Summary
In Borst v. Bovis Lend Lease LMB, Inc., 102 A.D.3d 519, 957 N.Y.S.2d 859 (1st Dept.2013), the plaintiffs were firefighters who were injured while battling a fire that had ignited during the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank building adjacent to the World Trade Center. Two other firefighters had perished in the conflagration.
Summary of this case from J.P. Morgan Sec. Inc. v. Vigilant Ins. Co.Opinion
2013-01-17
Michael BORST, et al., Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. BOVIS LEND LEASE LMB, INC., et al., Defendants–Respondents, Lower Manhattan Development Corp., et al, Defendants. Allen Hay, et al., Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. Bovis Lend Lease LMB, Inc., et al., Defendants–Respondents, Lower Manhattan Development Corp., et. al, Defendants.
Barasch McGarry Salzman & Penson, New York (Dominique Penson of counsel), for appellants. Newman Myers Kreines Gross Harris, P.C., New York (Stephen M. Bigham of counsel), for respondents.
Barasch McGarry Salzman & Penson, New York (Dominique Penson of counsel), for appellants. Newman Myers Kreines Gross Harris, P.C., New York (Stephen M. Bigham of counsel), for respondents.
Orders, Supreme Court, New York County (Barbara Jaffe, J.), entered September 8, 2011, which, in these consolidated personal injury actions, denied plaintiffs' motions for summary judgment as to liability, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
Plaintiffs failed to make a prima facie showing of entitlement to partial summary judgment as a matter of law. The non-prosecution agreement entered into between the New York County District Attorney's Office (N.Y.DA) and the Bovis defendants (Bovis) following NYDA's criminal investigation of the August 18, 2007 fire at the Deutsche Building in lower Manhattan, was correctly deemed inadmissible as proof of liability. The agreement explicitly provided that Bovis had not admitted liability, that the factual statements contained in the agreement were relevant only for the purposes of the compromise between the NYDA and Bovis, and that Bovis could contradict and/or contest any factual statement in the agreement in a subsequent action or proceeding to which the NYDA was not a party ( see e.g. Kollmer v. Slater Elec., 122 A.D.2d 117, 120, 504 N.Y.S.2d 690 [2d Dept. 1986] ).
Judicial estoppel, and even informal judicial estoppel, cannot be applied here. Bovis was not a party to a legal proceeding when it entered into the non-prosecution agreement ( see generally Ferring v. Merrill Lynch & Co., 244 A.D.2d 204, 664 N.Y.S.2d 279 [1st Dept. 1997] ), and the agreement and related documents amount to a pre-indictment settlement agreement that was neither judicially endorsed nor approved ( see Douglas v. Dashevsky, 62 A.D.3d 937, 938, 880 N.Y.S.2d 667 [2d Dept. 2009];Matter of Costantino, 67 A.D.3d 1412, 1413, 890 N.Y.S.2d 739 [4th Dept. 2009] ).