On August 25, 2012, Natalie Bar-Levy went with friends to Studio Square, a now closed sports bar in Astoria. She became involved in a verbal altercation with another customer and the bar’s bouncers were summoned to escort her out. While doing so, Ms. Bar-Levy, then a 25 year old schoolteacher, was shoved down a flight

On May 20, 2008, Alexander Nayberg was stopped at a red light in Garden City when two other cars collided in the intersection and one of them struck Mr. Nayberg’s car in the rear.

In the ensuing litigation, a Nassau County jury found that the two colliding drivers were each 50% at fault for