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DEFENDANT DRIVER WAVED TO PLAINTIFF’S DECEDENT, A PEDESTRIAN, INDICATING SHE WAS ALLOWING PLAINTIFF’S DECEDENT TO CROSS THE STREET; ONE SECOND LATER PLAINTIFF’S DECEDENT WAS STRUCK BY ANOTHER CAR; THE ACCIDENT WAS THE RESULT OF A SUPERSEDING, INTERVENING ACT AND DEFENDANT WAS NOT LIABLE AS A MATTER OF LAW (SECOND DEPT).

The Second Department determined defendant driver, Biesty, was entitled to summary judgment in this pedestrian accident case because the act of another driver was the supervening cause of the accident. Biesty had stopped at a stop sign and waved to plaintiff-pedestrian (Nanfro) indicating Biesty would allow Nanfro to cross the street. One second later Nanfro was struck by a car driven by Agostinelli:

A driver of a motor vehicle may, under certain circumstances, be liable to a pedestrian where the driver “undertakes to direct a pedestrian safely across the road in front of his [or her] vehicle, and negligently carries out that duty” … . “However, even if a pedestrian is injured because he or she relied on a driver’s gesture directing him or her to cross a roadway, the acts of another driver may constitute a superseding, intervening act that breaks the causal nexus” … . “Whether an intervening act is a superseding cause is generally a question of fact, but there are circumstances where it may be determined as a matter of law” … .

Here, assuming without deciding that Biesty negligently motioned Nanfro to continue walking across the street and that Nanfro relied upon the gesture, Agostinelli’s unforeseeable failure to see what was there to be seen and failure to yield the right-of-way to Nanfro, who was crossing the street within an unmarked crosswalk, constituted an intervening and superseding cause that established Biesty’s prima facie entitlement to judgment as a matter of law … . Levi v Nardone, 2019 NY Slip Op 08665, Second Dept 12-4-19

 

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