“Woman Scared by ‘Dexter’ Ad Sues MTA for Subway Fall”

“A woman using a Grand Central Terminal stairwell fell and broke her ankle last year because a spooky advertisement for the [Showtime serial-killer] series startled her, a new lawsuit charges. Ajanaffy Njewadda and her husband, a former Gambian ambassador, are suing the MTA and the cable network, accusing them of placing the ad in a dangerous spot for pedestrians.” [James Fanelli, DNAInfo New York]

3 Comments

  • A year ago I would not have believed any of this, but my ground floor neighbor decorated the front of the building for Halloween — we spent four hours handing out stuff to seemingly every kid in the Tristate area — and the next day I got a phone call from my cleaning lady from in front of the building, mildly hysterical because my house was haunted.

    I think the suit ridiculous, but not that it’s necessarily a scam.

    Bob

  • I’m somewhat sympathetic to the claim. Stairs should have high-contrast between the steps and the risers to help people with vision problems. Not having this high contrast, and having a giant face appear unexpectedly could startle someone. I think it may not be a good idea to make stairs appear different from usual.

    She did break her ankle.

  • @Robert

    The picture in the article is misleading. You can only see the complete image from afar. When I was in Vienna last month*, a museum had the same thing (no, not a picture of Dexter, but of one of the exhibits in the museum) on its steps leading up to the entrance. I could see the complete image when I was 50 feet from the steps, but once I got up to the steps you could not see the image at all. All you could see was a set of steps with some coloration. Thus walking up the steps was no different from walking up any other set of steps. In other words, the woman is dissembling.

    * Don’t you just love it when people name/place drop.! 🙂