$500,000 Sidewalk Trip and Fall Settlement in Manhattan

3rd Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, between 97th and 99th Streets. Our client was walking on the east side of the street when she tripped and fell — fracturing her left wrist badly enough to require surgery and damaging her left knee in the same impact. A sidewalk defect on one of Manhattan's busiest avenues.

Trip and Fall on 3rd Avenue in Upper Manhattan

Our client was walking along the east side of 3rd Avenue between 97th and 99th Streets in Manhattan when she tripped on a sidewalk defect and fell. 3rd Avenue is one of Manhattan's primary north-south thoroughfares — a heavily trafficked street where thousands of pedestrians walk every day. The sidewalk along the east side of the avenue presented a condition that caught our client's foot and sent her to the ground before she could recover her balance.

The fall produced two significant injuries: a fractured left wrist that required surgical repair and a left knee injury. The wrist fracture was the more acute of the two — imaging confirmed the break, and our client underwent surgery to realign the fractured bones and restore structural integrity to the joint. Wrist fracture surgery involves hardware placement (plates, screws, or pins) followed by a period of immobilization and physical therapy to restore range of motion and grip strength. The left knee injury complicated the recovery further — knee damage from a fall affects the ability to walk, climb stairs, and bear weight, adding a second rehabilitation track to an already demanding recovery.

Sidewalk Liability on 3rd Avenue

Property owners along 3rd Avenue in Manhattan are responsible for maintaining the sidewalk adjacent to their buildings in safe condition for pedestrian use. The stretch between 97th and 99th Streets serves residential buildings, commercial storefronts, and public-facing businesses — all of which depend on safe sidewalk conditions for the thousands of pedestrians who pass through daily. When the sidewalk surface deteriorates, cracks, or develops trip hazards, the adjacent property owner bears the legal responsibility to repair it.

Our attorneys investigated the specific sidewalk condition that caused the trip, documented the defect through photographs and measurements, and traced responsibility to the property owner whose building fronted the defective section of sidewalk. The evidence demonstrated that the trip hazard had been present long enough for the property owner to discover and repair it through reasonable inspection and maintenance. The failure to do so, on one of Manhattan's busiest pedestrian corridors, was a breach of the property owner's duty that directly caused our client's fall and the wrist fracture and knee injury that followed.

"3rd Avenue between 97th and 99th — a busy stretch of Manhattan. Our client was walking on the sidewalk when she tripped on a defect in the concrete. The fall broke her left wrist — badly enough that she needed surgery — and damaged her left knee. Two injuries from one fall, on a sidewalk that gets thousands of pedestrians every day. The property owner was responsible for that stretch of sidewalk, and the defect that tripped our client should have been repaired long before she ever walked over it." — Andrew Levine, Founding Partner

$500,000 Settlement for a Manhattan Sidewalk Trip and Fall

This $500,000 settlement covers wrist fracture surgery, left knee treatment, post-operative rehabilitation, physical therapy, lost wages, and the lasting limitations our client now manages in both joints. It holds the property owner accountable for a sidewalk defect on 3rd Avenue — a hazard on one of Manhattan's most-traveled pedestrian corridors.

If you tripped on a broken or defective sidewalk in Manhattan and suffered a fracture or joint injury, our premises liability attorneys have experience with sidewalk trip-and-fall claims and are ready to review your case.