Negligence cases over public housing murders will get jury trials

ALBANY, N.Y. (CN) — New York’s highest court opened the door to liability Tuesday in two murder cases involving broken locks in New York City housing projects.

In the first case, Bridget Crushshon was killed in 2008 by an ex-boyfriend who had entered her apartment building through a broken lock, waited in the hall for her, then choked her and doused with her gasoline, lighting both of them aflame. Both Crushshon and her attacker died from their injuries, and one of Crushshon’s sons, who tried to intervene, was hospitalized for 15 months from severe burns.

In the second case, two gang members shot and killed Tayshana Murphy in 2001 after a skirmish with a rival gang in which her brother was a member. Murphy had been standing with gang members outside a public housing apartment building, but she was then chased inside by two teenager rival gang members through an exit-only side door — which was supposed to be self-locking — and was shot at point-blank range.

Crushon and Murphy's families each filed suit against the New York City Housing Authority, saying the agency's failure to provide working exterior locks left if party liable. The city agency claimed it was not at fault for the murders because both attacks were “targeted” and not crimes of opportunity. While the city initially prevailed with this argument in the Murphy case, Crushshon's family won their case in the lower courts.

“I was confident that we were going to make new statewide law from the beginning,” attorney Steven Pecoraro of Pecoraro & Schiesel, who represented the Murphy family, said in an interview Tuesday. He noted the cases were clearly for a jury to determine, regardless of whether the attacks were targeted. “There’s a big difference between a Soviet hit squad killing somebody with plutonium or poison-laced umbrella tips and a couple of low-level teenagers.”

New York's Court of Appeals consolidated the two cases for oral argument last month and sided Tuesday with the families. Unraveling the city's defense, Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote for the unanimous court that jurors in both cases juries could find NYCHA partly liable, regardless of whether the criminals targeted their victims.

“That reasoning [from the city] mistakes a patently factual determination — whether a locked door would have prevented an attack — for a legal one,” the 15-page opinion explains.

Rowan said intent is an issue that should fall before a jury, not an appellate panel or even a trial court judge.

“It was not the trial court’s role, on summary judgment, to assess the fact-bound question of whether the intruders [in both cases] would have preserved in their attacks had the doors been securely locked,” he wrote, noting the “sophistication and planning of an attack” is irrelevant to proximate cause.

Wilson noted that surveillance video in the gang case show the killers attempting to enter through another locked door before slipping in through the broken side door. It's also just as likely that Murphy was the one attacked as any of the five others standing with her earlier. Further, the amount of time it took them to gain entry through a locked door might have been enough for Murphy to escape.

“A factfinder at trial could have found that a functioning lock on the side door would have deterred [the gang shooters] from pursuing the group into the building,” Wilson wrote. “Hypotheticals about what would have occurred if the side door had been locked … are quintessentially questions of fact to be resolved at trial.”

In an affidavit quoted in the opinion, Murphy’s mother notes that she complained multiple times before the shooting about the side door not locking, and a locksmith had given an affidavit saying the door had not been fixed since NYCHA was made aware of the problem.

Pecoraro said NYCHA’s recordkeeping was “outrageous” in the case, noting that the agency’s records indicated the door in the Murphy case was working properly the day before and day after the murder. “It fixed itself?” Pecoraro asked, adding that NYCHA later admitted a locksmith who claimed to have fixed the door months earlier had not worked during that period and that daily checklists for when the door was broken months earlier could not be located.

The case from Murphy's family now goes to a jury trial, as does the one from Crushshon’s.

Attorneys for the NYCHA — John Watkins of Watkins & Watkins and Patrick Lawless of Wilson Elser — did not immediately return emails seeking comment, nor did attorney Brian Shoot of Sullivan Papain who represented Crushshon’s son.

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