A landlord was hit with a fake lawsuit filed by a man filmed feigning injury from a fall on a stretch of sidewalk outside his building.
The unnamed building owner on Thursday produced surveillance footage of the suspected slip-and-fall in the Bronx, which appeared to be not so serious.
It shows two men pull up on a scooter and destroy the part of the sidewalk in question, before another man strolls by and undergoes a spectacle of a spill.
He drags his back foot and falls at the same exact spot the two men destroyed, and is now suing the building owner claiming he injured his back and knees.
He also said he suffered psychological injuries from the fall and that he couldn’t work as a result. The supposed victim was not identified.
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A landlord says he was hit with a fake lawsuit from a man supposedly injured from a fall on a stretch of sidewalk outside his building. The fall in question, seen here outside an unspecified building in the Bronx
‘It’s 100 percent fraud,’ Attorney Marc Sloane told ABC 7 Thursday, as the New York station’s On Your Side honed in on this and other potentially fake accident claims.
‘You know outright this doesn’t make any sense,’ another building owner, this one in Brooklyn, said as the station’s investigation team looked into another suspected scam.
‘I feel this is, like, some kind of setup that goes on beyond our control,’ he said, as footage of that fall showed another man crumpling to the floor in a questionable display.
As he suggested, New York is a hive for similar slip-and-fall claims, with these two serving as some of the most recent, dubious examples.
In fiscal year 2023, the five boroughs spent some $53.5 million to battle them back, local comptroller statistics show – with the one in Brooklyn in particular recently coming to question.
‘It’s not legitimate,’ Sloane sniped while sitting down with the local outlet. ‘It’s fraud.’
‘What are the coincidences that a person – two people whatever – just pulls up, gets off a bike, and just starts breaking up a sidewalk, and then ‘X’ amount of hours later somebody just happens to trip and fall over a defect that didn’t exist prior?’
To that, he called BS.
Another building owner, this one in Brooklyn, said this man also faked a slip and fall outside his property. Footage suggests the fall was not serious and likely fake
Shortly after, investigators with On Your Side reached out to the law firm representing the suspected fraudster, but did not receive an answer.
However, hard on the heels of this, the firm filed a notice with the Bronx Supreme Court that revealed they were in the process of withdrawing from the suit themselves.
The reason? Because they, too, suspected the man was full of it, ABC 7 found.
The station proceeded to review court documents surrounding the case that cast more doubt, finding that the two men caught on camera seemingly creating the crack were part of the legal team of the man who fell.
They discovered this by analyzing footage of the pair taking measurements and pictures of the crack after tearing up the sidewalk.
They did so by discerning that the photos submitted to the court from the man’s legal team were identical to the ones the two men would have shot, the station said.
Meanwhile, the landlord in Brooklyn, whom Sloane is representing, said he is still getting bills from his property insurance charging him a $10,000 deductible to investigate the obviously phony claim.
New York is a hive for similar slip-and-fall claims, with these two serving as some of the most recent, dubious examples. Another questionable case is seen here
‘Doesn’t have anything to do if the claim is legit or if it’s not,’ he explained as he too looks to disprove the claim with surveillance footage showing the man falling out of nowhere.
‘The deductible you have to pay regardless.’
Meanwhile, New York remains the top city in the US for questionable slip and fall claims, causing premiums to rise for building owners who then pass the buck to tenants in the form of higher rent.
‘It’s going down to the tenant, the homeowner,’ Mark Browne, Chair of the Faculty at the Greenberg School of Risk Management and Insurance at St. John’s University told ABC of how the scams are slowly affecting consumers and their cost of living.
‘It’s robbing from other people. It’s fraudulent, it’s criminal, it’s wrong.’
