--
Let's go to the wedding videotape!
A Park Avenue woman has filed a $5 million lawsuit against
a videographer, charging he gave her the wedding-bell blues -
and a broken arm - by tripping her during a friend's nuptials.
The videographer, Bill Poznanski, maintains Babette
Gruenberg walked into him because she wasn't watching where
she was going - and he has video showing the "seriously
injured" woman partying it up at the reception hours after the
accident.
"This is a case of an elderly woman who had a few stiff
drinks along with her heart medication who was not looking
where she walked," Poznanski's lawyer,
Susan Chana Lask, said
in court papers.
She told The Post the suit is "meritless" and "incredibly
ridiculous."
The septuagenarian's side contends Poznanski "was lying on
the floor [at the time of the accident], which constituted a
dangerous, hazardous and defective condition."
The stumble happened at the June 5, 1999, reception for
Peter Kaplan and Karen Adler at the University Club on West
54th Street.
Poznanski said he was shooting the wedding cake in an empty
reception room when Gruenberg and a friend strolled in.
Gruenberg says in her suit that Poznanski was lying on the
ground, and with no room to get around him, she tripped over
his leg.
She says the fall left her with "severe, painful and
serious personal injuries in or about the head, limbs and
body," including "contusions, abrasions, lacerations,
fractures and sprains," "severe shock to the nervous system,"
"internal injuries" and "mental anguish."
As a result, she was "confined to a hospital, bed and home
for a long period of time."
At Poznanski's deposition, he said he tried scooting
forward as he saw the pair approaching him and figured they'd
just walk around him because, at 6-foot-3, he's hard to miss.
"I was stunned they bumped into me . . . I'm not exactly
too small," he said, adding that he was holding his camera and
shining its light at the wedding cake at time of the
collision.
He said he thought Gruenberg was fine since she stayed at
the party.
Lask said Poznanski's video shows her two hours after the
fall "having a ball . . . with her pocketbook slung over her
alleged $5 million broken arm and a drink in the other hand."
She added Gruenberg didn't go to see a doctor until two days
later.
Gruenberg's lawyer didn't return a call for comment.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Barbara Kapnick is allowing
the case to proceed. "There are issues of fact as to whether
or plaintiff should have observed [Poznanski] prior to falling
over his outstretched leg," the judge found.