insurance Company, which is a subsidiary of Travelers Insurance, drafted language in a settlement document saying that any homeowner who accepts a payout of their claims cannot cooperate with the criminal invest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Recent Case Developments: Contractor Entitled to be Paid For Extra Work Not Part of Original Contract

On September 12, 2013, the Town of Kent (Putnam County) entered into a contract with a contractor to build a sewer.  During construction, certain "conditions that were unexpected and unanticipated" arose, requiring the contractor to do "extra" work--things beyond the scope of work of the original contract. (The appeals court doesn't detail what this extra work was.) The contractor performed the extra work, totaling around $380,000 in additional costs. For reasons not stated by the appeals court, the Town refused to pay for this extra work, and the contractor eventually sued the Town in May, 2015.  The contractor moved for summary judgment in the lower court (a kind of mini-trial on paper), and the court awarded judgment in favor of the contractor for the $380,000.  The Town appealed, but the appeals court sided with the contractor, saying that even though this "extra" work was not within the scope of work of the original contract, the con...
Post a Comment
Read more