Why would you doubt that? Imagine some hot shot lawyer's 19 year old daughter falls and breaks her neck. They would go after the city for not cementing the place shut and probably win - or at least get a deal.
The sickening part is that the city does the math and sometimes its just cheaper to pay the person to go away.
young padawan, much to learn, you have, about the ways of the dark side. when you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back.
Those sound pretty reasonable to me -- if you get hit by a car, you should sue the driver, even if the driver is the NYPD. That's a far cry from going down into the second avenue subway and suing the city for slipping and falling.
(Remember, being an invitee is different from being a trespassee. If you hurt yourself in a normal subway station, that's one thing. But if you open a manhole and crawl down into an abandoned station, that's another thing.)
A Manhattan jury awarded $14.1 million to a woman who lay
down on New York City subway tracks and was hit by a train
during a failed suicide. Another New York City jury gave
$9.3 million to a man who fell on subway tracks while
inebriated and lost his left arm. Another drunk on the
tracks was awarded $6 million.
I dunno, if you can get $14.1m for lying down on the subway tracks, you can probably get a pot of money if the city turns a blind eye while people go down into unlocked vaults for parties and have an accident.
