However, when a duty to act is voluntarily assumed, the scope of that duty is to perform the act carefully ( see Castiglione v. Village of Ellenville, 291 AD2d 769, 770, lv denied 98 NY2d 604; Oles v. City of Albany, 267 AD2d 571, 572; Figueroa v. Tso, 251 AD2d 959, 959). Here, there is no allegation or evidence that defendant's plowing of plaintiff's parking area was either negligently performed or the cause of the allegedly dangerous patch of ice ( see Rundquist v. Colletti, 237 AD2d 687, 689). Thus, Supreme Court correctly found that plaintiff failed to raise a question of fact as to whether defendant had breached any duty regarding plaintiff's parking area.
While plaintiff's coworkers testified that they witnessed defendant knock the sign down on prior occasions, they did not observe defendant knock the sign down on this occasion. Since "evidence of [a defendant's] general habits regarding snow removal are insufficient to raise an issue of fact as to whether the defendant may have engaged in snow removal that led to the accident" ( Nadel v. Cucinella, 299 AD2d 250, 252; see Oles v. City of Albany, 267 AD2d 571, 572; Connerton v. City of Binghamton, 236 AD2d 685, 686), and testimony indicated that NSC employees would typically take down the ropes and then fail to put them back up, there is no proof, beyond pure speculation, that defendant was negligent ( see Rundquist v. Colletti, 237 AD2d 687, 689). For these reasons, the negligence claim should have been dismissed as well ( see Martin v. Wilson Mem. Hosp., 2 AD3d 938, 939). Ordered that the order is modified, on the law, with costs to defendant, by reversing so much thereof as partially denied defendant's motion for summary judgment; motion granted in its entirety and complaint dismissed; and, as so modified, affirmed.
Accordingly, there is no evidence that the ice was present for a sufficient length of time to be discovered and remedied by the defendants' employees. Similarly, since the plaintiff admitted that he did not see the plowing of his driveway, his claim that negligent plowing created the ice upon which he slipped is nothing more than speculation and conjecture ( see, Rundquist v. Colletti, 237 A.D.2d 687). As the plaintiff failed to produce evidentiary proof in admissible form sufficient to require a trial of a material question of fact, the Supreme Court properly granted the defendants' respective motion and cross motion for summary judgment.