Description: Negligence action against City of New York for flooding damage during storms.
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Wohl v. City of New York
Case Documents:
Filing Date Type File Action Taken Summary 10/22/2014 Opinion Summary judgment awarded to City defendants. A New York Supreme Court in Staten Island awarded summary judgment to the City of New York and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection in an action by Staten Island homeowners who alleged that the City’s negligence resulted in flooding that damaged their car and their residence in August 2011. The court took judicial notice of climatological reports from the National Climatic Center and found that these reports proved that New York City had been “subjected to inordinate rainfall” during two storms in August 2011 (one of which was Hurricane Irene). The court found that the evidence demonstrated that the Staten Island sewer system had not been designed to accommodate the volume of rain that fell during the storms, and that the City met its burden of demonstrating prima facie that the sole proximate cause of the flooding was the volume of precipitation, not the City’s inspection and maintenance failures.