A landlord was the target of a bogus lawsuit filed by a man who was filmed faking an injury after falling on a stretch of sidewalk outside his building.
The building’s anonymous owner on Thursday submitted surveillance footage of the alleged slip and fall in the Bronx, which did not appear to be that serious.
It shows two men approaching on a scooter and destroying the section of pavement in question, before another man walks past and suffers a spectacle of a fall.
He drags his back foot and lands in the exact same spot where the two men destroyed him, and is now suing the building’s owner claiming he injured his back and knees.
He also said he suffered psychological damage from the fall and was unable to work as a result. The alleged victim was not identified.
Scroll down to watch the video:
A landlord says he received a bogus lawsuit from a man who was allegedly injured after falling on a stretch of sidewalk in front of his building. The fall in question, seen here in front of an unspecified building in the Bronx
“It’s 100 percent fraud,” said attorney Marc Sloane. ABC 7 On Thursday, the New York station’s On Your Side program focused on this and other potentially false accident claims.
“You know for a fact that this doesn’t make any sense,” said another building owner, this one in Brooklyn, as the station’s investigative team looked into another alleged scam.
“I feel like this is some kind of setup that’s unfolding outside of our control,” he said, as footage of that fall showed another man collapsing to the ground in a questionable display.
As he suggested, New York is a hotbed of similar slip-and-fall claims, and these two are some of the most recent and dubious examples.
In fiscal year 2023, the five boroughs spent about $53.5 million to combat them, local comptroller statistics show, with Brooklyn’s borough in particular recently coming under fire.
“It’s not legitimate,” Sloane said as he sat down to talk to the local outlet. “It’s a fraud.”
‘What are the coincidences that a person – two people or whatever – stops, gets off a bike and starts tearing up a sidewalk, and then ‘X’ amount of hours later, someone trips and falls on a defect that wasn’t there before?’
He called that garbage.
Another building owner, this one in Brooklyn, said this man also faked a slip and fall outside his property. The footage suggests the fall was not serious and was likely faked.
Shortly afterward, On Your Side investigators reached out to the law firm representing the alleged scammer but received no response.
However, shortly after this, the firm filed a notice with the Bronx Supreme Court revealing that they were in the process of withdrawing from the lawsuit.
The reason? Because they, too, suspected the man was crazy, ABC 7 found out.
The station proceeded to review court documents related to the case that raised further questions, and found that the two men caught on camera apparently creating the crack were part of the legal team of the man who fell.
They discovered this by analyzing images of the couple taking measurements and photographs of the crack after breaking the sidewalk.
They did so after determining that photographs presented to the court by the man’s legal team were identical to those the two men had allegedly taken, the station reported.
Meanwhile, the Brooklyn landlord Sloane represents said he is still receiving bills from his homeowners insurance company charging him a $10,000 deductible to investigate the obviously bogus claim.
New York is a hotbed of similar slip and fall lawsuits, and these two are some of the most recent and dubious examples. Another questionable case is seen here
“It has nothing to do with whether the claim is legitimate or not,” he explained as he also seeks to refute the claim with surveillance footage showing the man falling out of nowhere.
‘You have to pay the deductible anyway.’
Meanwhile, New York remains the city with the highest number of questionable slip-and-fall claims in the U.S., driving up premiums. to raise taxes on building owners, who then pass the responsibility on to tenants in the form of higher rents.
“The onus is on the tenant, the homeowner,” Mark Browne, faculty chair of the Greenberg School of Risk Management and Insurance at St. John’s University, told ABC about how scams are slowly affecting consumers and their cost of living.
“It’s stealing from other people. It’s fraud, it’s a crime, it’s a mistake.”
