*1 Defendants appeal from an order of the Supreme Court, New York County (Lucy Billings, J.), entered February 22, 2017, which, insofar as appealed from as limited by the briefs, denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment dismissing so much of the complaint as alleged inadequate lighting of the premises, and granted plaintiff’s cross motion to amend the bill of particulars to the extent of including the applicable 1916 Building Code provision regarding adequate lighting.*2
Plaintiff, Roberto Haibi, brings this action as the Administrator of his father Erasmo Haibi’s estate to recover damages for Erasmo’s injuries from a fall on October 24, 2009, on a stairway in a residential apartment building owned by defendant 790 Riverside Drive Owners, Inc., and managed by defendant Orsid Realty Corp. The stairway connects the main and southern lobbies near an entrance to defendants’ building. Plaintiff alleges that his father was injured by a fall on the lobby stairs because of, among other things, inadequate illumination.Erasmo Haibi’s granddaughter, Danette Rodriguez, who lived with her grandfather in the building at the time of his accident, did not observe his fall, but found him lying injured at the bottom of the lobby stairs. Erasmo Haibi died February 5, 2011, from a cause unrelated to his fall, before he was deposed in this action. The building’s surveillance cameras, however, recorded his fall on a videotape that Rodriguez viewed on the day of the fall. Although Rodriguez orally requested a copy of the videotape from defendants, and plaintiff’s attorney requested in writing that they preserve the tape, defendants destroyed it. In anticipation of trial, plaintiff moved for an adverse inference instruction to the jury, at trial, due to defendants’ destruction of the tape. The motion court granted plaintiff an instruction allowing the jury to infer that the videotape would have supported Rodriguez’s depiction of the stairs and of Erasmo Haibi’s fall, based on Rodriguez’s viewing of the tape.In response, before the trial commenced, defendants moved for summary judgment claiming that there was no dangerous condition on their stairway that caused Erasmo Haibi’s fall. Initially, the motion court granted defendants’ summary judgment motion to the extent of dismissing plaintiff’s claims that the stairway was unsafe due to the lack of handrails, and nonuniform treads and risers on
