Speculation About Cause of Fall Required Dismissal of Complaint​

In determining the plaintiff’s resort to speculation about the cause of her fall required dismissal of the complaint, the Second Department wrote:

“In a slip-and-fall case, a plaintiff’s inability to identify the cause of the fall is fatal to the cause of action because a finding that the defendant’s negligence, if any, proximately caused the plaintiff’s injuries would be based on speculation” …. Here, the moving defendants established their prima facie entitlement to judgment as a matter of law by submitting, inter alia, the deposition testimony of the plaintiff and her husband, which demonstrated that the plaintiff could not identify the cause of her fall without resorting to speculation …. Although the plaintiff claimed that a bar connected to the bottom step of the bus caused her to trip, she acknowledged that she did not see this bar before her fall, that she did not know which foot made contact with the bar, and that she only assumed that she had tripped on the bar after she regained consciousness and went looking for the source of the fall. Deputron v A&J Tour, Inc, 2013 NY Slip Op 03629, 2nd Dept, 5-22-13