On January 5, 2022, at some point between 11:00 a.m. and noon, plaintiff Tyrone Granum left a friend’s apartment in a multi-unit apartment building in Newark owned by defendant Ecuador Velez. Granum alleged that as he walked down the concrete exterior stairs leading from the building’s front door, he slipped and fell on a patch of ice near the top of the staircase, severely injuring his back. After Granum filed suit against Velez, titled Granum v. Velez, 2026 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 867 (App. Div. May 1, 2026), Velez produced an expert meteorologist’s report that identified freezing rain and sleet overnight, with some light snow intermittently overnight, with freezing rain continuing that morning, changing to rain from about 9:30 a.m. until shortly after noon. Velez filed a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the complaint, raising the issue of whether New Jersey’s recent “ongoing storm” rule was appropriate when the plaintiff could not establish when the storm had ended.
As the Appellate Division’s opinion points out, the Supreme Court, somewhat controversially, established the “ongoing storm” rule in 2021 in Pareja v. Princeton Int’l Props., 246 N.J. 546 (2021), when it overturned the Appellate Division’s own opinion that struck down the rule on public policy grounds. The rule established by the Supreme Court in Pareja states that a private landowner generally does not have a duty to remove snow or ice from public walkways until a reasonable time after the precipitation has ended. The Court noted two exceptions, one where the defendant’s conduct somehow increases the risk to pedestrians (such as forcing someone to take a longer walk around an area of dangerous ice) or when there was a pre-existing risk on the premises (such as the failure to remove snow or ice from a previous storm). The opinion left the door open for a plaintiff to introduce facts that questioned when the storm ended or whether the accumulation of ice or snow was from a prior storm, both of which may defeat a summary judgment motion.
In opposition to the motion, Granum testified that it had stopped snowing at the time of his fall, but he failed to show a clear endpoint of the rain or snow or that the endpoint occurred within a reasonable time before he fell. Finding that Velez met the standard for the ongoing storm rule to apply, even when the evidence was viewed in a light most favorable to Granum, the trial court granted Velez’s motion for summary judgment, dismissing the matter. Granum appealed.
On appeal, Granum’s argument was that the trial court failed to consider the evidence in a light most favorable to him because he factually disputed the timing of the storm’s end and that the ongoing storm rule should not apply to premises such as Velez’s apartment complex. The Appellate Division disagreed, finding that Granum could not present a genuine issue of material fact to defeat the motion.
Relying on their “obligation to apply” Supreme Court precedent, the Appellate Division found that Granum’s account of the facts was “imprecise and largely uncertain,” noting that he admitted it sleeted the night before and that, when he emerged from the apartment, he testified “it wasn’t snowing,” without explicitly denying whether it was still raining or sleeting, nor could he approximate when the precipitation ended entirely.
Further, Granum attempted to argue that owners of privately owned sidewalks, or stairs, have a heightened duty for the safety of the public with a reference to case law that removes public sidewalk immunity from a homeowner’s association since they own or control the sidewalk. The Appellate Division found this position inapplicable because, here, Velez is not claiming an immunity from liability, but that he does have a duty to remove ice and snow from the stairs and sidewalks, it is just suspended until “a reasonable time after the cessation of precipitation.”
