LEACH v. Moshe Lieberman, Defendant–Respondent–Appellant. (2025)

Order, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Bianka Perez, J.), entered February 29, 2024, which, to the extent appealed from as limited by the briefs, granted the motion of defendants GVC II Inc. and Tiffany Marie Merritt (collectively, GVC Defendants), for summary judgment dismissing the complaint as against them, unanimously reversed, on the law, without costs, and the motion denied.

Plaintiffs allege that they sustained injuries when they were passengers on a bus driven by Merritt and operated by GVC II, Inc., which collided with a minivan driven by defendant Lieberman.

GVC Defendants established their prima facie entitlement to summary judgment on the issue of liability by demonstrating, through Merritt's testimony, that Lieberman caused the collision when he “violated [his] duty not to enter a lane of moving traffic until it [was] safe to do so” (Castro v. Hatim, 174 A.D.3d 464, 464, 106 N.Y.S.3d 24 [1st Dept. 2019] [internal quotation marks omitted];  see Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1128[a]).  Merritt's testimony that Lieberman “made an unsafe lane change, without signaling or leaving a safe distance between the vehicles in violation of traffic laws, establishes [his] negligence” (Velasquez v. MTA Bus Co., 132 A.D.3d 485, 485, 19 N.Y.S.3d 18 [1st Dept. 2015]).

Plaintiffs’ testimony, in which they alleged that the accident was caused by the bus veering into the center lane, was “sufficient to permit an inference” that the bus proximately caused the accident, and the bus driver's conflicting testimony raised triable issues of fact (see DiSalvatore v. New York City Tr. Auth., 45 A.D.3d 402, 403, 845 N.Y.S.2d 312 [1st Dept. 2007]).  Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, we conclude that issues exist as to whether the bus driver “exercise[d] due care to avoid the accident” (Sylvester v. Velez, 146 A.D.3d 599, 599, 44 N.Y.S.3d 742 [1st Dept. 2017]).