Opinion
January 21, 1986
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Orange County (Green, J.).
Order reversed, on the law, with costs, and motion granted to the extent of awarding plaintiff partial summary judgment on the issue of liability and matter remitted to the Supreme Court, Orange County, for further proceedings to determine damages.
On October 9, 1983, plaintiff Elizabeth Farina was injured when an aircraft in which she was a passenger went off a runway while landing at Kennedy Airport. The record is silent as to what caused the aircraft's departure from the runway. Upon these facts, there is a sufficient evidentiary basis for invoking the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur (see, e.g., Abbott v Page Airways, 23 N.Y.2d 502, 510; Zaninovich v American Airlines, 26 A.D.2d 155). The res ipsa doctrine creates a permissible inference of negligence which may be rebutted (see, Pfaffenbach v White Plains Express Corp., 17 N.Y.2d 132, 135). However, as the Court of Appeals noted in George Foltis, Inc. v City of New York ( 287 N.Y. 108, 121): "There may be cases where the prima facie proof is so convincing that the inference of negligence arising therefrom is inescapable if not rebutted by other evidence" (see also, Gravitt v Newman, 114 A.D.2d 1000; Notice v Regent Hotel Corp., 76 A.D.2d 820).
In opposition to the motion for summary judgment, defendant submitted an attorney's affirmation and thereby sought to defeat plaintiffs' motion by reference to speculative issues of fact concerning the proximate cause of the accident. There is no allegation made therein that the affirmant had personal knowledge of the relevant facts. Therefore, the affirmation has no probative value to defeat the motion for summary judgment (see, e.g., Roche v Hearst Corp., 53 N.Y.2d 767, 769; Columbia Ribbon Carbon Mfg. Co. v A-1-A Corp., 42 N.Y.2d 496, 500). Accordingly, defendant has failed to refute the inference of its negligence and partial summary judgment in plaintiffs' favor is warranted as a matter of law. Lazer, J.P., Thompson, Weinstein and Niehoff, JJ., concur.