Opinion
570212/04.
Decided March 30, 2005.
Defendants appeal from an order of the Civil Court, New York County, entered September 10, 2003 (Jose A. Padilla, Jr., J.) denying their motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint.
Order entered September 10, 2003 (Jose A. Padilla, Jr., J.), reversed, with $10 costs, defendants' motion for summary judgment is granted, and the complaint is dismissed.
PRESENT: HON. WILLIAM J. DAVIS, J.P., HON. PHYLLIS GANGEL-JACOB, HON. MARTIN SCHOENFELD, Justices.
PER CURIAM:
There is no evidence of any "serious injury" at the time of the March 1998 accident (Insurance Law § 5102[d]); see Pommells v. Perez, 4 AD3d 101). Plaintiff walked to work from the accident scene, took no time off, and did not seek medical attention for a month, at which time his doctor found only "mild" and "moderate" restrictions of spinal movement ( see Licari v. Elliott, 57 NY2d 230). After a brief course of physical therapy in late 1999 (more than a year after the accident), plaintiff had no further examination or treatment until 2003, when the instant motion for summary judgment was made ( see Toulson v. Pai, 13 AD3d 317). Given the lack of contemporaneous evidence of serious injury, the four year gap in treatment, and the affirming doctor's failure to adequately address the possible significance of a December 1998 fall in which plaintiff fractured three ribs, the complaint should have been dismissed ( see Shinn v. Catanzaro, 1 AD3d 195; Uber v. Heffron, 286 AD2d 729).
This constitutes the decision and order of the court.