So, can a case be cobbled for tripping?

Stone-paved streets are potentially dangerous for pedestrians and civic bodies.

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While cobblestones may be an endearing feature of roads since Roman times, in these litigious times, an injurious stumble on an uneven surface can also cause irreparable damage to a city’s finances. (Representative image)
When it comes to legal matters, it’s hard to trip up Amal Clooney, but cobblestoned streets are clearly another matter. So, New York’s city authorities must have missed a heartbeat or two when they learnt that the celebrity lawyer lurched and nearly keeled over on a paved stretch of Manhattan this week not far from where her sister toppled four years ago. While cobblestones may be an endearing feature of roads since Roman times, in these litigious times, an injurious stumble on an uneven surface can also cause irreparable damage to a city’s finances. Of course, not all topples mean a potential payout. There has to be a visible defect — the so-called ‘one inch rule’ of a pit or a protuberance size in the stonework — before courts can consider a claim and Clooney’s vertiginous stiletto heel twisting in a grout may not qualify.


Cities across the world are replacing cobblestones; even Rome itself announced plans this June to replace cobblestones with asphalt on 70 of its busiest thoroughfares. And a Parisian has been selling such discarded ‘pavé’ stones (bought for a pittance from the city council) for €60-150 as mementos. But the question is whether two tumbles in similar cobbled terrain in New York are grounds enough for a lawyer of Clooney’s calibre to fight for the safe perambulation rights of the not-so-down-at-heel.



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