Court of Appeals Win: Indemnity Claim Rejected as Too Attenuated
The Shaub, Ahmuty, Citrin & Spratt, LLP appellate team recently secured a significant victory in the New York Court of Appeals, which rejected co-defendants’ efforts to impose contractual indemnity on our client under three indemnification agreements.
Plaintiff, an employee of another subcontractor, was injured after falling from a ladder he commandeered from our client, instead of using his own employer’s equipment. The majority found that all three indemnity provisions are “cabined” by the scope of “Work”, a defined term that did not include supplying ladders to other trades. To allow indemnity under these circumstances involving such a “distantly attenuated nexus”, the majority found, would render the even the broadly worded indemnity agreement superfluous.
The Court also rejected co-defendants’ attempt to import notions of foreseeability – which determines the scope of a duty - as the benchmark for determining whether a duty exists in the first place, finding “it would swallow the default rule of no duty to third parties to a contract.” Thus, the Court preserved long-standing New York jurisprudence and well-established summary judgment standards.
This was truly a team effort with Christopher Simone arguing the appeal, Gerard Cushing drafting the brief and assisting with oral argument preparations, and Kevin Kelleher, Nina Allowe, and Justin Thrasher making extremely valuable contributions to the victory.
