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In civil court on October 16
Like Feinstein, Anna Rosenberg had not been in her store when it was attacked. She had closed the business before crowds arrived in the area. Her testimony in the trial was therefore limited to the details of the damage done. Evidence of the cause of the damage was provided by Herbert Cantor, who owned a pharmacy five doors from Rosenberg's business. After learning of the disorder in Harlem on the evening of March 19, he had rushed to protect his store, arriving around 11:00 PM. He watched crowd "carrying bricks, stones and bottles, as well as canned goods march down the street," Cantor testified," shouting, "'Down with the whites! Let's get what we can,'" and hurling missiles through windows." Feinstein's store manager had described a similar crowd around his liquor store, which was a block north of Rosenberg's business. Cantor saw a fire break out in the notion store sometime between 11:00 PM and midnight, but could not see who started it. Missing from the reported testimony was any mention of the police, whether they were absent or ineffectual in controlling the crowd. Instead, the presence of the Royal Insurance Company appeared to have focused the attention of journalists at least on the question of whether a riot had occurred.
Attorneys for Royal Insurance argued that riot caused the damage to Rosenberg's business, while Arnold denied that a riot in the legal meaning had occurred and argued that outbreak of the fire at the time crowds were in the area was a coincidence. When attorneys for the insurance persisted in rejecting the city's position, as the New York Herald Tribune put it, Arnold called for a mistrial in response to insurance arguments. Judge Rosalsky rejected that motion. No other testimony was reported on behalf of Rosenberg, Royal Insurance, or the city.
This jury too awarded damages to Rosenberg in the sum of $804, 82% of the insurance valuation of damage, in the process of imposing liability on the city rather than the Royal Insurance company. Arnold filed a motion to set aside the verdict, as he had in Feinstein's trial. Judge Rosalsky, unlike Judge Shalleck, simply denied the motion, perhaps aware that his colleague was already drafting an opinion on the law that would be applied to this case as well — and to the 160 claims that Arnold said were pending in the Municipal Court, "mostly for small sums."