Sheehan v. City of New York

• Decision Date: 15 July 1976
• Docket Number: Nos. 1,2,s. 1
• Citation: 354 N.E.2d 832,40 N.Y.2d 496,387 N.Y.S.2d 92
• Parties: , 354 N.E.2d 832 Timothy SHEEHAN, Appellant, v. CITY OF NEW YORK et al., Respondents. Walter NOVAK, Jr., Respondent, v. NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT AUTHORITY, Defendant, Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority et al., Appellants, and City of New York et al., Respondents. Action
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 92

387 N.Y.S.2d 92

40 N.Y.2d 496, 354 N.E.2d 832

Timothy SHEEHAN, Appellant, v. CITY OF NEW YORK et al., Respondents.

Walter NOVAK, Jr., Respondent, v. NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT AUTHORITY, Defendant,

Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority et

al., Appellants,

and

City of New York et al., Respondents.

Action Nos. 1, 2.

Court of Appeals of New York.

July 15, 1976.

Arthur N. Seiff, New York City, for appellant in Action no. 1.

W. Bernard Richland, Corp. Counsel (Bernard Burstein and L. Kevin Sheridan, New York City, of counsel), for respondents in Action No. 1.

Robert J. Lawton, New York City, Stuart Riedel, Brooklyn, and William Scheiner, New York City, for appellants in Action No. 2.

Vincent M. Sclafani and John J. O'Connor, New York City, for respondent in Action No. 2.

FUCHSBERG, Judge.

On a clear morning on East 138th Street in Bronx County, an eastbound bus operated by appellant Timothy Sheehan and owned by appellant Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority (MABSTOA) was brought to a gradual stop at the street's intersection with Jackson Avenue for the purpose of permitting any passengers who wished to do so to board or alight. While so stopped, the bus was struck from the rear by a sanitation truck operated by respondent Anthony Loria and owned by respondent the City of New York (City). Sheehan and respondent Walter Novak, Jr., a passenger in the bus, were injured.

East 138th Street is a two-way street; in each direction it has two lanes, one along the curb where vehicles generally parked and the second along the center line where moving vehicles usually traveled. The block on which the bus had been proceeding before it reached the corner was about 300 feet long. It is undisputed that Sheehan's brake lights had signaled his intended stop and that it had been a slow and gradual one. The truck driver had noticed the brake lights where he was still 150 feet behind the bus. Both vehicles were then in the traveling lane. There was no vehicle between them to obstruct Loria's line of sight. Loria did not deny that he knew where the bus had stopped or that he had sufficient opportunity to stop his truck safely, but testified that when he attempted to do so his brakes did not hold. A designated bus stop was located at the southeast curb at the Jackson Avenue intersection. Sheehan testified he could not pull completely into it because cars were parked there at the time; Loria remembered no such obstructing vehicles.

The appeals here are in two separate personal injury actions which were tried together before a jury, one brought by Sheehan against the City and Loria, the other by Novak against the owners and operators of both vehicles.

Before the trial court charged the jury, it denied motions for dismissal of Novak's case against MABSTOA and Sheehan and for a directed verdict in favor of Sheehan, each urging a failure of proof to establish either negligence in the operation of the bus or legally cognizable cause between its manner of operation and its collision with the truck. During its charge, the court recited section 122 of the New York City Traffic Regulations, which reads: 'Bus stops. No driver of a bus shall pick up or discharge passengers on any street except at bus stops designated by the Commissioner of Traffic' in writing. Over exception, it then responded to a request that it 'charge that the mere stopping of the bus in the traffic lane is in and of itself not negligence' in the following language: 'I so charge. You take into consideration all the other facts and circumstances in the evidence.'

At the conclusion of its deliberations, the jury brought in a verdict in the amount of $50,000 against both drivers and owners in Novak's case, apportioning the negligence between them under Dole v. Dow Chem. Co., 30 N.Y.2d 143, 331 N.Y.S.2d 382, 282 N.E.2d 288, and, consistently, ¹ decided against Sheehan in his suit against the City and Loria. On motions of MABSTOA and Sheehan, the court, on the grounds that no prima facie case of liability had been made against them and that 'it shocks the conscience of this Court', then set aside the Novak verdict insofar as it held MABSTOA and Sheehan liable and directed that the entire amount of the damages it awarded be assessed against the City and Loria alone. It also set aside the verdict in the Sheehan case, in which it ordered a new trial. The Appellate Division, by a vote of three to two, reversed a judgment and an order entered on those decisions and reinstated the verdicts.

The liability arising from the operation of the sanitation truck is now no longer contested. The essential question raised on this appeal is whether, under the facts in these cases, the City and Loria alone are liable because, as a matter of law, there was no proof that the conduct of Sheehan was causally connected with the collision. For the reasons which follow, we conclude there was no such legal connection and that the order of the Appellate Division should be reversed.

Though negligence and proximate cause frequently overlap in the proof and theory which support each of them, they are not the same conceptually. Evidence of negligence is not enough by itself to establish liability. It must also be proved that the negligence was the cause of the event which produced the harm sustained by one who brings the complaint (Saugerties Bank v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 236 N.Y. 425, 141 N.E. 904; 1 Shearman and Redfield, Negligence, §§ 34, 35, 36; 1 Warren's New York Negligence, § 5.06). 'The measure of the defendant's duty in determining whether a wrong has been committed is one thing; the measure of liability when a wrong has been committed is another' (Spade v. Lynn & Boston R.R. Co., 172 Mass. 488, 491, 52 N.E. 747, 748 (Holmes, J.); quoted in Palsgraf v. Long Is. R.R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 349, 162 N.E. 99, 102).

Furthermore, proximate cause is no less essential an element of liability because the negligence charged is premised in part or in whole on a claim that a statute or ordinance, here a traffic regulation, has been violated (Homin v. Cleveland & Whitehill Co., 281 N.Y. 484, 488, 24 N.E.2d 136, 137; Boronkay v. Robinson & Carpenter, 247 N.Y. 365, 160 N.E. 400).

Therefore, if either negligence or proximate cause relating to Sheehan's conduct was not established, the question of his and his employer's liability as defendants, as well as the question of whether he was barred from recovering as a plaintiff, should not have been submitted to the jury (see Restatement, Torts 2d, § 434; Weiner, Civil Jury Trial and the Law-Fact Distinction, 54 Cal.L.Rev. 1867, 1882--1883; James, Functions of Judge and Jury in Negligence Cases, 58 Yale L.J. 667, 676--677).

In the case before us, we are not faced with the kind of issues of fact, heavily disputed and imbued with shadings and inferences, which so often characterize a negligence suit. This case is singularly appropriate for the exercise of the trial court's screening function since there is so little factual controversy. Both sides agree that the truck struck the bus in the rear, that the bus had been within the truck driver's uninterrupted view continually for a long distance before the impact and long after the signal of its intended stop had been transmitted to the truck, that it at no time had left the truck's path, that its stop was engineered slowly so that no element of surprise was involved and that it was the failure of its brakes which propelled the truck into the bus.

The only factual dispute was as to whether other automobiles then occupied the designated but...