“A politically connected Brooklyn judge plans to file a $1 million lawsuit against the city after slipping on a just-mopped floor in his own courthouse, the Daily News has learned.” Civil judge Jack Battaglia, who broke his knee in the fall, is said to be suing not just New York City but the cleaning woman who mopped the floor. “Everyone is entitled to equal justice,” said Dick Dadey of Citizens Union, “but I hope he’s not using his intimate knowledge of the system to maximize his claim.” (Elizabeth Hays, “Judge suing city for $1M after fall on wet courthouse floor”, New York Daily News, Apr. 14).
More: Eric Turkewitz says the judge has only filed a Notice of Claim against the city, not yet a suit; when the time comes, he might not (or then again he might) name the janitor as a defendant. At Above the Law, a commenter offers a theory of why worker’s comp would not bar the judge’s claim. The same commenter asserts that Judge Battaglia is part of a special subgroup of judges whose work consists heavily of hearing claims against the City of New York, and a second, equally anonymous commenter maintains that the prospect of the judge’s having to recuse himself from such cases (now that he is a litigant) is good news for the city.
4 Comments
Does he also get to try the case in his court?
Walter:
The judge didn’t sue the janitor. The judge merely filed a Notice of Claim, which must be done within 90 days of an incident when the City is involved. That Notice gives info to the City that allows it to investigate. The law also, unfortunately, requires you to place a number in the Notice even though it is unlikely a potential litigant will know what their actual damages are. That’s a crappy law, but it must be followed.
If and when a suit is filed, it is unlikely the janitor would be named. And that would have been true even if the Daily News hadn’t run its hit piece.
As a former Assistant Corporation Counsel in the Tort Division, I witnessed enough perversions of the law to write a book: a Queens judge who dragged the city through an on-its-face dismissable claim for years because the (adjudicated insane) plaintiff was pro-se, plaintiff’s attorneys who maintained their own personal injury cases against the City amongst their stacks of other cases (one was a lawyer suing for slipping in the snow outside the courthouse, and when he got to the end of his own personal docket with me on “preliminary conference” day, he blithely whipped out the next case, his own – my jaw dropped at the moxie of it), pro-se Rikers litigants who sued over things like slipping on a wet shower floor (The shower floor was wet? Who knew?), case after case of likely-to-obviously fraudulent cases (referrals of these were almost always rejected by overworked DA’s), the “Big Apple Map” ridiculousness (Walter has written on this), the list goes on.
I think most Americans would be disgusted by what goes in the subterranean world of personal injury litigation in New York City, against the City itself and otherwise. (The ATL commenters are correct that there are so many cases filed against the City that they set up “city parts”, or judges to whom city cases are funneled.) The City is seen as a very easy target, and juries, especially in outer boroughs like Brooklyn and the Bronx, are likely to hit it with big verdicts. And yes, there is a racial angle to that, as documented by Jeff Toobin in a New Yorker article a few years ago.
The whole thing has very little to do with an epidemic of pedestrians tripping and falling, cuffs being put on too tight or NYPD cars rear-ending folks. It has to do with making money. Where’s Albany in all this? Check out Walter’s writing on who runs that show: plaintiff’s personal injury attorneys, naturally, like Helene Weinstein.
Judge Battaglia’s potential lawsuit fits into the landscape very nicely.
What you’re describing isn’t local to only NYC. It happens all too frequently here in South TX as well. *sigh*