Regla Lopez suffered injuries to her back and right leg when she slipped on a piece of excrement. (Apparently, the toilet in her apartment had overflowed, and when she awoke from a sleep, her unit was "ankle deep" in waste water.)
In a lawsuit filed in the Bronx County Supreme Court, Ms. Lopez sued her landlord (Crotona Avenue Associates, LP) alleging that the company knew of the bathroom's defects and that her repair requests had been ignored. The landlord countered that it had no record of any complaints (from Lopez or any other tenant) nor was there any evidence of any plumbing problems in the building (other than an unrelated incident in the basement). An expert also inspected Lopez's apartment and, using a plumbing line with a video camera, found no obstructions.
Lopez secured an affidavit from another tenant (on a different floor) who outlined numerous problems with his toilet, together with an engineer's affidavit that "opined" that the toilet overflow was the result of the "owner's failure to repair or replace a non-functioning float."
Faced with this conflicting information, the Supreme Court determined that there were issues of fact which precluded the grant of summary judgment -- thus warranting that there be a formal hearing or trial on Lopez's claims.
Unimpressed with the tenant's evidence, the Appellate Division, First Department, reversed. Since her engineer never actually visited the premises, the AD1 found the opinions of Lopez's expert to be predicated on "speculation." It further discounted her fellow tenant's affidavit since his plumbing problems were "unrelated" to those purportedly experienced by Lopez.
In effect, the AD1 summarily flushed the case ....
For a copy of the Appellate Division's decision, please use this link: Lopez v. Crotona Avenue Associates, LP