TOWN OF GREECE GOT PLOWED HERE
After she was rear-ended by a snowplow owned by the Town of Greece, B.P. filed a personal-injury case, in the Monroe County Supreme Court.
The Town argued that New York law exempts certain vehicles engaged in highway work, like snowplows, from the usual rules of the road, and that a “recklessness standard of care” applied. But as the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, noted, that exemption only applied if the vehicle was in “work” mode when the accident occurred. (It did not apply if the snowplow was merely traveling from one location to another, for example.)
Because the Town failed to show that the operator was “working” at the time of the collision, the AD4 thought the motion was properly denied. As the appellate court noted in its decision:
The deposition testimony submitted by defendants in support of their motion was vague and equivocal with respect to whether the accident site was part of [its employee’s] route on the day in question — [the employee] did not precisely describe the geographical contours of his route or state that the accident site was a part thereof — and was insufficient to satisfy defendants' initial burden …. Moreover, defendants' initial submissions otherwise failed to eliminate the question whether [the employee] was "merely traveling from one route to another route" on roads that did not constitute part of his run or beat.”
To be frank, that’s all Greek to me.
# # #
DECISION