Appeal from an order of the Civil Court of the City of New York, Kings County (Jack M. Battaglia, J.), entered May 6, 2005. The order, insofar as appealed from as limited by the brief, granted a trial motion by plaintiff to the extent of setting aside the verdict as against the weight of the evidence and ordering a new trial.

On the court's own motion, the notice of appeal is treated as an application for leave to appeal, and leave to appeal is granted.

Order, insofar as appealed from, affirmed without costs.

Plaintiff commenced the instant action to recover for personal injuries she sustained after she allegedly tripped and fell on plywood surrounding a steel column on the platform of the subway station located at 36th Street and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn.
Plaintiff claimed that defendant was negligent in not keeping the platform in a reasonably safe condition. She testified at trial that she was looking straight ahead while she was walking and did not see the plywood prior to her fall. Defendant claimed that the platform was in a reasonably safe condition as the plywood had been painted yellow, was beveled on all sides and was secured to the platform by bolts. After trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of defendant, finding that defendant was negligent, but that its negligence was not a substantial factor in causing the accident. Upon an oral application by plaintiff, the trial court set aside the jury's verdict as against the weight of the evidence and ordered a new trial.

An appeal as of right does not lie from the order entered May 6, 2005, which merely memorialized a trial ruling (CCA 1702 [a] [2]; CPLR 2211; see Camacho v City of New York, 218 AD2d 725 [1995]). However, under the circumstances of this case, we find it appropriate to deem the notice of appeal to be an application for leave to appeal and to grant such leave (see Gunn v Sound Shore Med. Ctr. of Westchester, 5 AD3d 435 [2004]).

"[T]he standard for determining whether a jury verdict is against the weight of the [*2]evidence is whether the evidence so preponderated in favor of the movant that the verdict could not have been reached on any fair interpretation of the evidence . . . The [trial court's] disposition of a motion to set aside the verdict as against the weight of the evidence is entitled to great respect" (Harris v Marlow, 18 AD3d 608, 610 [2005] [citations and internal quotation marks omitted]). After reviewing the record and applying the aforementioned standard to the case at bar, we are of the opinion that the trial court providently exercised its discretion in setting aside the jury's verdict in favor of defendant and ordering a new trial since the issues of defendant's negligence and causation were "so inextricably interwoven as to make it logically impossible to find negligence without also finding proximate cause" (Rubin v Pecoraro, 141 AD2d 525, 527 [1988]; see Dellamonica v Carvel Corp., 1 AD3d 311 [2003]; Lora v City of New York, 305 AD2d 171 [2003]; see also Alexander v City of New York, 21 AD3d 389 [2005]; cf. Gaston v Viclo Realty Co., 215 AD2d 174 [1995]).

Pesce, P.J., Weston Patterson and Belen, JJ., concur.