Opinion
July 14, 1995
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Monroe County, Kehoe, J.
Present — Pine, J.P., Fallon, Doerr, Balio and Boehm, JJ.
Order unanimously affirmed without costs. Memorandum: Plaintiff commenced this action against, inter alia, the City of Rochester, the County of Monroe and Frank L. Ciminelli Construction Co., Inc. (defendants) to recover for injuries he sustained when he fell off a cliff into the Genesee River gorge in May 1987. We conclude that Supreme Court properly granted summary judgment dismissing the complaint. As an initial matter, we note that plaintiff was not entitled to be held to a lesser burden of persuasion in establishing a prima facie case of negligence; he failed to provide an expert's affidavit concerning his alleged amnesia ( see, Sawyer v. Dreis Krump Mfg. Co., 67 N.Y.2d 328).
Plaintiff failed to raise an issue of fact whether defendants were negligent or whether he assumed the risk. Defendants had no duty to erect barriers or warning signs in the area because the gorge was an open and obvious natural geographic phenomenon and plaintiff was fully familiar with its dangers ( see, Diven v Village of Hastings-On-Hudson, 156 A.D.2d 538). Plaintiff testified at his deposition that he had been to that area hundreds of times both during the day and night and was familiar with the cliff at the end of the gorge. We conclude that plaintiff's act of running along the cliff's edge in the dark was the sole proximate cause of the accident ( see, Tarricone v State of New York, 175 A.D.2d 308, 310, lv denied 78 N.Y.2d 862; Pizzola v. State of New York, 130 A.D.2d 796, 798).
In light of our conclusion, it is not necessary to address plaintiff's remaining contention.