Laing v. City of New York

• Decision Date: 08 September 1987
• Citation: Laing v. City of New York, 519 N.Y.S.2d 238, 133 A.D.2d 339 (N.Y. App. Div. 1987)
• Parties: Keith Jay LAING, Appellant, v. The CITY OF NEW YORK, Respondent, et al., Defendant.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

Page 238

519 N.Y.S.2d 238

133 A.D.2d 339

Keith Jay LAING, Appellant, v. The CITY OF NEW YORK, Respondent, et al., Defendant.

Supreme Court, Appellate Division Second Department.

Sept. 8, 1987.

Ginsberg & Katsorhis, Kew Gardens (Spiros A. Tsimbinos, of counsel), for appellant.

Peter L. Zimroth, Corp. Counsel, New York City (Fay Leoussis and Karen Hutson, of counsel), for respondent.

Before MANGANO, J.P., and BRACKEN, KUNZEMAN and HARWOOD, JJ.

MEMORANDUM BY THE COURT.

In a negligence action to recover damages for personal injuries, the plaintiff appeals, as limited by his brief, from so much of a judgment of the Supreme Court, Queens County (Lerner, J.), entered June 6, 1986, as, upon the respondent's motion, dismissed the complaint insofar as it was asserted against it at the end of the plaintiff's opening statement.

ORDERED that the judgment is affirmed insofar as appealed from, with costs.

The plaintiff instituted this action to recover damages resulting from his fall over an allegedly raised section of sidewalk. The plaintiff contends that a tree inspection report of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation pertaining to a homeowner's request for tree pruning which noted a cracked sidewalk is a "written acknowledgement from the city" of the defective sidewalk condition within the meaning of Administrative Code of the City of New York former § 394a-1.0(d) (now § 7-201[c] ) (hereinafter the Pothole Law).

Prior notice laws such as the provision at issue are to be strictly construed. Their words are not to be given an "artificial, forced or unnatural meaning" (Zigman v. Town of Hempstead, 120 A.D.2d 520, 521, 501 N.Y.S.2d 718) nor given "a strained interpretation to defeat their obvious intent" (Freeman v. County of Nassau, 95 A.D.2d 363, 364, 466 N.Y.S.2d 684). The City Council's rejections of amendments proposing an intra-agency duty to inform the Commissioner of Transportation of defective sidewalk conditions directly contravenes the plaintiff's attempt to read such a duty into the law (Excerpt of City Council Stated Meeting held on November 15, 1979, at 20, 27-28, 34, 51, 58). Moreover, paragraph 4 of the Pothole Law states that "[w]ritten acknowledgement shall be given by the department of transportation of all notices received by it". [Administrative Code § 7-201[c][4].) Where similar expressions are used in a statute, it is presumed that they are used in the same sense throughout, in the absence of an indication to the...