Opinion
October 2, 1997
Appeal from Supreme Court, New York County (Emily Jane Goodman, J.),
According to plaintiff's bill of particulars and his deposition testimony, he injured himself when he slipped and fell on a patch of unplowed ice which had formed on premises leased to and controlled by defendant American Airlines. Meteorological records adduced by American in support of the present motion, however, establish that the icy condition to which plaintiff has attributed his injury resulted from a mild snowfall followed by a freezing rain and that the period between the cessation of the gelid precipitation and plaintiff's injury was not so unreasonably long as to constitute a predicate for liability for negligent nonremoval of the ice ( see, e.g., Mandel v. City of New York, 44 N.Y.2d 1004; Drake v. Prudential Ins. Co., 153 A.D.2d 924; Valentine v. City of New York, 86 A.D.2d 381, affd 57 N.Y.2d 932). The affidavit of plaintiff's brother stating that plaintiff fell not upon newly formed ice but upon a longstanding and very substantial pile of plowed snow and ice is not only sharply at variance with plaintiff's account of the circumstances of his fall but, given the meteorological data for some three weeks preceding plaintiff's injury indicating only trace snowfalls and numerous intervening periods of thaw, incredible as a matter of law ( see, Loughlin v. City of New York, 186 A.D.2d 176, 177, lv denied 81 N.Y.2d 704), and, as such, insufficient to sustain this action.
Concur — Murphy, P.J., Sullivan, Ellerin and Williams, JJ.