DEMAILLE v. TRUMP CASTLE ASSOCIATES (2001)

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Alice Schlesinger, J.), entered September 14, 2000, which, upon a jury verdict, awarded judgment to plaintiff on liability, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

Plaintiff brings this action to recover for personal injuries sustained on October 2, 1994, when she slipped and fell on one of several puddles of partially melted ice on a marble floor in the Trump Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City.

 “To constitute constructive notice, a defect must be visible and apparent and it must exist for a sufficient length of time prior to the accident to permit defendants's employees to discover and remedy it” (Strowman v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 252 A.D.2d 384, 675 N.Y.S.2d 82, quoting Gordon v. American Museum of Natural History, 67 N.Y.2d 836, 837, 501 N.Y.S.2d 646, 492 N.E.2d 774).   The evidence established that plaintiff fell when she and a friend walked from their room into the elevator lobby, which had a marble floor and was adjacent to the room where the ice machine was located.   Circumstantial evidence of defendant's constructive notice of a dangerous condition was provided by the uncontroverted trial testimony of plaintiff and her friend regarding the size of the puddles and the size of the partially-melted ice cubes, relative to the size of those produced by the ice machine, as well as by the deposition testimony of an individual who entered the elevator lobby shortly after plaintiff fell (see, Negri v. Stop and Shop, Inc., 65 N.Y.2d 625, 626, 491 N.Y.S.2d 151, 480 N.E.2d 740;  Salaam v. City of New York, 226 A.D.2d 173, 640 N.Y.S.2d 117).   Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and according her the benefit of every favorable inference (see, Sagorsky v. Malyon, 307 N.Y. 584, 123 N.E.2d 79), it cannot be said that this circumstantial evidence was insufficient, as a matter of law, to permit the jury to draw the necessary inference that the ice had been spilled a sufficient length of time prior to the accident to allow defendant's employees to discover and remedy the condition (see, Negri v. Stop and Shop, supra, at 626, 491 N.Y.S.2d 151, 480 N.E.2d 740).