In a fairly recent Kalamazoo County Circuit Court case Ryan & Ryan fought one of the nation’s largest retailers after the client slipped and fell near the cashier station at the front of the store and sustained a knee injury. The store denied that the floor was dangerously slippery and refused to compensate the woman for her pain and physical impairments. In fact, the manager of the store testified that the floor was dry in the area of the fall.
However, in surveillance video obtained from the store a man was seen in the same area carrying a bag of ice from a nearby ice freezer minutes before the fall. The cashier testified at deposition that he had observed an ice cube melting on the floor near his work station. Yet, the store still insisted that the floor was safe and that it owed no duty to clean up or mop the area near the cashier and ice freezer.
One week before a jury trial was scheduled the parties reached a settlement of $340,000. At the time of the mediation, months before the trial, the store had offered only $15,000…before it wisely changed its evaluation.