Sherwood v. State
| Decision Date | 14 April 1997 |
| Citation | 657 N.Y.S.2d 336,238 A.D.2d 396 |
| Parties | Leeroy SHERWOOD, Appellant, v. STATE of New York, Respondent. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
Glaser, Shandell & Blitz, LLP, New York City (Alexander J. Wulwick, of counsel), for appellant.
Dennis C. Vacco, Attorney-General, New York City (Peter G. Crary and Gina M. Ciccone, of counsel), for respondent.
In a claim to recover damages for personal injuries, the claimant appeals from a judgment of the Court of Claims (Weisberg, J.), dated January 2, 1996, which, after a nonjury trial on the issue of liability, is in favor of the State of New York and against the claimant, dismissing the claim.
ORDERED that the judgment is affirmed, with costs.
While traveling westbound on the Long Island Expressway in Queens the then-19-year-old claimant lost control of his car, which went over an embankment and collided with a tree. The claimant thereafter brought this claim against the State, alleging that it had been negligent in not maintaining a guardrail at the spot where his car left the highway.
Although, as the State correctly concedes, the Court of Claims erred in restoring to certain trigonometric formulas that had not been introduced into evidence in its discussion of proximate causation in its posttrial decision, we conclude that the error was harmless, as the record is devoid of evidence that any negligence by the State proximately caused the claimant's accident (see, e.g., Epstein v. State of New York, 124 A.D.2d 544, 507 N.Y.S.2d 689). Among other things, the claimant, who was the sole witness to the accident, originally testified that he did not know at what angle his vehicle was traveling when it left the highway. When pressed, however, he estimated that the angle was 45 degrees, and that his speed was 56 miles per hour. Subsequently, however, the claimant's own expert, Joseph Champagne, testified that guardrails would only deflect a vehicle that was traveling up to 60 miles per hour if it left the highway at an angle of 25 degrees or less. This same expert--admitting that there was nothing in evidence to support his computation--estimated that the claimant had left the roadway at an angle of between 4 and 14 degrees. In addition, Champagne conceded that the formula he was using would apply only to a car engaged in controlled evasive maneuvers, and not to a car out of control, as was the case here. The State's expert, Robert Hintersteiner, corroborated...
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