Ja Rule could be held liable for injury on property during snowstorm
The litigation involves a woman who suffered a slip-and-fall injury at the home of Jeffrey Atkins, who is better known as Ja Rule.
The “ongoing storm rule” got the cold shoulder for a second time on Thursday (Oct. 8) in the New Jersey Appellate Division, in a ruling overturning dismissal of a suit by a woman who suffered a slip-and-fall injury during a snowstorm.
And the litigation involves a celebrity.
The latest case is by the housekeeper for Aisha Atkins and her husband, Jeffrey, a rapper and reality television star, better known as Ja Rule.
The decision means another appellate court has found a property owner is not immune from a claim for injuries while a snowstorm is underway.
This comes as an appeal pends before the New Jersey Supreme Court on the future of the “ongoing storm rule,” which holds that a property owner is not liable for injuries from snow on sidewalks until after the precipitation stops.
The Appellate Division decision on that issue relies on another recent appeals court ruling that found the ongoing storm rule is not valid. But further revisions to the law are possible because the Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on that rule’s validity.
The rule, which says that a landowner’s duty to clear snow and ice from sidewalks begins after the snow stops falling, has long been applied in New Jersey courts.
Thursday’s decision in Berniz v. Atkins reinstates a suit by a housekeeper, Josselyn Berniz, who sued her employers after falling on their driveway in Saddle River during a snowstorm. A trial judge dismissed the suit, but Judges Clarkson Fisher Jr. and Scott Moynihan reversed, citing the April 9 Appellate Division published decision, Pareja v. Princeton International Properties.
Berniz initially parked her car in front of the garage doors at the home of her employers, Jeffrey and Aisha Atkins, but was later asked to move it to the street to permit the driveway to be plowed. But when she left work at 5 p.m., the driveway was snow-covered. While walking down the snow-covered driveway, she fell backward and injured her right hand.
The lawyer for Berniz, Robert Kuttner of Maplewood, did not return a call. The lawyer for the Atkinses, Santo Artusa Jr. of Jersey City, said the standard applied in his clients’ case and Pareja is “overly burdensome — it would mean they would have to have contractors on call for the slightest precipitation. That’s an incredibly difficult standard to meet. I feel my clients did what they were supposed to do.”
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