Landlord Not Responsible for Aide's Fall Near Dump Site

Tenant's home health aide sued landlord for negligence after she tripped and fell on a piece of carpet discarded near the dump site behind the building. She had gone outside to place a bag of recyclable trash next to a fence surrounding a locked outdoor dump site. Coming back, she slipped and fell on a small one-foot triangular piece of carpet that was wet on the bottom and lying on the walkway to the dump site. The health aide said that she hadn't seen the carpet on the walkway before she fell. Landlord claimed that it wasn't responsible for the aide's injury and asked the court to dismiss the case without a trial. The court ruled against landlord.
Landlord appealed and won. Landlord's caretaker said that he cleaned the area twice a day and that he regularly removed improperly discarded garbage. There was no proof that the piece of carpet had been there long enough for landlord to have had notice of a dangerous condition that it did nothing about. A general awareness of the presence of litter at the site wasn't enough to prove that landlord should have known that the carpet was there and that someone could trip over it.

DeJesus v. NYCHA: NYLJ, 7/10/08, p. 32, col. 1 (App. Div. 1 Dept.; Mazzarelli, JP, Andrias, Williams, Buckley, JJ,Acosta, J--dissenting)