ALBANY, N.Y. — When is a village parking lot a highway? When New York’s highest court says so.
A Court of Appeals ruling Thursday means Margaret Groninger can’t sue Mamaroneck for her slip and fall on ice in its parking lot.
The village says it neither received prior notice about that icy defect nor caused it, and therefore can’t be sued.
Lower courts agreed.
Groninger says state law lists only six municipal locations that require advance notice of defects: sidewalks, crosswalks, streets, highways, bridges and culverts.
Four judges say this parking lot serves the “functional purpose” of a highway, “open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel.”
Three dissenting judges say that’s so obviously untrue “as hardly to merit serious discussion.”
