Partner Rich Nichols recently obtained a defense verdict in Supreme Court New York County involving a case of extensive property damage to a condominium unit due to flooding from the unit above.  

Rich’s trial strategy focused on impeaching plaintiff’s liability expert through a comprehensive cross examination and by utilizing our own engineering expert who noted numerous deficiencies in the forensic opinion of plaintiff’s engineer, including his failure to properly examine the instrumentality at issue and failure to perform necessary laboratory tests.

Although the jury found that our client was not negligent and thus did not deliberate on damages, Rich successfully moved to exclude various hearsay statements, including reports of experts who were not testifying at trial yet upon whom plaintiff’ s testifying experts relied; through a rigorous course of cross examination Rich was able to demonstrate thus that plaintiff failed to establish a proper valuation of the claimed damages. 

Before jury selection, Rich also successfully argued multiple motions and at trial received numerous rulings in his favor all of which were instrumental in the jury returning a verdict after a minimal time of deliberations.  Several of the jurors remarked, in post-trial interviews, that our presentation of the fact and expert witnesses and cross-examination of plaintiff’s witnesses led to the 6:0 defense verdict.

To learn more about this result or other ways Fleischner Potash can help your claims team, please contact our Insurance Defense Team.

‍