In a negligence action to recover damages for personal injuries, defendant appeals from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Kings County, entered June 26, 1972, in favor of plaintiff, upon successive jury verdicts, after separate trials upon the issues of liability and damages. Judgment reversed, on the law and the facts, and complaint dismissed, on the law, with costs. Upon a previous appeal in this action, following a previous trial, we reversed the dismissal of the complaint at the end of plaintiff’s case and granted a new trial, stating that at the new trial plaintiff shall be permitted to produce an expert to establish a case under the doctrine of res ipso loquitur (Sciemeca v. New York City Tr. Auth., 39 A D 2d 596). We stated (pp. 596-597): “ We are of the opinion that while, in order for plaintiff at bar to have brought himself within the purview of the doctrine of res ipso loquitur, proof of exclusive possession and control was a necessary prerequisite, all that he was required to establish was that under the facts and circumstances adduced and from the nature of defendant’s possession and control ‘ the probability that the negligent act was caused by someone other than the defendant is so remote that it is fair to permit an inference that the defendant is the negligent party’.” At the second trial, now under review, plaintiff produced expert testimony which indicated that the piece of steel was a leaf spring from a type of train which testimony by defendant indicated had not run over the tracks in question at or near the time of the accident. Further, defendant produced testimony which indicated that the two types of trains which ran over the elevated tracks at or near the time in question had much different springs and thus the injury producing item could not have come from them. Defendant also produced testimony which indicated that the object involved was from an automotive truck and that there were numerous buildings abutting and higher than the tracks and that it was thus possible for someone to have thrown objects onto the tracks. In light of the above, we are of the opinion that plaintiff failed to sustain his burden of proof which burden we explained in our first decision (see Sandler v. Garrison, 249 N. Y. 236). Latham, Brennan and Benjamin, JJ., concur; Martuscello, Acting P. J., concurs in the reversal of the judgment, but otherwise dissents and votes to grant a new trial, with the following memorandum: The trial court erred as a matter of law when it allowed, over defendant’s objection, plaintiff’s witness, a history professor, to testify as an expert that the leaf spring which allegedly caused plaintiff’s injury was an object from an elliptical spring of a New York City Rapid Transit subway car. The voir dire examination as to the qualifications of this witness in my opinion revealed that he lacked the background which would qualify him as an expert for this purpose. Gulotta, J., dissents and votes to affirm the judgment, with the following memorandum: On December 27, 1967 at about 7:00 a.m., while driving his automobile along Broadway near Ralph Avenue, in Brooklyn, underneath the elevated railroad structure operated by defendant, plaintiff was injured when a large piece of steel in the shape of a
