Mayard v Wheels, Inc., 2010 NY Slip Op 00653 (2d Dept. 2010)
“Under these circumstances, where McKenzie was faced with a sudden and unexpected circumstance, not of his own making, under any view of the evidence, the emergency doctrine [*2]applied (see Jones v Geoghan, 61 AD3d 638). The Wheels defendants met their burden of establishing that McKenzie was not liable for the collision involving his minivan and the Shishko vehicle (see Marsch v Catanzaro, 40 AD3d 941). A driver is not obligated to anticipate that a vehicle, upon being struck by another vehicle, will then hit a guardrail and subsequently bounce across several lanes of traffic (id. at 942). The plaintiff’s speculation that inattentiveness on the part of McKenzie caused the collision, or that he might have been able to take measures to avoid the contact with the Shishko vehicle, was insufficient to defeat that branch of the Wheels defendants’ cross motion which was for summary judgment.”
You can just imagine what the law clerk who was writing this decision was thinking when (s)he wrote the bold portion above.
