Summary
In Matter of Flannelly v Board of Trustees of N. Y.C. Police Pension Fund, 278 A.D.2d 113 [1st Dept 2000], the officer tripped and fell over a "tangle of television and VCR wires in the women's locker room of the police station where she worked, while performing a routine security inspection" (Id.).
Summary of this case from Ciccone v. SewellOpinion
December 19, 2000.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Edward Lehner, J.), entered August 9, 1999, which granted petitioner's application to annul respondents' denial of an accident disability pension by virtue of a tie vote of the Board of Trustees, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
Rosemary Carroll, for petitioner-respondent.
Mordecai Newman, for respondents-appellants.
Before: Nardelli, J.P., Tom, Mazzarelli, Wallach, Rubin, JJ.
Petitioner's trip and fall over a tangle of television and VCR wires in the women's locker room of the police station where she worked, while performing a routine security inspection, was, as a matter of law, a service-related accident entitling her to an accident disability pension. The record shows that the wires were in an unexpected location at the entrance of the locker room, a situation that had been recently created by painters who, unbeknownst to petitioner or anyone else in the police station, had moved the television and VCR and unplugged their wires. As the IAS court stated, the injury-causing circumstances are "strikingly similar" to those held to be accidents as a matter of law inMatter of McCambridge v. McGuire ( 62 N.Y.2d 563) and Matter of Gasparino v. Bratton ( 92 N.Y.2d 836).
THIS CONSTITUTES THE DECISION AND ORDER OF SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT.