The New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York, issued a favorable ruling for plaintiff’s lawyers in Rodriguez v. City of New York, 31 N.Y.3d 312 (2018). The Court in a 4-3 ruling reached the decision that in negligence cases a plaintiff does not need to bear the burden of establishing the lack of their own comparative negligence in order to obtain summary judgment.
Practically speaking, this ruling will very likely lead to judicial efficiency in that many cases may be resolved before reaching the trial part. This ruling will encourage litigators to utilize summary judgment motions, which, in our opinion, have been underutilized in litigation. The granting of partial summary judgment, or summary judgment on liability, purpose is to narrow the issue for a jury. Ultimately, narrowing the issue for a jury will have the intended consequence of a quicker resolution and, very likely, for a higher value.
Certainly, before Rodriguez this office often moved for partial summary judgment on cases that had strong and favorable facts- Now post-Rodriguez this office will move for summary judgment where the facts may not be as strong. We, at The Law Office of Daniel Levy, LLP, -New York’s Personal Injury Lawyers, look forward to citing this decision in future summary judgment motions, especially in motor vehicle accidents, pedestrian knockdowns, and slip and fall cases.