This page summarizes and comments on a published court decision. It is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case depends on its own facts. Unless this page says otherwise, The Eskesen Law Firm did not represent any party in this case.
Bottom line
An injured person must sue the right company before the deadline to sue runs out, and adding it later may be too late. Here, the First Department affirmed the dismissal, as time-barred, of a woman’s injury claims against the elevator company that had held the contract to service the elevator, because serving a different company earlier did not bring it into the case, and it affirmed summary judgment for the company that bought that contract without taking on liability for past injuries.
The case
- Court
- Appellate Division, First Department
- Decided
- October 27, 2026
- Case
- Turner v Pride & Servs. El. Co. Inc.
- Citation
- 2026 NY Slip Op 06269
- Official text
- Read the decision on the New York courts’ official reporter site
The facts
The plaintiff sued several companies over an accident involving an elevator. When she started the action, she named a company called WeWitt. Later, with the court’s permission, she amended her complaint to add CEMD Elevator Corp. (also doing business as City Elevator), which had held the contract to service the elevator and had sold it to Kone, Inc. CEMD moved to dismiss the claims against it as time-barred, and Kone moved to renew its earlier motion for summary judgment. The Supreme Court, New York County, granted both motions, and the plaintiff appealed.
The holding
The First Department unanimously affirmed. “The motion court correctly granted CEMD’s motion to dismiss the action as time-barred” (2026 NY Slip Op 06269, *1). The plaintiff argued that naming WeWitt was a “mere misnomer” for CEMD, but “[t]he initial service of process on WeWitt was insufficient to confer personal jurisdiction on CEMD because neither the WeWitt manager who was served with the complaint nor the WeWitt principal who came into possession of it were authorized to accept service on behalf of CEMD” (id.). The earlier order allowing the amendment did not help her, because it “determined only that the proposed amended complaint against CEMD was not patently devoid of merit” (id.). As for Kone, its agreement to buy CEMD’s contracts, including the one for this elevator, “explicitly excluded assumption of personal injury liability for events occurring prior to the sale” (id.). Her argument that Kone was liable as CEMD’s successor was not considered, because it “was not alleged in the complaint and was raised for the first time in opposition” to Kone’s motion (id.), and the court added that it would fail anyway.
What changed
Nothing new: this applies settled law, including the court’s earlier decision in Henry v Tao Group LLC (243 AD3d 460).
What it means
- Who maintained the equipment that caused the injury is often a separate question from who owns the building, and the answer is safest found before the deadline to sue.
- Here, papers served on one company did not bring a different company into the case, because the people who received them were not authorized to accept service for it.
- Here, the court’s earlier permission to amend the complaint was not a ruling that the new claim was on time.
- A company that buys another company’s contracts does not necessarily take on its liability for earlier injuries. Here the purchase agreement excluded it, and the successor theory came too late.
Our view
Commentary by Frank N. Eskesen. This section is opinion.
In our entry on Torres v Tinton Realty Group LLC (First Department, October 22), the question was which company was running a construction job, and a site sign and public building records helped answer it. This case shows what can happen when a question like that is answered after the deadline. In our experience, many buildings hire an outside company to maintain their elevators, and the name a tenant or visitor sees, if any, may not be the company’s legal name. The decision does not say what remains against the other defendants. Two lessons. 1. If you are hurt in an elevator, or by any equipment in a building, get legal advice promptly; it can take time to learn which companies owned, managed, and maintained it, and the deadline does not wait. 2. For lawyers, ask early for the elevator maintenance contract and service records, confirm each company’s exact legal name and who may accept service for it, and plead every theory you intend to rely on, including successor liability, in the complaint.
Topics
Court: First Department. Year: 2026. Statutes: CPLR 2221; CPLR 3211(a)(5). Result: affirmed.
Reviewed by Frank N. Eskesen, admitted in New York since 2000. Decided October 27, 2026. Posted October 28, 2026.
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