You v. Pedro Teixeira, Inc.

Background

The action arose from a July 17, 2015 motor-vehicle accident in which an approximately 83-year-old Ka Chor Yau was struck and killed by a dump truck near the intersection of Canal Street and Bowery Street on the Manhattan side of the Manhattan Bridge. Jin Yue You, administrator of Mr. Yau’s estate, asserted negligence and wrongful-death claims against Pedro Teixeira, Inc. and Maykel Feliz-Tejeda.

Mr. Feliz-Tejeda was driving the truck during his employment for Pedro Teixeira, Inc. He testified that he stopped at a red light, was not using his phone, and was looking ahead for pedestrians. After the light turned green, he began driving, felt the truck go over something, and then saw a person on the ground in his rearview mirror. The truck was traveling approximately five to ten miles per hour at that time.

Mr. Yau had been crossing Canal Street approximately 148 to 200 feet from the nearest crosswalk. The parties disputed how he was moving and whether Mr. Feliz-Tejeda should have seen him before the collision. A police traffic-enforcement agent testified that Mr. Yau was moving very slowly. The defendants’ accident-reconstruction expert concluded that Mr. Feliz-Tejeda would have had about one second to see Mr. Yau. The plaintiff’s expert concluded that Mr. Yau could have been visible from an angle the police analysis did not examine, potentially for a longer period.

Legal standard and analysis

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, summary judgment is appropriate only when there is no genuine dispute about any material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The court must view the evidence favorably to the party opposing the motion.

Under New York law, a negligence claim requires proof of a duty, a breach of that duty, and an injury substantially caused by the breach. Drivers must use due care to avoid colliding with pedestrians, while pedestrians crossing outside a marked crosswalk must yield to vehicles. However, New York follows comparative negligence, so a pedestrian’s own fault does not automatically bar recovery.

The court held that the parties’ evidence created a factual dispute about whether Mr. Feliz-Tejeda had sufficient time and visibility to see and avoid Mr. Yau before moving the truck. The court considered the testimony, surveillance footage, police investigation, and competing expert analyses to be subject to interpretation. Whether Mr. Feliz-Tejeda failed to see what he should have seen was therefore a question for the factfinder, not one the court could resolve on summary judgment.

The court also rejected the defendants’ argument that seeing Mr. Yau for only one second was legally insufficient to support liability. The court explained that the cited cases involved different evidentiary records and procedural settings, including cases with no evidence of negligent driving or uncontradicted evidence about what the driver saw. The court further noted that a cited New York decision had refused to take judicial notice of a general rule about how quickly a driver can react to an emergency.

Disposition

The court denied the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. In the conclusion, the court described the motion as a motion for partial summary judgment and stated that it was denied. The court scheduled a final pretrial conference, directed the parties to arrange a settlement conference with Magistrate Judge Fox, and stated that the case remained referred to Magistrate Judge Fox for general pretrial management.