Lawsuit filed over icy slip and fall in garage
STAMFORD — A city man has filed suit against the operators of the Gateway Garage as well as the owners of the Washington Boulevard parking structure for negligence and recklessness that allowed for the creation of ice to form in early March 2019 that caused the man to slip and fall, severely injuring his elbow.
Stamford attorney Adam Blank said the victim of the fall, 68-year-old Stamford man, has undergone multiple rounds of very expensive medical procedures to repair a very painful elbow injury, dubbed the Terrible Triad of the elbow, in the medical profession.
“We are disappointed that the city hasn’t stepped in to ensure Building and Land Technology has made its garage safe for commuters,” said Blank, who works for the law office of Wofsey, Rosen, Kweskin & Kuriansky LLP. No date has been set for trial.
The 21-page suit filed in March says the 1,700-space garage, which offers access to the Stamford Metro-North railroad station, is built underneath a plaza and one or more high-rise towers.
On the Building Land and Technology site the Gateway properties are described as an office complex fully leased to Charter Communications and the only Stamford property with direct train platform access to Metro North and Amtrak and Acela for transportation between Boston and New York City. “This trophy property boasts unparalleled convenience, location, and visibility as the Gateway to Harbor Point’s 100-acre urban environment,” it says.
The suit alleges that the the use of expansion joints to construct the garage should not allow water to flow from the top level of the garage to the lower levels.
The suit also says that the owners of the building were required to waterproof the top level of the garage.
But when the garage was opened to the public in 2014, the suit alleges that the top level of the garage was not adequately waterproofed, allowing the water to flow into the garage.
“The Gateway Garage owners could have kept the Gateway Garage closed until construction above was completed and the Gateway Garage was appropriately waterproofed, but made a conscious decision not to do so,” the 21-page complaint says. The Gateway Garage owners instead opened the Gateway Garage to the public for a fee so they could earn profits curing the period of construction of the plaza and towers above.”
Attorneys for the operator of the garage, Pro Park Inc., the owner of the structure, HP Gateway Unit One LLC, did not return calls for comment. A spokesperson for Building and Land Technology said they could not comment on ongoing litigation.
According to the suit, later in the evening of March 5, 2019 Michael Borkowsky was on the train coming from New York City, where he was having dinner with this son. After getting off at the Stamford station he made his way into the Gateway Garage at about 10:20 p..m.
As he was pushing the lock button on his car’s remote and listening for his horn to beep while scanning cars in the garage, the suit says he slipped on an icy puddle near an expansion joint and fell forward landing on his left elbow joint, fracturing the radial head and ulnar coronoid process, causing fracture lines and chips. It is called the Terrible Triad because the injury causes three complicated traumas of the elbow.
Blank said Borkowsky has already had to pay $150,000 in medical expenses to doctors and practitioners working on his elbow.
But in a reply to the complaint, attorney Frank Usseglio, who is representing the operators of the garage, Pro Park Inc., said Borkowsky failed to to watch where he was stepping, failed to make use of his senses and faculties and was not watching his his surroundings, because he had lost his car or did not remember where he had parked.
in the same filing Usseglio also denied the claim that the defective condition at the Gateway Garage posed a serious dangers to those using the garage such as Borkowsky. As well he denied the allegation that the garage owners put profits ahead of people.
He also argued that the the Gateway Garage owners were mot aware of the dangerous conditions for a significant time before the accident, as Blank argued in his complaint.