Two claims filed against the city in 2018 after a city plow truck struck a privately owned pickup truck have been dismissed, but a major piece of the case has yet to be decided.

The lawsuit was originally filed in February 2019 after a pickup truck driven by Mark Moll, who was working for Lynn Development Inc., was hit by a Jamestown snowplow at 3:43 a.m. March 2, 2018. Moll alleges plow driver William Griffith sped through a stop sign at Marion Street and Foote Avenue and hit the truck Moll was driving.

A notice of claim was filed in May 2018 against the city, but the claim wasn’t settled within the 30-day window included in the state General Municipal Law, prompting a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Mayville.

ARGUMENTS

Michael Coutu, an attorney from Lewis & Lewis P.C. representing Moll, wrote in a court filing that Moll had suffered life-altering injuries that required four spinal surgeries that rendered Moll disabled. Coutu argued the city should be held liable for the accident because it assigned an inexperienced driver to the plow route with insufficient training; that the plow driver hadn’t operated the plow properly down Marion Street’s steep grade; that the driver hadn’t blown his horn to alert Moll that the plow truck was approaching; and that it was likely the plow driver had not been given a 10-hour rest period as required under Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules. Coutu also said the plow truck was one of the city’s oldest plow trucks at the time and had the fewest safety features of vehicles on the city’s fleet.

“Simply put, as in Bliss, Holmes and Campbell and the other cases, the record is replete with evidence from which a trier of fact can rationally conclude that the defendants acted with reckless disregard for the safety of others leading to the crash at Marion and Foote Avenue,” Coutu wrote in a memorandum of law submitted to state Supreme Court. “This includes the non-party witness affirmation describing his observations of the crash and conduct of the defendant’s plow operator and the expert reconstruction affidavit establishing further evidence of the defendant’s acts which taken together show a conscious disregard for the safety of others making the risk of harn if not inevitable, at least, highly probable. For this reason as well the defendants’ motion must be denied.”

Marina Murray, an attorney from the Sugarman Law Firm LLP representing the city, argued that claims the plow truck sped through the Marion Street/Foote Avenue intersection can’t be verified while Griffith testified he wouldn’t have driven faster than 15 miles an hour that morning and was driving between 5 and 10 miles an hour when the plow truck began to slide through the intersection. Griffith also testified he had received the rest recommended by federal law while Patrick Monaghan, city fleet manager, testified the plow truck’s systems were in good working order before the accident.

“First, throughout their opposition, Plaintiffs argue that Mr. Griffith ‘failed to stop at and sped through a stop sign at the intersection of Marion Street and Foote Avenue,’ suggesting that Mr. Griffith intentionally drove into the intersection,” Murray wrote in a memorandum of law submitted to state Supreme Court. “There is nothing in the record to support this contention. Mr. Griffith was unable to bring the plow truck to a complete stop at the stop sign because of the icy condition of the road, causing his plow to slide through the intersection. In fact, as Mr. Griffith was driving down Marion Street, he was feathering the plow’s brakes and doing ‘everything he could’ to try and bring his plow truck to a complete stop at the stop sign.”

State Supreme Court Judge Lynn Keane sided with Moll in March 2021, denying the city’s motion to dismiss the case and ordering the parties to file motions for summary judgement limited to the issue of “serious injury” as defined by state insurance law. The serious injury judgement has yet to be decided.

CITY’S APPEAL

The city appealed shortly after Keane’s decision to the Fourth Department Appellate Division, which ruled in early August that claims of negligent hiring, training and supervision should be dismissed along with a claim of negligent entrustment while also ruling the city had not proven that Griffith wasn’t operating the plow truck with reckless disregard for the safety of others.

“Here, defendants’ submissions established that Griffith had prior experience driving a snowplow and, for a few weeks after Griffith was hired by the DPW, he was trained by an experienced snowplow driver through a training program provided by the city, during which Griffith observed and emulated the experienced driver’s practices. Further, Griffith did not have a poor driving record, he had a commercial driver’s license and he previously was employed by the state of New York as a snowplow driver. We therefore conclude that defendants met their prima facie burden for summary judgement with respect to the negligent entrustment claim.”