$650,000 Settlement – Supermarket Slip & Fall in Brooklyn
| Settlement Amount | $650,000 |
| Injury Type | Torn ACL and meniscus, fractured wrist |
| Location | Brooklyn supermarket |
| Year | 2024 |
| Practice Area | Slip and Fall / Premises Liability |
What Happened
Our client was shopping at a Brooklyn supermarket when she slipped and fell hard in the dairy aisle. The floor was wet – soaked, in fact – from water leaking out of a malfunctioning refrigeration unit that the store’s own employees had already flagged to management three days earlier. There were no wet floor signs. There was no barrier. There was nothing to warn her that the floor under her feet was a hazard.
She hit the ground fast and hard, reaching out instinctively to break her fall. The damage from that split-second was severe enough to require two surgeries and keep her out of work for nearly a year.
What made this case particularly infuriating was what discovery revealed: the store knew. Not “should have known” – actually knew. The leak had been documented internally. Management had been told. And still, nothing was done.
The Injuries
The fall tore our client’s ACL and meniscus in the same knee, requiring full reconstructive surgery. She also fractured her wrist in the fall – a distal radius fracture that required surgical repair with a plate and screws.
The combined recovery from both procedures was grueling. Our client worked as a healthcare professional, a job that requires being on her feet and physically capable. She was unable to return to that work for eleven months. Eight months of intensive physical therapy were required before she regained enough function to attempt a return. Even then, she returned with residual limitations and the knowledge that her knee, in particular, would never be exactly what it had been before.
How Liability Was Established
Premises liability cases often turn on the notice question: did the property owner know about the dangerous condition, and for how long? In this case, the answer was devastating for the defense.
Through litigation discovery, Jason obtained the store’s internal maintenance logs – records the store was required to keep and was compelled to produce. Those logs documented that a store employee had reported the malfunctioning refrigeration unit and the resulting floor leak to the store manager three days before our client’s fall. The report was logged. The manager acknowledged it. And no repair was made, no wet floor sign was placed, and no area was cordoned off.
Subpoenaed maintenance records further showed that the refrigeration unit had been cycling in and out of malfunction for weeks – a pattern the store was aware of through its own service calls. This was not a sudden, unforeseeable event. It was a recurring problem the store chose not to fix.
Challenges in the Case
The store’s first defense was flat denial: the floor was dry, the leak did not exist, and our client fell for some other reason. To support this position, the store would normally have pointed to its security footage – but the security footage of the fall no longer existed. The store claimed it had been overwritten in the ordinary course.
Jason recognized this immediately as potential spoliation – the destruction of evidence relevant to pending or anticipated litigation. He filed a motion for spoliation sanctions. After briefing and argument, the court agreed: the store had a duty to preserve that footage once it was on notice of the accident, and the footage’s destruction warranted a consequence. The court issued an adverse inference instruction, telling the jury that they could presume the destroyed footage would have shown a wet floor.
That ruling changed the entire posture of the case. Combined with the maintenance logs and the employee’s notice report, the defense had no credible path to victory. The store had real, documented notice of a known hazard, destroyed the evidence that would have shown the fall, and had no witness who could credibly testify the floor was dry.
The Outcome
The case settled for $650,000. The result compensated our client for her medical expenses, the eleven months of income she lost from her healthcare job, her pain and suffering through two surgeries and a lengthy rehabilitation, and the lasting impact on her physical capacity.
For a client who prided herself on her physical capability and her career, this recovery was meaningful beyond the dollar amount. It validated the wrong that had been done to her and provided the stability she needed to rebuild.
Were you injured by a dangerous condition in a store, restaurant, or building in New York City? Slip and fall cases depend heavily on evidence that can disappear quickly – surveillance footage, maintenance logs, and witness accounts. Call as soon as possible to protect your claim.
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Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is unique. The facts, injuries, and legal theories in your case will determine its value. This summary has been anonymized to protect client privacy.