DEFENDANT TRANSIT AUTHORITY’S NEGLIGENCE FURNISHED THE CONDITION FOR PLAINTIFF’S DECEDENT’S DEATH BUT WAS NOT THE CAUSE OF HIS DEATH, DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO SET ASIDE THE SUBSTANTIAL VERDICT SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED (SECOND DEPT).

The Second Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined the substantial plaintiff’s verdict in this wrongful death case should have been set aside. It was alleged that the NYS Transit Authority was negligent in failing to make sure all passengers were off the subway train when the train reached the end of the line, requiring that it be repositioned in the relay tunnel. Plaintiff’s decedent, who was intoxicated, remained on the train. At some point he fell from the train in the relay tunnel and was killed:

… [V]iewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, there is no valid line of reasoning and permissible inferences which could possibly lead rational people to conclude that the defendants’ alleged negligence was a proximate cause of the decedent’s injuries and death … . Even assuming that the defendants’ employees were negligent in failing to remove the decedent from the train before it was taken into the subject relay tunnel, the defendants’ negligence merely furnished the condition or occasion for the occurrence of the decedent’s fall from the train …  rather than being one of its proximate causes. While the record evidence supports the plaintiffs’ theory that the decedent was in the area between the two northernmost subway cars when he fell to the tracks below, the circumstances that led the decedent to be in that area, and the cause of the fall itself, remain unknown and, therefore, speculative … . Williams v New York City Tr. Auth., 2019 NY Slip Op 06187, Second Dept 8-21-19