Francesca Ippolito-Craven, and G. William Bissett, of the Miami office, obtained a Summary Judgment in favor of the Client. The case involved a slip and fall where the Plaintiff claimed an employee took a leaky garbage bag out the front door dripping grease on the ground on the sidewalk in the front of the store causing her to slip and fall. However, our Client’s incident report stated Plaintiff “missed the step” and fell off the sidewalk. Also, the emergency room records from the night of the incident in two separate portions noted Plaintiff, “tripped and fell over a parking bumper.” The garbage bag/grease theory came up for the first time in Plaintiff’s complaint which was filed two years after the incident and in her deposition.

During Plaintiff’s deposition, it was clearly established by Francesca, in three different ways, that Plaintiff never actually saw any substance whatsoever dripping from the garbage bag and did not see any grease on the ground at any point prior to or after her fall and all of the photos taken on the date of the incident showed Plaintiff on the black asphalt laying next to a parking bumper in the parking lot.

Summary Judgment was then filed based upon the improper stacking of inferences. However, in response to the Summary Judgment, Plaintiff argued that she was entitled to an adverse inference or adverse presumption of negligence to defeat the summary judgment. Plaintiff made claims that our client had spoliated evidence because we did not preserve the surveillance camera footage from the night of the incident, although no such request was made until the footage was taped over during the regular course of business. The Court reserved ruling on the Summary Judgment and asked the parties to brief the issue of spoliation and have a hearing on a motion for sanctions Plaintiff filed.

At the second Summary Judgment hearing, Plaintiff again attempted to reargue the spoliation issues and additionally claim there were issues of fact as to our Client’s actual and constructive notice. However, the Court granted our summary judgment a Proposal for Settlement was early on in this case.