- Court
- New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department
- Case
- Gonzalez-Taveras v. City of New York
- Date
- June 2, 2026
- Slip Op. No.
- 2026 NY Slip Op 03389
Background
Plaintiff Luis Manuel Gonzalez-Taveras allegedly slipped and fell on a patch of ice on a sidewalk at approximately 8:15 a.m. on February 6, 2014. The incident occurred approximately eighteen hours after the end of a winter storm that deposited four inches of snow in the area between 2:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on February 5, 2014. Certified climatological records showed that temperatures during the period fluctuated between 34 and 21 degrees Fahrenheit, with an average temperature of 27 degrees on February 6. The plaintiff brought suit against the City of New York, the New York City Department of Transportation, and other defendants. The defendants moved for summary judgment based on the storm-in-progress doctrine. The Supreme Court, Bronx County, granted the defendants’ respective motions for summary judgment dismissing the complaint, and the plaintiff appealed.
Holding
The Appellate Division unanimously affirmed the dismissal. The Court held that the City defendants established prima facie entitlement to summary judgment under the storm-in-progress doctrine by demonstrating that they did not have a reasonable amount of time to discover and remedy the alleged icy condition before the plaintiff’s fall. The combination of the temperature fluctuation—which would have caused a freeze-thaw cycle creating the icy condition—and the passage of only eighteen hours from the end of the storm to the fall was sufficient to show that the City did not have a reasonable time to address the condition. The Court also found that the plaintiff failed to raise a triable issue of fact in opposition, as he provided no evidence that the ice he slipped on was old or preexisting, nor any other evidence rebutting the City’s showing. The remaining defendant’s motion was also properly granted on similar grounds.
Takeaways
The storm-in-progress doctrine protects municipalities and property owners from liability for injuries caused by ice and snow conditions that formed during or shortly after a recent storm, provided the defendant did not have a reasonable time to discover and remedy the condition. The passage of eighteen hours from the end of a storm, combined with subfreezing temperatures that would cause melting snow to refreeze, is insufficient time for a municipality to address icy conditions. Plaintiffs opposing summary judgment in storm-in-progress cases must present affirmative evidence that the ice was a preexisting condition unrelated to the recent storm; mere speculation is insufficient.
Why It Matters
This decision provides useful guidance on the temporal boundary of the storm-in-progress defense. Courts will consider not only the time elapsed since the storm ended but also the temperature conditions that affect how quickly ice can form and how reasonable it is to expect remediation. Here, the very cold temperatures that followed the storm made it unreasonable to expect the City to have identified and treated the icy sidewalk within eighteen hours. Plaintiffs’ attorneys handling winter slip-and-fall cases should obtain detailed climatological records early in the litigation to assess the viability of their claims against the storm-in-progress defense, and should be prepared to present evidence of preexisting ice conditions that predated the recent storm event.