Order Reduction In Payout To Injured Fireman

By ARI PAUL

A Second Department Appellate Division panel has modified a lower court's damage award to a Firefighter who sued New York City Transit for sustaining injuries while responding to an emergency at a bus depot.

A Staten Island Supreme Court jury had ordered that NYC Transit pay Firefighter Edward Terranova damages including lost wages when he suffered job-ending injures at the bus depot. A State Supreme Court Justice declined to reduce the award even though Mr. Terranova had also received a disability pension.

"The evidence at trial with respect to the Transit Authority's culpability was uncontradicted," Appellate Division Justice Robert A. Spolzino stated for the panel in his decision. "The plaintiff testified that as he entered a small ejector pump room located off a bathroom in the depot, he fell, striking his shoulder on a metal partition, when his feet slid out from under him on accumulated grease, papers, and other debris."

He continued, "The Transit Authority employee responsible for cleaning the depot, Joseph O'Callaghan, testified that the door connecting that room to the bathroom lacked a door sweep, creating a gap between the bottom edge of the door and the floor of the bathroom that allowed debris and other waste from the bathroom to pass under the door and into the ejector pump room and was not aware of anyone else who had such responsibility. He had cleaned the ejector pump room on only one occasion, when there was a sewer backup, and had not been in the room for at least six months."

Justice Spolzino concluded, "There is, thus, ample evidence upon which the jury could reasonably have concluded that an omission on the part of the Transit Authority was responsible for the plaintiff's injuries," but that NYC Transit also established that Mr. Terranova's disability pension "was a collateral source ... that must be set off against the amount of the verdict." The case has been sent back to Staten Island Supreme Court to reduce the award.