Rhames v. City of New York

Order, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Julia Rodriguez, J.), entered April 17, 2014, which granted petitioner’s motion to deny respondent City of New York’s workers’ compensation lien, unanimously reversed, on the law, without costs, and the motion denied.

Petitioner, an employee of the Department of Education, was injured when, while helping to unload a delivery of paper inside the school building where he worked, the skid that was carrying the paper fell on his foot. Under the circumstances presented, petitioner is not entitled to recover no-fault benefits (see Insurance Law § 5103 [a] [1]), since the delivery person’s vehicle was clearly not a proximate cause of petitioner’s injuries (see Walton v Lumbermens Mut. Cas. Co., 88 NY2d 211 , 215 [1996]). Accordingly, the application to deny the workers’ compensation lien should have been denied. Concur — Gonzalez, P.J., Sweeny, Renwick, Saxe and Feinman, JJ.