Plaintiffs, all infants and students at a Yeshiva established and run by the Bobov Hasidic community located in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, bring this action for damages allegedly sustained by them when they participated in an important event in their community, the marriage of the Grand Rebbe Halberstan's grandson.

Plaintiffs have filed a complaint against the defendants Congregation Shaarei Zion (Congregation), the Bobover Yeshiva Bnei Zion (Yeshiva), the City of New York (City), Serco/JL Associates, Inc (Serco) and entities related to Serco and Thomas Colasanto d/b/a Able Welding, Co.

Plaintiffs allege that the Congregation and the Yeshiva were negligent, inter alia, in the planning, operation and control of the wedding, allege that the City was negligent because the bleachers that it owned and supplied for the event collapsed during the wedding and that the Serco defendants, who set up and maintained the bleachers, were negligent in setting up defective bleaches.

Many of the facts are in dispute. What is undisputed is that on Jan 12, 2000, a wedding of the Rebbe's grandson was held in Borough Park. The City, at the request of the Bobov community, closed the public streets and provided, after a request by Heshie Dembitzer, the Administrator of the Yeshiva, bleachers for the event. It is also undisputed that the plaintiffs were on the bleachers watching the wedding, that they had been released from school early by the Yeshiva in order to attend the wedding and that approximately four thousand people were crowded into the streets to view the wedding. Finally, it is not disputed that the bleachers were over flowing with people who were "squished", "jammed packed" and "squished like sardines"on the bleaches.

There are factual disputes as to who sponsored, managed and oversaw the event, the Congregation and/or the Yeshiva. Facts concerning whether the collapse of the bleachers was caused by overcrowding or by defective welds, who was responsible for crowd control the New York City Police Department or the Congregation and whether any planning to provide for crowd control was done by the Congregation in light of the anticipated large crowd.

The Congregation and the Yeshiva now move for summary judgment dismissing the complaint and all cross claims asserted against them. Alternatively, the Congregation moves for summary judgment against the City on a theory of indemnification based on the City allegedly supplying defective bleachers.

The Congregation does not deny that it organized the wedding and that it requested, through Dembitzer , the closing of the street and the placement of the bleachers. Instead, it [*2]argues that it has no liability in that "it did not own the bleachers, did not maintain or repair the bleachers, did not set up the bleachers and did not know of any weight or spectator limits of the bleachers." The Yeshiva argues that it "was not responsible for the planning, organizing or supervising of the wedding, and had nothing to do with the bleachers in question". These arguments are unpersuasive.

As to the Congregation, it fails to acknowledge any duty that it has, as the organizer of an event, which it acknowledges would be attended by a large part of the Bobov community. The Congregation had a duty to the plaintiffs who had been invited to attend the wedding to use reasonable and ordinary care to insure against foreseeable risks, which included providing general crowd control as well as preventing overcrowding to the bleachers that it had admittedly requested and had placed at the event. (Caldwell v Village of Is. Park, 304 NY 268 [1952 ] ). Here, there are disputed issues of fact for a jury to determine as to the role played by the Congregation and its members in providing or not providing crowd control.

The Congregation essentially argues that the specific cause of the accident was the collapse of bleachers, and that notwithstanding any duty it may have owed to the plaintiffs, that the collapse was not foreseeable and was the intervening cause (not the over flow crowd) of the accident.

First, there are issues of fact as to whether the collapse was caused by a welding defect or over crowding. Second and more importantly, the concept of proximate cause is not a precise formula that applies to all cases. The application is based on policy considerations not rigid formulas. (Derdiarian v Felix Contracting Corp, 51 NY2d 308 [1980]).

As the Court of Appeals noted in Derdiarian, when evaluating an intervening cause:

Where acts of a third person intervene between the defendant's

conduct and the plaintiff's injury, the casual connection is not

automatically severed. In such a case, liability turns upon whether

the intervening act is a normal or foreseeable consequence of the

situation created by the defendant's negligence. ( citations omitted)

If the intervening act is extraordinary under the circumstances, not

foreseeable in the normal course of events, or independent of or far

removed from the defendant's conduct, it may well be a superseding

act which breaks the causal nexus. (citation omitted) Because

questions concerning what is foreseeable and what is normal may be

the subject of varying inferences, as is the question of negligence itself,

these issues generally are for the fact finder to resolve.

Accordingly, the issues of negligence, foreseeability and proximate cause involve so many variables in this case that they are best left to the jury to resolve. (Rotz v City of New [*3]York, 143 Ad2d 301 [1st Dept 1998]).

The same criteria applies to the motion of the Yeshiva. There are issues of fact as to the role of the Yeshiva in the planning and organization of the event. It is undisputed that the Administrator of the Yeshiva was one of the key organizers of the wedding. Moreover, the Yeshiva doesn't address the question of the extent of the duty it owed to its students who were released from school to attend an event that the school's administrator played a key role in organizing. (Wood v Waterville City School Districts, 30 AD3d 663 [3d Dept, 2006] ).

Where, as here, the Congregation and the Yeshiva knew the size of the crowd anticipated on narrow public streets and the importance of the event to their community, it was clearly reasonably foreseeable that placing bleachers with limited capacity at the best place to view the wedding would require that steps be undertaken to manage the crowd to prevent over crowding on the bleachers. It is up to a jury to determine the extent of the breach, if any, of the duty owed to the plaintiffs by the Congregation and the Yeshiva. (Rotz v City of New York, 143 AD2d 301 [1st Dept 1998], (Iacono v VMSG Holding Corp, 8 Misc 3d 1014 (A) [1997]).

Accordingly, the motions for summary judgment by the Congregation and theYeshiva are denied. The motion by the Congregation for summary judgment against the City is likewise denied as there are triable issues of fact as to the cause of the accident.

The foregoing constitutes the decision and order of the Court.

_______________________

May 19, 2008Robert J. Miller

J.S.C.

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