Pendley v. City of New York

Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Geoffrey D. Wright, J.), entered November 28, 2012, which granted plaintiffs motion to have his late notice of claim deemed timely served nunc pro tunc, unanimously affirmed, without costs. The motion court did not improvidently exercise its discretion in granting plaintiffs motion, in this action where plaintiff alleges that he was injured when he tripped and fell on defendants’ stairs. Although plaintiff did not provide a reasonable excuse for failing to timely serve the notice of claim, such failure, by itself, is not fatal to the motion (see e.g. Weiss v City of New York, 237 AD2d 212, 213 [1st Dept 1997]). Rather, the record demonstrates that there was a relatively short delay in the filing of the notice of claim, which provided actual notice of the accident within a reasonable time after the 90-day period expired. Furthermore, defendants did not address plaintiff’s showing that defendants would not be prejudiced because the condition of the steps had not changed since the accident (see Matter of Mercado v City of New York, 100 AD3d 445 [1st Dept 2012]; Fredrickson v New York City Hous. Auth., 87 AD3d 425 [1st Dept 2011]). Concur — Gonzalez, EJ., Acosta, DeGrasse, Freedman and Richter, JJ.