The Matthew Rice Van Wyck settlement refers to Waller v. City of New York & State of New York, an $8,365,000 resolution Rice secured for a 17-year-old girl who was left with permanent partial paralysis after the car she was riding in skidded on ice on the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens. The case settled during the second week of jury selection, before any verdict.1Fellows Hymowitz Rice. $8,365,000 Settlement for Municipal Liability
What Happened on the Van Wyck
The teenager, an unrestrained passenger, was ejected from the vehicle when it hit ice on the north side of the expressway. She fractured a neck vertebra, which caused her permanent partial paralysis, and also suffered a fractured skull, a fractured pelvis, and a punctured lung.1Fellows Hymowitz Rice. $8,365,000 Settlement for Municipal Liability
The Legal Theory Against the City and State
Rice built the case on municipal negligence. He and his team alleged that the ice condition at that spot on the Van Wyck was longstanding and that both the City and State of New York had ignored the hazard for years. The firm has said it assembled extensive evidence that the two government entities knew about the problem before the crash.2Fellows Hymowitz Rice. New City Car Accident Lawyer Naming both the city and the state as defendants allowed the claim to reach whichever entity was responsible for the roadway condition.
For scale, the NYC Comptroller’s Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Claims Report listed the top ten tort claims adjudicated that year as ranging from $6.95 million to $13 million, and motor vehicle claims were the costliest personal injury category for the city, totaling $173.7 million in payouts that fiscal year.3NYC Comptroller. Annual Claims Report
The $6.3 Million Figure in the New York Post
A 2008 New York Post article on the city’s personal injury payouts referenced the same matter but reported a $6.3 million figure tied to Gwendolyn Waller becoming a quadriplegic after a crash on the Van Wyck.4WRSH Law. News The available sources do not explain the gap between $6.3 million and $8,365,000. One plausible reading is that the Post figure reflects the city’s share alone, while the $8,365,000 is the total including the State of New York, which was also named as a defendant. That reading is not confirmed in the record.
Who Matthew Rice Is
Matthew F. Rice is a personal injury trial attorney and named partner at Fellows Hymowitz Rice, a firm based in New City in Rockland County. He earned a bachelor of science from Cornell in 2000, a juris doctor from St. John’s University School of Law in 2003, and was admitted to the New York bar in 2004. He is also admitted in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.5Super Lawyers. Matthew Rice He later earned an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business in 2011.6Lawyers.com. Matthew Rice Before moving to plaintiff work, Rice defended construction companies and other defendants in multi-million-dollar suits, and has said that background shaped how he approaches defense strategy on the plaintiff side.7Fellows Hymowitz Rice. Matthew F. Rice He became a named partner at the firm in 2021.