The Post has the details:
Anastasia “Sasha” Klupchak, who was an honors student and varsity soccer player, is guaranteed the $29 million from the building owner East Village Associates after her lawyer struck an unusual deal with defense counsel on Monday.
Called a “high low settlement” the parties agreed that if the jury came back with a verdict that was less than $13 million, the defense would pay $13 million; but if they arrived at a figure over $29 million, the landlord would cough up $29 million.
The pre-verdict deal means the award cannot be appealed.
Klupchak, 22 at the time in 2008, was visiting a friend at 82 Second Ave. between Fourth Street and Fifth Street. She and her friend went out on the fire escape to smoke around midnight. When attempting to re-enter the apartment, "she fell through an unguarded opening in the fire escape platform." The 12-foot fall left her paralyzed from the waist down.
The landlord at the time, East Village Associates, was found liable "because a 1949 law prohibited the type of fire escape on the building." One of the six jurors found that Klupchak "was at least partially responsible for her injuries." She had been drinking on the evening of her fall, and the landlord's attorney said "that she treated the fire escape like a balcony instead of an emergency escape route."
Her attorney, Thomas Moore, noted that there was no provision in the lease that said tenants couldn’t hang out on the fire escape. He also got the landlord, Bernard McElhone of East Village Associates, to admit under cross examination that “tens of thousands of New Yorkers regularly” hang out on the structures.
Klupchak, who went on to pursue a Ph.D. in film studies at Emory, now teaches at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta.
As for the building, Icon Realty bought the property from East Village Associates in January 2013 for $3.1 million. Icon flipped the building in late 2015 to a South Carolina-based investor for $10.9 million.
“She cried with joy and [thanks]. She just kept saying, ‘I don’t believe it'” https://t.co/5FQCDjZFz6
— New York Post Metro (@nypmetro) March 8, 2017
Google Street View image from 2008
16 comments:
Sad story, but good for her.
I know there's a lot of grandfathering in terms of building codes, but it is pretty crazy that something that's been prohibited for over half a century and clearly so unsafe was still on that building. Makes sense that the landlord was found partially responsible.
There should be inspections of residential buildings to ensure fire escapes are up to code. How could this remain on the building when these were outlawed in 1949? Also, with all the NYU students partying on fire escapes, roofs and in stairwells all over the East Village, landlords would be use to make sure everything is up to code.
I cannot agree with this judgement, property owners should not be responsible for accidents that happen to people that are high or intoxicated. Sadly there have been incidents involving young people falling from rooftops during a night of drinking, I can't say I heard of a landlord being sued for this. This landlord was prepared for questioning by his landlord, he should never stated that "tens of thousands hangout on fire escapes", that comment was not based on any reliable statistic and should not have been considered a true statement by the jury.
Anonymous 8:58 AM: drunk or not, the fire escape was faulty. If she'd been drunk and it wasn't faulty, there would be no lawsuit.
To me this seems like a pretty crazy precedent. It's now time to party on your fire escape with impunity I guess.
I would only agree with this settlement if the accident happened while a resident was fleeing a fire and the escape proved endanger her well being instead.
Why is it always drunk NYU students who are falling off of buidlings or getting stuck between buildings? Now that they arre making money off of this I expect NYU to offer a major in Rooftop Rage Management. Can we please get some nets put up around these buildings?
Wow. So if you have a smoke on your fire escape, you deserve to be paralyzed because the greedy absentee landlord couldn't spring to bring the escape up to code for 1949? Makes me wonder how many of these commenters actually grew up in the city or have lived here for more than a year or two. The fire escape is the front porch for city dwellers without a trust fund. It's amazing that tribal hatred of millennials leads to such callous attitudes.
I have lived here for 30 years and I have a fire escape. I would never sit on it, smoke on it, or put plants on it. It is not a balcony. It is there so I can escape if there is a fire. Unfortunately, the spoiled brats living above me don't get this. They sit out there and smoke, and guess where their cigarette butts end up? On my window sill and on the fire escape outside my window.
I have sympathy for you, 8:21. Luckily that hasn't happened above me but a couple of times people have decided to climb the fire escape in the middle of the night to go to the roof and it really gives you a heart attack to wake up at 2 AM and see someone 3 feet from where you are sleeping. Hard to get back to sleep after that. People are rude!!
Some weird comments here.
(1) Landlord breaks the law.
(2) Other person does something mildly stupid but 100% legal.
So where should the legal liability lie? This would not seem to be a difficult question.
As someone who has lived with a fire escape for many years, the first thing you should know about a fire escape is that it was put there to escape from fires. That's how they came up with the name fire escape. If it was put there for smoking, they would have called it a Smoking Escape. If it was put there for drinking beer, it would be called a Drinking Escape. It's not a balcony or a terrace where people go to hang out. it's a fire escape. Many of these things are old, rusted and rickety and full of gaps you can easily fall through. So unless your building is on fire, stay off the fire escape.
Even the fire escapes that meet the legal requirements are easy to fall from. They are not for hanging out, and they are not for smoking. I hate to see anyone injured even if they are drunk and taking risks but you also have to use common sense. The majority of these NYU kids are from the burbs and they aren't used to apartment life and they don't respect their neighbors or their buildings and they climb the fire escapes like they are jungle gyms and party on our rickety roofs. This isn't the first accident like this. Remember the student who fell between the buildings and the other one who jumped down a flight of stairs and crashed through? What's crazy is the landlords now only care about renting to these transient kids who can afford to pay a lot of rent but are they okay with paying the price when these kids get hurt? It seems like it would make more sense in the long run to rent to stable adults who respect their buildings and the neighborhood.
The Post article said that she had been drinking — nowhere does it say she was drunk.
Even if this fire escape had been up to code and she hadn't been drinking, it is dangerous to hang out and smoke on these fire escapes. You could topple down the stairs easily even if you were 100 percent sober. I would suggest landlords put language in leases from now on specifically banning people from sitting, smoking, doing anything on a fire escape but trying to escape from a fire.
If anything good comes out of this I hope the kids in the neighborhood who climb the fire escapes and hang out on them, especially at night when visibility isn't good, will stop doing it even if they are 100 percent sober or only buzzed. Walk around the side streets on any weekend night when the weather is nice and you will see them out there. Sometimes it is a bunch of people and these fire escapes weren't made to hold that much weight. They are not balconies. This case got a lot of press because the woman was paralyzed but there have been other instances in the last few years of people even falling on the fire escapes and getting nasty cuts and falling from lower levels and winding up with broken bones.
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