THE APPLICATION FOR LEAVE TO FILE A LATE NOTICE OF CLAIM SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN GRANTED; THERE WAS NO SHOWING THE CITY AND FIRE DEPARTMENT HAD TIMELY KNOWLEDGE OF A POTENTIAL NEGLIGENCE ACTION ARISING FROM A RESPONSE TO A 911 CALL (SECOND DEPT).
The Second Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined the application for leave to file a late notice of claim should not have been granted. Plaintiff alleged the city and the fire department (the appellants) were negligent in the response to a 911 call made after petitioner’s daughter was discovered drowning in a swimming pool. The petitioner did not demonstrate the appellants were timely made aware of a potential negligence action:
Contrary to the petitioner’s contention, the appellants did not acquire actual knowledge of the essential facts constituting the claim within 90 days after the claim arose or a reasonable time thereafter by virtue of their possession of a portion of the relevant 911 call. The appellants demonstrated that 911 calls are initially answered by a representative of the New York Police Department (hereinafter NYPD) and are transferred to the FDNY’s Emergency Medical Dispatch Center if, as here, the reported emergency is of a medical nature. The appellants showed that the NYPD portion of the call was deleted in the normal course of business after 180 days, while the FDNY portion was retained. The FDNY portion of the call and other communications maintained by the appellants revealed that the arrival on the scene of an Advanced Life Support ambulance was delayed because the ambulance was initially directed to an incorrect address, but did not reveal whether the appellants’ employees or the 911 caller was the source of the error. Rather, it was the deleted NYPD portion of the call that would likely have contained that information. Furthermore, the petitioner’s daughter’s pulse and breathing were restored in the ambulance, and nothing in the records maintained by the appellants revealed the extensive injuries that the petitioner’s daughter allegedly suffered. Thus, despite the appellants’ knowledge of facts surrounding the response to the 911 call, there was little to suggest injury attributable to any negligence on their part … .
… [E]ven assuming that the petitioner demonstrated an absence of prejudice, in response, the appellants made a particularized evidentiary showing that they would be substantially prejudiced by the more than one year delay in serving the notice of claim by showing that the NYPD portion of the call, which would likely have revealed the source of the erroneous residential address, had been deleted … . The petitioner additionally failed to demonstrate a reasonable excuse for the failure to timely serve a notice of claim … . Matter of Adbelghany v City of New York, 2020 NY Slip Op 04391, Second Dept 8-5-20