Opinion
2004-1663 K C.
Decided July 7, 2005.
Appeal by plaintiff from an order of the Civil Court, Kings County (B. Balter, J.), dated October 24, 2002, denying his motion to set aside a jury verdict in favor of defendants on the issue of liability, and from a judgment of the same court, entered April 9, 2003, in favor of defendants in effect dismissing the action.
Appeal from order unanimously dismissed.
Judgment unanimously affirmed without costs.
Before: PRESENT: GOLIA, J.P., RIOS and BELEN, JJ.
At the outset we note that any right to a direct appeal from the order terminated with the entry of judgment ( see Matter of Aho, 39 NY2d 241).
Plaintiff brought the instant action after he injured himself in defendants' home while in the course of replacing ceiling tiles in their kitchen. Following a trial on the issue of liability, the jury returned a verdict in favor of defendants, finding that while they were negligent, said negligence was not a substantial factor in bringing about the accident. The trial court denied plaintiff's motion to set aside the verdict as inconsistent and contrary to the weight of the evidence.
Plaintiff's contention that the jury verdict was inconsistent is not preserved for appellate review inasmuch as plaintiff failed to object to the verdict prior to the discharge of the jury ( see Barry v. Manglass, 55 NY2d 803; Clements v. Lindsey, 237 AD2d 557). In any event, contrary to plaintiff's contentions, the answers to the interrogatories on the verdict sheet were not internally inconsistent ( cf. Roberts v. County of Westchester, 278 AD2d 216; DePasquale v. Morbark Indus., 254 AD2d 450; Cortes v. Edoo, 228 AD2d 463). Although a trial court has the discretion to set aside a verdict which is clearly the product of substantial confusion among the jurors ( see e.g., Borovskaya v. Herkovic, 300 AD2d 331; Roberts v. County of Westchester, 278 AD2d 216, supra), the confusion must be apparent from the trial record ( see Moisakis v. Allied Bldg. Prods. Corp., 265 AD2d 457) which was not the case here.
Nor was the verdict against the weight of the evidence. A jury finding that a party was negligent, but that such party's negligence was not a proximate cause of the accident is inconsistent and against the weight of the evidence only when the issues are "so inextricably interwoven as to make it logically impossible to find negligence without also finding proximate cause" ( see Ruscillo-Steiner v. City of New York, 11 AD3d 597, quoting Rubin v. Pecoraro, 141 AD2d 525, 527; see also El-Shafaie v. Verma, 2 AD3d 394; Cona v. Dwyer, 292 AD2d 562). Under the facts of the instant case, the jury could have found that defendants' installation of the light fixture or the countertop created unsafe conditions, that defendants were negligent in permitting such unsafe conditions to exist, but that it was the conduct of plaintiff himself which was the cause of his accident. Since the verdict was supported by a fair interpretation of the evidence, the court below did not err in denying plaintiff's motion to set aside the liability verdict.