New York: Premises Owner/Employer Might Be Liable for Negligence in Parking Lot Injury

A New York employer, who, in her individual capacity, also owned the building where the employer and other tenants leased space, was not entitled to summary judgment on the employee’s negligence claim since questions of fact existed concerning whether the parking lot area—where the employee slipped and fell on a patch of ice—was within the employer’s exclusive control. The appellate court acknowledged that where a defendant was both the property owner and a corporate officer of the plaintiff’s employer, the defendant’s responsibility to provide the plaintiff with a safe place to work could be merged, in which case, workers’ compensation benefits were the plaintiff’s sole remedy. If, however, the defendant’s duty of care toward the plaintiff was owed purely in the capacity as owner of the property at the accident site, and not at all as a co-employee, N.Y. Work. Comp. Law § 29(6) would not bar the plaintiff’s negligence action.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Garelle v. Geinitz, 2016 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 8768 (3rd Dept., Dec. 29, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 113.02.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law