Joseph Perl, Appellants v. Mehmood Meher, Respondents; David Adler, Appellants, v. Pincus…

Summary

In a consolidated decision resolving three no-fault 'serious injury' appeals, the Court of Appeals held that an expert's quantitative range-of-motion measurements taken years after an accident are legally sufficient under Toure's quantitative prong to raise a fact issue, and it expressly rejected any rule requiring contemporaneous numerical measurements as a prerequisite to recovery. Applying that rule, it reversed the Appellate Division dismissals in Perl and Adler—reinstating the denial of summary judgment in Perl and restoring the path to the jury verdict in Adler—while affirming dismissal in Travis, where the record contained no evidence of a statutorily defined serious injury under either the limitation-of-use or the 90/180-day categories. The Court further held that Perl's competing radiological and treating-physician proof was sufficient to raise a triable causation issue despite defense MRI evidence of preexisting degeneration.