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The higher court said a local judge “improperly granted“ dismissal of the suit filed by James and Maryann Griffin without considering the findings of an engineering expert hired by the couple or the county’s longstanding failure to fix obvious problems that often sends water across Breakneck Road.
The lower court judge granted the county’s request to dismiss the complaint in Hackensack on May 12, 2010, contending that the Griffins failed to show “through competent evidence that a dangerous condition existed on the roadway on the day of the accident and caused the accident.“
A month later, the judge denied a request to reconsider the decision (Both originally sued the borough of Oakland, too, but didn’t challenge the judge’s dismissal of that part of their complaint. The Griffins also settled separately with the driver of the other car).
The UPS Flexible Benefits Plan (UPS) joined the couple in their complaint, seeking reimbursement for medical expenses it paid on behalf of the younger Griffin, also named James, now 26.
Drainage problems on the roadway have caused countless problems for decades on Breakneck, a two-lane county road (Route 502) that runs north and south from Longhill Road in Oakland and becomes Berdan Avenue at the Wayne township border.
In 1987, a Breakneck Road property owner complained to county officials about water collecting in front of his house. Fourteen years later, a neighbor complained. According to the Appellate Division decision released Friday, “[c]ounty workers who responded to the complaint noted that this was a ‘bad location’ on the roadway, and that when they tried to clean the drain they noticed the pipe was broken.“
County officials promised to inspect the area, but “there is no evidence that this inspection occurred,“ the appeals judges said. Two more complaints followed in 2004, one about two clogged catch basins “filled to [the] top with water“ and the other about “a berm in need of repair.“
Nothing changed over the years – until, finally, a July 24, 2006 complaint by one of the original homeowners again brought county inspectors, who said debris had to be removed from the catch basins, court papers show.
The work wasn’t done until Sept. 27, 2006 – a dozen days after Griffin’s crash.
Driving home from William Paterson University on Sept. 15, 2006, James Griffin, Jr. lost control of his car while heading north on Breakneck around 2 in the afternoon. It crossed the double-yellow line and crashed into a 1999 Toyota Land Cruiser coming the other way.
The crash left him “incapacitated and unable to recall how the accident occurred,“ the suit says.
An eyewitness testified that she was two to four car-lengths behind Griffin’s vehicle for a good five to 10 minutes before the crash. She said he seemed to be going 30 to 35 miles an hour and driving normally, until “he made an extremely fast winding kind of turn[,]” “an abrupt left turn,” according to the appeals decision. He “almost seemed out of control[,]” and she thought “something happened to him, like a heart attack,” court papers show.
The witness recalled little else, however, including whether or not it was raining, or whether the road was wet or dry.
A meteorological expert reported that nearly an inch and a half of rain combined fell in Oakland that day and the day before.
“The expert concluded that ground surfaces were wet from the ongoing rain, and this significant rainfall ‘would have been enough to cause some minor road flooding including ponding and pooling of water in poorly drained areas,” the appeals judges noted.
The Land Cruiser’s driver said she was at the crest of the hill on Breakneck, going south at about 40 miles an hour, when she saw Griffin’s car “shooting across the yellow line perpendicular to [her] car in [her] lane.” She said it seemed Griffin “was turning into” a driveway. She applied her brakes, she said, but couldn’t avoid a collision.
A resident who’d lived in the area more than 38 years estimated that a dozen accidents a year happened in that same spot outside his house, the appeals judges noted. When it rains, water from the hill “often runs in front of my house across the roadway and cars hit the water and lose control and cross over the roadway and into my yard,“ he said, adding that puddles often formed. The homeowner said he hadn’t seen any roadwork done by the county other than tree trimming.
Another resident said that water pooled on Breakneck Road any time “you get a good rain” and that the water “just runs everywhere when it is bad.” The appeals court cited several complaints the woman made to county officials.
Photos taken around the same time of year in 2009 showed what those who gave depositions agreed were the usual conditions in the area when it rains: pools of water.
Police who responded to the crash confirmed that the road was wet. Inspectors from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Fatal Accident Investigation Unit (FAIU) did the same. One said he spotted a puddle in the spot where it’s believed Griffin lost control of his car.
Oakland Police Chief Edward Kasper, who also responded, said “several accident reports from the Oakland Police Department indicated there had been flooding and wet weather accidents on Breakneck Road in the past.“
An engineering expert hired by the Griffins pointed directly to “friction differential“ caused by pooled water, during pre-trial depositions. He blamed “the improper drainage of the roadway and lack of maintenance of drainage ditches,“ which he said “created a dangerous condition.“
Based on measurements taken under similar circumstances, the pool that Griffin’s car apparently hit was likely 50-75 feet long and more than a dozen feet wide, the engineer testified.
The engineer also concluded that, at a relatively low cost, county officials could have “quickly and easily” eliminated the dangerous condition through maintaining proper drainage along the roadway. A roadside ditch or crowning would have kept water from flowing across it, the engineer said. They could at least posted warning signs, he said, calling the failures “palpably unreasonable.“
Before the case could make it to a trial, the expert died. A judge allowed the Griffins to find a new one who could investigate the incident, with no restrictions. But another judge got the case, then ruled that the resulting report “could not change the theories of the case,“ the appeals judges wrote.
The judge also insisted that no one decisively proved that there was water on the roadway or why other cars passed the same area without incident. The judge granted what’s known as “summary judgment,“ dismissing the complaint.
The Griffins and UPS asked the court to reconsider, taking the new report into account. The judge refused.
So they appealed to the higher court, arguing, among other things, that the judge “improperly engaged in factfinding,“ and “relied solely on evidence favorable to the [c]ounty,“ without giving proper weight to the evidence. Nowhere does the law give a judge that kind of authority, they said.
The Appellate Division judges agreed.
The trial court’s “function is not . . . to weigh the evidence and determine the truth . . . but to determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial,” they wrote.
“Whether a dangerous condition exists [on public property] is ultimately a question for the jury,” as is the credibility of any witness or expert, the judges added.
“That being said, we are satisfied that there is ample circumstantial and expert evidence on which a jury could reasonably find that a dangerous condition – a large pool of water – existed in the northbound lane of Breakneck Road at the time of the accident at the point where Griffin lost control of his vehicle,“ they wrote.
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