PLAINTIFF SLIPPED AND FELL ON ICE INSIDE THE BUILDING SHE WAS WORKING IN, THE JURY COULD RATIONALLY CONCLUDE THE ICE WAS THE RESULT OF NEGLIGENCE ON THE PART OF SOMEONE INVOLVED IN THE CONSTRUCTION PROJECT, THE MOTION TO SET ASIDE THE VERDICT AS BASED ON LEGALLY INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE IN THIS LABOR LAW 241 (6) ACTION WAS PROPERLY DENIED (SECOND DEPT).
The Second Department determined defendant’s motion to set aside the verdict as based on legally insufficient evidence was properly denied in this Labor Law 241 (6) action. Plaintiff’s job was removing asbestos from a building. After getting out of her asbestos suit in the decontamination room and walking in the interior of the building she slipped and fell on ice. The Second Department held that the jury could have rationally concluded someone participating in the construction project was negligent:
We agree with the Supreme Court’s determination denying that branch of the defendant’s motion pursuant to CPLR 4404(a) which was to set aside the jury verdict as based on legally insufficient evidence and for judgment as a matter of law. There was a valid line of reasoning and permissible inferences which could have led a rational jury to conclude that the negligence of some party to, or participant in, the construction project caused the plaintiff’s injuries … . The jury could have credited the plaintiff’s trial testimony that she slipped on a large patch of ice on the floor of a building that did not have heating on a cold January day, and therefore, rationally conclude that “someone within the chain of the construction project was negligent in not exercising reasonable care, or acting within a reasonable time, to prevent or remediate the hazard, and that plaintiff’s slipping, falling and subsequent injury proximately resulted from such negligence” … . Bocanegra v Chest Realty Corp., 2019 NY Slip Op 01048, Second Dept 2-13-19