Facts

On the evening of Feb. 13, 2006, plaintiff Rosa Silva, 42, was a patron of the King Ranch Market located in Victorville. She claimed that after entering the market, she slipped and fell and landed in a sitting position on orange juice that was on the floor. Plaintiff described the orange juice as being tacky, sticky and getting dark in color with an appearance as if it had been on the floor for a long period of time.

Following her fall, she was assisted up by unknown store patrons and, thereafter, located by the store's assistant manager who took a report and photograph of her. She left of her accord and, with the assistance of her husband, traveled to St. Mary's Hospital where she received emergency room treatment.

Plaintiff filed suit against defendant E&T Foods Inc., dba King Ranch Market.

During the course of the case, the defense brought a motion for summary judgment, which was ultimately removed from calendar to allow the matter to proceed towards mediation.

PLAINTIFF'S CONTENTIONS:
Plaintiff contended that the juice had commenced drying up and, as such, had been at the location for a sufficient amount of time that the store knew or should have known of its existence and failed to warn or otherwise rectify the condition.

For attempted impeachment at the time of trial, plaintiff produced a video, which had not previously been divulged in discovery. The video was a sub rosa investigation performed by plaintiff's brother-in-law wherein he hid a camera in a shopping cart and filmed various locations throughout the store.

DEFENDANT'S CONTENTIONS:
Defendant, mostly through plaintiff's expert Alex Balian, demonstrated that the location of plaintiff's alleged fall was the main entrance of the store and extremely traffic area.

In using plaintiff's time sequence, on how long she was in the store and how many steps she had taken from certain points, the video assisted in showing the heavy traffic area where plaintiff fell. The defense contended that, based on plaintiff's own evidence, the condition could not have existed for a length of time before the incident, if the condition even existed.

Plaintiff's expert, Alex Balian, utilized declarations of the defense's employees as part of his opinion in the case. Defense counsel sought to use the declarations during trial to establish that the employees found no orange juice after the fall and had in place an exemplar cleaning system including a full time janitor. The court gave a limiting instruction that such declarations are not evidence and only admitted them as basis for the expert's opinion.

In addition, the defense also had some limited impeachment evidence on plaintiff relevant to her modifying her story from her deposition taken in 2006 up to the time of trial.

Settlement Discussions

Plaintiff's initial demand was $1 million, lowered to $900,000 at the time of mediation. Prior to trial, plaintiff's counsel indicated a willingness to accept the case in the $175,000 to $185,000 range. The defendant's highest offer was $115,000 prior to trial.

Specials in Evidence

$234,000

Damages

Plaintiff claimed that at the time of her fall, she was a sole proprietor selling items at a swap meet. Although plaintiff initially claimed losses of hundreds of thousand of dollars prior to trial, since the trial was bifurcated and only liability discussed in the first phase, damages were not established other than general comment. Plaintiff's counsel did advise the jury that plaintiff had received serious injuries as a result of the incident, including having to undergo a spinal fusion.

Result

The jury returned a verdict, phase one, for the defense. As such, the case did not proceed to the damages phase.

Other Information

The case was mediated before Vigo Boserup, Esq. of JAMS.

Deliberation

85 minutes

Poll

12-0 (defense)

Length

five days