10/05/2012 - Myclipp

limb that tumbled down at Stuyvesant Square Park in
Manhattan, where 29-year-old Alexis Handwerker was
injured so severely that she was hospitalized for more
than four months. Parts of the limb later showed it had
been so deteriorated that it was hollow. On the eve of
trial this February, the city settled for $4 million. But in
the long court fight, city lawyers advanced and then
abandoned numerous arguments, including the claim
that Ms. Handwerker failed to use unspecified
“reasonable safety devices” when sitting on the park
bench. As its legal arguments were failing, the city was
conducting secret video surveillance on Ms.
Handwerker. Her lawyer, Sal A. Spano, said he
learned of the surveillance only when the city had to
turn its evidence over. He said he thought the goal was
to imply to jurors that she was the kind of person the
authorities might suspect of some kind of unspecified
wrongdoing. In response to a question about the
surveillance, the Law Department’s written response
said that it did not comment on strategies in particular
cases but that it was necessary to assess the “extent
of the limitations claimed” by an injured person,
“particularly where a plaintiff seeks millions of dollars.”
Mr. Spano said the city’s response to Ms.
Handwerker’s accident changed over time. Hours after
The New York Times/ - Politics, Qua, 16 de Maio de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
she was rushed to the hospital, a top parks department
official in Manhattan, William Castro, went to the
Bellevue Hospital emergency room. In the lawsuit, Ms.
Handwerker’s mother and stepfather recalled that Mr.
Castro offered his help to the stricken family. They said
he explicitly promised to “preserve the tree” so
everyone could find out “how this happened.” In a
document filed during the case, Mr. Castro said that he
did not recall making any such promise and that it was
standard practice to save only portions of a tree. Two
days later, the tree was cut down, and most of it was
discarded. A judge declined to punish the city, noting
that city workers took photographs of the tree and
saved parts of the limb that fell and a part of the trunk.
But the judge left open the possibility that Mr. Spano
might argue to the jury that “spoliation of evidence”
deprived tree experts working for him of vital evidence
to prove that the tree had been so obviously rotting for
years that a rudimentary inspection would have
revealed that it was a deadly hazard. “Maybe their
intentions were in the right place at the beginning,” Mr.
Spano said. “But all of a sudden it becomes, ‘How are
we going to get ourselves out of this situation?’ ”
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