## Facts

- Robert Cruz waited on the landing of an exterior stairway leading into an elevated subway station.
- Cruz lifted himself onto and sat on a railing approximately 43 inches high above the landing; the landing was about seven feet above the sidewalk.
- As several youths climbed the stairway, one brushed against Cruz, and Cruz fell to the sidewalk and became a quadriplegic.
- Plaintiffs presented an engineer who opined the stairway and railing were not designed in accordance with good and accepted engineering principles because the railing did not deter or prevent sitting.
- The engineer described alternative designs that could deter sitting (e.g., a higher railing, a surface difficult to sit on, or screening above the railing).
- The trial court excluded the engineer’s testimony about whether similar safety features were used at the same station or other nearby elevated stations.
- At the close of plaintiffs’ proof, the trial court granted the transit authority’s motion for judgment as a matter of law under CPLR 4401, dismissing the complaint for failure to make a prima facie negligence showing.

## Issues

1. Whether, viewing plaintiffs’ evidence most favorably to them, the proof established a prima facie case of negligence based on the design and maintenance of the stairway railing.
2. Whether a common carrier’s duty to use reasonable care in providing and maintaining safe station stairways could be breached by failing to design a railing to deter sitting in a foreseeable high-traffic area.
3. Whether Cruz’s decision to sit on the railing and/or the brushing contact by an unidentified third party constituted a superseding, intervening cause as a matter of law, defeating proximate cause.
4. Whether excluding expert testimony about comparable safety features at the same or other stations was erroneous where offered to inform the standard of care.

## Decision

- The appellate court reversed the judgment and ordered a new trial.
- The court held plaintiffs’ proof was sufficient to establish a prima facie case of negligence and the CPLR 4401 dismissal was error.
- The court held the evidence did not establish, as a matter of law, that Cruz’s conduct or the third party’s contact was so extraordinary and unforeseeable as to sever causation.
- The court concluded the exclusion of the comparative-design expert testimony was erroneous.
- The court stated it expressed no view on ultimate liability.

## Legal Principles

- A prima facie negligence case requires proof of duty, breach, and injury proximately caused by the breach.
- On a CPLR 4401 motion at the close of plaintiff’s case, the court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and give the plaintiff the benefit of reasonable inferences; the court may not resolve credibility or factual conflicts.
- A common carrier must use reasonable (ordinary) care, in light of foreseeable dangers, in providing and maintaining safe and adequate station stairways.
- Where the alleged dangerous condition is created by the defendant’s own design, actual notice of the condition is established for prima facie purposes.
- Intervening acts by a plaintiff or third party do not break proximate cause as a matter of law unless they are extraordinary and unforeseeable; otherwise, causation is generally for the jury.

## Conclusion

The court held that plaintiffs’ expert proof permitted a jury to find negligent stairway-railing design by the transit authority and that neither the plaintiff’s sitting on the railing nor a third party’s brushing contact defeated proximate cause as a matter of law; the directed verdict was reversed and a new trial ordered.


Cruz v. N.Y.C. Transit Auth., 136 A.D.2d 196 (N.Y. App. Div. 2d Dep’t 1988)