Skipped safety inspections by MTA workers may have caused a dangerous platform gap that caused gruesome injuries to a commuter at a Yonkers train station in 2021, her attorney told The Post.
Mara Jill Leibler bashed her face and broke her hand when she tripped on a platform at the Metro-North’s Greystone station – but her lawyer said the hazard likely went unfixed because of MTA inspectors who filed phony safety reports without ever doing required safety checks.
“She just goes flying forward, face first, into the concrete,” said Robert Menna, of Greenberg Law. “She put her hand out and that’s how she broke her hand — and she also hit her face.”
Leibler fell in April 2021 when she didn’t see the five-inch gap between the train and platform, caused by a section of track that had sunk over time, Menna said.
The tumble allegedly left her with multiple smashed teeth and blood dripping down the front of her. Leibler had to have extensive dental work to fix her shattered teeth, Menna said.
Leibler also hit her face — leaving her with cuts and so much swelling that she could barely see out of one eye, her lawyer said.
And Leibler had to have surgery on her broken hand, Menna said.
“Their records never reported any issue, and we sent investigators and an expert out to the site on numerous occasions and the dangerous condition always existed,” Menna said. “So in sum, they were not reporting the dangerous condition over several years.”
A spokesperson for the MTA told The Post safety is the “highest priority” at Metro-North Railroad.
“The agency is consistently working to enhance it,” the spokesperson added.
Menna filed a lawsuit in 2022, well before the faked inspections were revealed, alleging MTA inspectors failed to note the sinking track or the widening vertical gap. The suit claims the agency’s inspection logs contained no mention of the hazard, even though it was obvious to anyone standing on the platform.
Metro-North denies wrongdoing and will defend itself against the suit, according to a spokesperson for the MTA.
The attorney now believes those clean records mirror the same kind of falsified documentation uncovered in The Post’s investigation, which revealed that MTA inspectors skipped station checks, faked reports, and were caught dining out while on the clock.
“All of the records show that there was nothing wrong, and it passed the inspection,” Menna said. “So we always had this thought in the back of our minds — how are these records saying this is passing inspection when this is going on for years? Then the article in The Post came out and I was like, oh — they’re fraudulently writing whatever they want in these reports and not actually doing the inspections.”
Menna said his expert witness — a former MTA inspector — will testify at trial that Metro-North’s inspection reports for Greystone Station were “impossible” to be true, based on repeated site visits since 2022 that showed the problem has persisted.
“These employees are there to protect the safety of the passengers and the people that ride the trains, and they’re ignoring their duties,” Menna said. “If they did their job and reported what was actually going on, this would not have happened.”
A judge is expected to set a 2026 trial date for the case on Nov. 5. Menna said their settlement demand was $950,000, but it was rejected. A court mediator recommended a settlement of $450,000 but Metro-North was “not close to that number,” Menna said.
The two MTA employees accused of faking train inspections are mechanic George Desmond and inspector Ibn Jenkins.
Desmond was fired on Monday, Oct.13, 2025 after a disciplinary hearing, according to the MTA.
Jenkins isn’t working right now and isn’t getting paid and is still facing disciplinary action. What happens next will depend on the rules in his union contract, according to the MTA.
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