Plaintiff Glenn Weidlich slipped and fell outside the front door of his condominium unit due to ice on the landing and fell down the stairs. He sued the defendants, 313-319 First Street Condo Association Inc. and Clinton Hill Condo Association, among other defendants, claiming that they were negligent due to the unsafe condition of the exterior front stairs of the building. At the time of his fall, there had been freezing rain. The issue in Weidlich v. 313-319 First Street Condo Association, Inc., 2025 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1366 (App. Div. July 22, 2025) was whether the ongoing storm rule immunized the condo association defendants from negligence for their failure to remove the ice from the stairs or whether one of the two exceptions to the ongoing storm rule applied.
Plaintiff owned and lived in the condominium unit located at 357 8th Street, Jersey City. On the morning of January 5, 2022, as he stepped outside his front door, he slipped on ice on the landing and fell down the stairs. Due to his fall, he suffered a torn patella tendon and underwent surgery.
Plaintiff sued the defendants, alleging negligence and premises liability. He claimed that due to the unsafe condition of the exterior front of the stairs, he was caused to slip and fall on the steps.
At the conclusion of discovery, defendants filed motions for summary judgment, arguing that plaintiff fell solely because of the ongoing freezing rain and icy condition on the landing that morning and that they were immune due to the ongoing storm doctrine.
The trial court found that plaintiff did slip and fall during an ongoing storm event. It noted that the ongoing storm rule immunized “commercial landowners from negligence if they fail to remove an accumulation of snow and ice from public walkways during an ongoing storm,” citing to the Supreme Court Pareja v. Princeton International Properties case. Further, the trial court found that neither exception to the ongoing storm rule was applicable.
This appeal ensued. Unfortunately, for the plaintiff, the Appellate Division did agree with the trial court decision.
Plaintiff contended that the exceptions to the ongoing storm rule would prevent its application in his case. He argued that there was a pre-existing dangerous condition of the stairs and that, further, the condition of the stairs was caused by a lack of maintenance and the recent paint job completed on the steps and landing.
The Appellate Division noted the Supreme Court’s ongoing storm rule which affected the duty commercial landowners had to remove snow and ice accumulations and pathways during a storm. The rationale of this rule was that “it is categorically inexpedient and impractical to remove or reduce hazards from snow and ice while the precipitation is ongoing.” Thus, in Pareja, the Supreme Court held that “absent unusual circumstances, a commercial landowner’s duty to remove snow and ice hazards arises not during the storm, but rather within a reasonable time after the storm.”
However, the Pareja Court did identify two exceptions to the ongoing storm rule that may impose a duty on a commercial landowner. Under the first exception, a commercial landowner may be liable if his or her actions increased the risk to pedestrians and invitees on the property by, for example, creating unusual circumstances in which the defendant’s conduct exacerbated and increased the risk of injury to the plaintiff. Under the second exception, a commercial landowner may be liable where there was a pre-existing risk on the premises before the storm. Under the second exception, a landowner may be liable for an injury during a later ongoing storm if it “failed to remove or reduce a pre-existing risk on the property.”
In this case, neither party argued that the defendants did not have a duty to maintain the stairs outside defendant’s condominium and clear ice and snow for them. The dispute focused, instead, on whether one of the exceptions to the ongoing storm rule applied.
The plaintiff argued that defendants’ conduct created and increased the risk by not addressing the deterioration of the surface of the steps which allowed water infiltration and imperceptible freezing to occur over the surface; second, that the wrong paint was used during a recent paint job which, in plaintiff’s opinion, made the steps sleeker and harder to negotiate when wet; and, third, affixing the handrails next to the steps too far from the pedestrian pathway.
The Appellate Division noted that the plaintiff admitted that he never reached any of the steps because he fell on the landing outside his front door that morning due to the icy conditions. As for the condition of the steps, plaintiff admitted that there had been no precipitation on the days before he slipped and fell but that there was precipitation in the form of freezing rain and snow at the time of his fall. But, regardless of the condition of the steps, the plaintiff fell on the landing before he reached the steps. Therefore, the pre-existing condition of the steps did not satisfy any exception to the rule.
As for the handrails, although plaintiff had an expert on that point, the expert report failed to provide any support for his conclusion that the handrails were too far away from the walking pathway to allow plaintiff to utilize them to stabilize himself or help him regain his balance after slipping on the ice. The Court found that it was a bare conclusion, not supported by any credible evidence on the record. Thus, the Court found it to be an inadmissible net opinion.
With respect to plaintiff’s lay opinion that the paint job made the landing more slippery, the Court also rejected that argument as satisfying one of the exceptions to the storm in progress rule. The defendants argued that an expert was needed to explain how the type of paint used made the steps more slippery. Plaintiff’s expert offered no opinion as to this assertion and the Court found that this conclusion required expert testimony. The Appellate Division found that, without an expert, the record failed to establish any nexus between the paint job and plaintiff’s fall.
For the above reasons, the Court agreed that the ongoing storm rule applied and none of the exceptions to the rule applied. Thus, the Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s summary judgment dismissal of the lawsuit.