$800,000 Settlement for slip and fall
The Plaintiff: a 50 year-old nursing assistant
This case settled for Eight Hundred Thousand Dollars ($800,000.00) prior to jury selection.
The Plaintiff, a 50 year-old nursing assistant claimed that while working at a heath facility in Manhattan she was caused to slip and fall on a wet hallway floor which resulted in two surgeries for a torn rotator cuff as well as fusion surgery to her neck due to herniated discs.
The difficulty in the case was that the Plaintiff could not identify what the substance was that caused her to slip or how long the substance had been on the hallway floor. In slip and fall cases, a plaintiff, in most instances, must establish that the defendant created the dangerous condition or that the dangerous condition existed for a sufficiently long period of time that the defendant should have discovered the dangerous condition and cleaned it up. In this case plaintiff could not establish either of the above elements.
However, the Plaintiff and a co-worker did testify that during the weekends, when the plaintiff’s accident occurred, the cleaning staff at the facility was always understaffed resulting in the hallways being in a particular dirty condition each weekend. This “recurrent condition” argument that our firm argued was actually upheld by the appellate court when defendants appealed the lower court’s ruling in our favor!
Despite this being a difficult liability case to prove against the defendants we were able to settle the case for a high six figure sum.
Also, of great importance we were able to persuade the worker’s compensation carrier for the plaintiff’s employer to continue to cover the plaintiff for any future medical care that she may need for the injuries she suffered as a result of the accident. This of course is a great benefit to the plaintiff as her future medical care is assured and she has peace of mind in knowing that all such future medical care will be paid for!