By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — A Gramercy Park woman filed a $2 million lawsuit against the elevated High Line Park after she says she tripped over a slab of raised concrete, the New York Post reported. It's believed to be the first claim against the $172 million park.
Paula Shapiro, 66, claimed in court papers that she broke her ankle in the fall on June 21, roughly two weeks after the park opened. Shapiro’s lawyer told the Post his client was not the first to fall in the park, but was the first to sue.
High Line Park's landscape has a combination of "meandering concrete pathways with naturalistic plantings," according to its official Web site.
The elevated park was once a freight rail line that hadn't been used for decades. A community group called Friends of the High Line spent years gathering city support and funding to recreate the derelict rail line as a park. A portion of the park, from Gansevoort Street to W. 20th Street, opened earlier this year. When finished, the park will extend from the Meatpacking District to Midtown.
Shapiro was roughly 250 feet from the park's Gansevoort Street entrance when she tripped on a median of trees and flowers her claim states was surrounded by "raised, uneven, depressed decorative concrete," the Post reported.
