Calling 311 for help could help you win money from the city in a lawsuit.
A Manhattan state judge ruled that a Chelsea gallery owner’s 311 complaint about a storm drain that flooded his business gave the city legal notice that he’d suffered damages. The phone call, therefore, exempted him from a law requiring him to tell the city within 90 days of the incident that he planned to sue.
The case could be a blow to the city’s efforts to curb lawsuit payouts, which cost taxpayers more than $500 million yearly.
Six inches of water gushed into the Zach Feuer Gallery on West 24th Street on Sept. 8, 2004, causing over $100,000 worth of damage to 25 or 30 artworks. “We lost a lot of art … Most of it was totaled,” gallery owner Zach Feuer said.
Feuer complained about the incident to 311, and in the following weeks, city workers cleaned and inspected the storm drain.
Instead of filing a notice of claim within 90 days of the Sept. 8 incident, Feuer’s insurance company waited until July.
Although that was well beyond the 90-day deadline, Judge Doris Ling-Cohan said Feuer’s lawsuit should go ahead because his 311 call helped give the city “actual knowledge of the facts” of his legal claim.
Feuer’s lawyer, Eliot Greenberg, said that while Ling-Cohan’s ruling is a precedent, it doesn’t repeal the 90-day notice-of-claim requirement. “I wouldn’t advise a client that there is no need to file a notice of claim anymore,” he said.
But Greenberg also believes the ruling will make it easier to sue the city. “I’m sure there are going to be a lot of people who are going to try,” he said.
City lawyers called Ling-Cohan’s decision “erroneous,” but haven’t decided whether to appeal. “In any event, the decision is highly unlikely to be of broad application,” the city Law Department said in a statement.
Greenberg said he expects other judges will handle similar situations “on a case-by-case basis.”
Thousands of people sue the city each year – for everything from sidewalk slip-and-falls to medical malpractice at city hospitals.
In December, city Comptroller Bill Thompson reported the city paid $576.6million in tort claims in 2004, down $6.3 million from 2003. In the last few years, the city has moved to aggressively curb the payouts by settling more cases out of court.