Opinion
July 10, 1995
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Harbater, J.).
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed, with costs.
We agree with the trial court that the plaintiffs failed to make out a prima facie case of negligence at trial. The circumstantial evidence presented by the plaintiffs as to the happening of the accident failed to provide sufficient facts from which the jury could reasonably infer that the allegedly negligent design and construction of the picnic table owned by the defendant was a substantial factor in causing the infant plaintiff's injury. Moreover, the evidence failed to render the other possible causes of the injury sufficiently remote to enable the jury to reach a verdict based upon the logical inferences to be drawn from the evidence, not upon speculation ( see, Abdullah v. City of New York, 203 A.D.2d 397; Thomas v. New York City Tr. Auth., 194 A.D.2d 663).
The plaintiffs sought to reopen their case in order to ask one question of a witness. Whether to grant this request was a matter within the court's discretion ( see, Feldsberg v. Nitschke, 49 N.Y.2d 636, 643; Kennedy v. Peninsula Hosp. Ctr., 135 A.D.2d 788, 790), and we conclude that the denial of the application was not an improvident exercise of discretion under the circumstances herein. Sullivan, J.P., O'Brien, Altman and Goldstein, JJ., concur.