Court Opinion

ID: 5486551
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-01-10 02:15:04.923022+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:33:41.440668
License: Public Domain

Smith, J. (dissenting).
The majority opinion seems to say that no written notice requirement applies in this case because the Village should have foreseen that its method of removing snow would create a hazard. This amounts to saying that no written notice is required because the municipality was negligent. But the whole point of written notice legislation is to protect municipalities from liability, even where they are negligent, unless they have received written notice of the hazard in question. The majority decision frustrates this legislative aim, contradicting both the text of the written notice requirements and our recent holdings in Oboler v City of New York (8 NY3d 888 [2007]) and Yarborough v City of New York (10 NY3d 726 [2008]). I therefore dissent.
Village Law § 6-628 says:
“No civil action shall be maintained against the village for damages or injuries to person or property sustained in consequence of any street, highway, bridge, culvert, sidewalk or crosswalk being defective, out of repair, unsafe, dangerous or obstructed or for damages or injuries to person or property sustained solely in consequence of the existence of snow or ice upon any sidewalk, crosswalk, street, highway, bridge or culvert unless written notice of the defective, unsafe, dangerous or obstructed condition or of the existence of the snow or ice, relating to the particular place, was actually given to the village clerk and there was a failure or neglect within a reasonable time after the receipt of such notice to repair or remove the defect, danger or obstruction complained of, or to cause the snow or ice to be removed, or the place otherwise made reasonably safe.”
Village of Mount Kisco Code § 93-47 is very similar:
“No civil action shall be brought or maintained against the Village of Mount Kisco for damages or injuries to person or property sustained in consequence of any street, highway, bridge, culvert, sidewalk or crosswalk being defective, out of repair, unsafe, dangerous or obstructed or in consequence of the existence or accumulation of snow or ice upon any street, highway, bridge, culvert, sidewalk or crosswalk, unless written notice of the existence of *120such condition, relating to the particular place, had theretofore actually been given to the Board of Trustees of the Village of Mount Kisco and there had been a failure or neglect on the part of said village to cause such condition to be corrected or such snow or ice to be removed or the place otherwise made reasonably safe within a reasonable time after the receipt of such notice.”
Written notice requirements of this kind are common in New York. Ordinarily they do not, as these provisions do not, include in their text an exception for hazards the municipalities created. We have nevertheless recognized such an exception—not, as the majority implies, to nullify the requirement in every case in which a municipality negligently fails to foresee the consequence of its actions, but to take account of cases in which a prior written notice requirement would be anomalous. Thus, if a city construction crew digs a hole in the street, it would seem absurd to immunize the city from lawsuits by pedestrians who fall in the hole on the ground that no one gave the city written notice of the hole’s existence (see Doremus v Incorporated Vil. of Lynbrook, 18 NY2d 362, 366 [1966] [written notice requirements were designed to exempt municipalities from roadway defects “which do not immediately come to the attention of the village officers”]). Kiernan v Thompson (73 NY2d 840 [1988]) was a case of this type. Where the City of Ithaca, in removing a tree stump, had left a crack in the sidewalk, we held that “since the City created the crack in the pavement, plaintiff was not required to provide it with prior written notice of the unsafe condition” (id. at 842).
Our cases also recognize, however, that the rationale of the exception does not apply where a condition that the municipality creates is not immediately dangerous, but becomes so with the passage of time. In such cases the municipality may be at fault for not foreseeing the danger, but that is irrelevant; there is, by hypothesis, fault by the municipality in every case to which a prior written notice requirement applies. Where the danger is not the immediate result of the municipality’s negligent act, it cannot be said with certainty—as it can in the case of the hole the city itself dug—that the municipality actually knew of the danger. In such cases, therefore, the municipality is entitled to prior written notice.
As the Appellate Division explained in Bielecki v City of New York (14 AD3d 301, 301-302 [1st Dept 2005]):
*121“We understand the affirmative negligence exception to the notice requirement to be limited to work by the City that immediately results in the existence of a dangerous condition. . . . If we were to extend the affirmative negligence exception to cases like this one, where it is alleged that a dangerous condition developed over time from an allegedly negligent municipal repair, the exception to the notice requirement would swallow up the requirement itself, thereby defeating the purpose of the Pothole Law.”
We adopted the reasoning of Bielecki in two recent cases, Oboler (8 NY3d at 889-890 [case dismissed where plaintiff failed to show that a height differential between a manhole cover and the adjoining asphalt existed immediately after the city’s resurfacing of the roadway]) and Yarborough (10 NY3d at 728 [case dismissed where city was allegedly negligent in repairing a pothole, causing deterioration “over time with environmental wear and tear”]). These cases effectively overruled our affirmance several decades ago of the Appellate Division’s decision in Muszynski v City of Buffalo (33 AD2d 648 [4th Dept 1969], affd on op below 29 NY2d 810 [1971]). Oboler and Yarborough essentially adopt the view of Judge Scileppi, dissenting in Muszynski, that written notice is required where “the dangerous condition was not created immediately and consequently” upon a municipality’s action (29 NY2d at 813).
The majority here distinguishes Oboler and Yarborough on the ground that those cases involved defects in the pavement itself, not ice that formed on the pavement. The majority’s reasoning is that, while it is “understandable” that deterioration of the pavement resulting from negligent street repair “may escape detection” (majority op at 117), a negligently created pile of snow “presents the foreseeable, indeed known, risk of melting and refreezing” (id. at 117). But this confuses the issue of written notice with the issue of negligence. If a risk is neither foreseeable nor known, the municipality is not liable for it at all—the written notice statute is unnecessary. The premise of the plaintiffs case, in a case like Oboler or Yarborough, is that the municipality should have foreseen, but negligently failed to foresee, that its way of repairing the streets would cause the pavement to deteriorate. There is, in other words, no logical distinction between pavement-defect cases like Oboler and Yarborough and snow-and-ice cases like this one. The written *122notice requirements here apply by their terms to the “accumulation of snow or ice.”
Of course it can be said in a case like this—as it could be said in Oboler, Yarborough, Bielecki and similar cases—that it is unfair to leave plaintiffs uncompensated for an injury that a municipality negligently caused, but that is what prior written notice requirements do. Such requirements may be harsh, but they are “a valid exercise of legislative authority” (Amabile v City of Buffalo, 93 NY2d 471, 473 [1999]). The State, which has created municipalities and has, by abrogating the old rule of sovereign immunity, permitted citizens to bring actions against them, has chosen to limit those lawsuits to cases in which a municipality has received written notice of the hazard complained of. Because the Village here received no such notice, this case should be dismissed.
Judges Ciparick, Pigott and Jones concur with Chief Judge Lippman; Judge Smith dissents in a separate opinion in which Judges Graffeo and Read concur.
Order reversed, etc.