NOTICE PROVIDED BY BIG APPLE POTHOLE MAP CALLED INTO QUESTION

According to yesterday’s City Room blog in the NY Times , the Big Apple Pothole Mapmay be going the way of the dinosaurs.  Apparently, the Court of Appeals ruled in two cases yesterday that the map did not provide sufficient notice to allow claims resulting from slip and fall accidents to go forward.  The problem, according to the Court, lies in the coded symbols on the map that are meant to indicate defects, i.e., a pothole, or a crack in the sidewalk.  In  yesterday’s cases, the symbols did not exactly match the circumstances of the plaintiffs’ falls, prompting the Court to, at least in one case, affirm a lower court’s setting aside of a plaintiff’s verdict.

UPDATE:  The cases, which were decided under the caption D’Onofrio v. City of New York , NY Slip Op 09860 (2008) , in a decision dated December 18, 2008, have just been published by the New York State Law Reporting Bureau.