Brinkerhoff v. County of St. Lawrence

• Decision Date: 25 February 2010
• Citation: 70 A.D.3d 1272,897 N.Y.S.2d 269
• Parties: Barbara BRINKERHOFF, as Administrator of the Estate of David Brinkerhoff, Deceased, Appellant, v. COUNTY OF ST. LAWRENCE et al., Respondents.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

897 N.Y.S.2d 269
70 A.D.3d 1272

Barbara BRINKERHOFF, as Administrator of the Estate of David Brinkerhoff, Deceased, Appellant,
v.
COUNTY OF ST. LAWRENCE et al., Respondents.

Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, New York.

Feb. 25, 2010.

897 N.Y.S.2d 269

Seeger Weiss, L.L.P., New York City (Chris VandeKieft of counsel), for appellant.

Hancock & Estabrook, L.L.P., Syracuse (Janet D. Callahan of counsel), for respondents.

Before: PETERS, J.P., ROSE, LAHTINEN, MALONE JR. and KAVANAGH, JJ.

KAVANAGH, J.

70 A.D.3d 1272

Appeal from an order of the Supreme Court (Demarest, J.), entered March 30, 2009 in St. Lawrence County, which granted defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint.

70 A.D.3d 1273

On April 24, 2007, Travis Trim, after being stopped for a minor traffic infraction in the Village of Margaretville, Delaware County, pulled out a handgun, shot State Trooper Matt Gombosi and fled.¹

897 N.Y.S.2d 270

A State Police Mobile Response Team was dispatched to the area and, the next day, located Trim hiding in a vacant house. As the Response Team approached the premises, Trim opened fire and, during the ensuing confrontation, State Trooper David Brinkerhoff, a member of the Response Team, was shot and subsequently died as the result of his injuries.

Trim had been on probation for a petit larceny conviction and was under the supervision of defendant St. Lawrence County Department of Probation during the 20-month period immediately prior to the shooting. While on probation and prior to the shooting, Trim was arrested and charged with purchasing alcohol for three underage friends, but was not cited by the Probation Department for violating the terms of his probation. Two months later, in December 2006, the Probation Department obtained a warrant for Trim's arrest for a probation violation after he was found to have alcohol and marihuana in his dormitory room at the State University of New York at Canton, but failed to forward the warrant for execution to a law enforcement agency or enter it into the Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives Registrant System computer database as required by state probation division regulations.

Plaintiff, Brinkerhoff's wife and administrator of his estate, commenced this action claiming that, had defendants properly supervised Trim's probation and processed the warrant for his arrest, Trim would not have been at large and the shooting that resulted in Brinkerhoff's death would not have occurred. ² Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint and Supreme Court granted the motion, prompting this appeal.

In this appeal, plaintiff only challenges Supreme Court's dismissal of her cause of action seeking damages for her husband's wrongful death pursuant to General Municipal Law § 205-e. That statute was enacted to provide police officers with a statutory cause of action by...