Mʏᴇʀs & Cᴏᴍᴘᴀɴʏ
Rolling Stools And Broken Hips
Premises liability cases take a lot of different forms. But there are some common elements.
They usually involve a fall. With the benefit of hindsight, it's usually a fall that (theoretically) the injured person could have avoided.
But we don't live retrospectively. We live moving forward with imperfect information and the need to make a lot of different decisions.
The person who falls usually has to make a split-second decision. The property owner is situated differently. The property owner usually has plenty of time to decide what they can do to eliminate hazards.
Sometimes they eliminate (or mitigate) hazards. Sometimes they do nothing and hope for the best. Sometimes they're just tuned out.
All of these factors were present in a premises case we handled for an eighty year old woman who went to the bank to make a deposit.
She waited at a "walk up" customer service kiosk. There were people in front of her. She started to get tired.
Then she saw what was essentially a drafting stool.
It was tall, didn’t have any arms and had casters. Maybe not ideal, but under the circumstances, sitting on it was a lot more appealing than continuing to stand while she waited.
She tried to "mount" the stool. It shot out from under her. She fell to the ground and broke her hip.
The Bank was adamant it did nothing wrong. It argued that she should not have tried to use the rolling stool because it was meant for employees only. And even if it shouldn't have allowed the stool to be in the customer area, there was nothing unreasonably dangerous about the stool.
The Bank brought a motion for summary judgment. (Frequently--in disputed liability cases--real negotiations don't start until the defendant swings for the fence (trying to get the case dismissed) and fails.)
We persuaded the court that the stool was not safe for customers because (1) the seat was high (about 32.5” from the floor), (2) the stool didn’t have arms and (3) the casters didn’t have a lock mechanism to keep the stool from rolling away when someone attempts to sit on it. (Before taking this case I didn't realize this was an option available for commercial stools; essentially the casters will not roll unless a person is fully seated.)
The Bank's motion was denied and we were able to settle the case at mediation for 7.5 times the bank’s initial offer.
This was a case where we learned a lot about rolling stools (which was interesting). But the outcome was really the product of telling a simple story:
The Bank knew that many customers who came to the branch were older, the Bank knew that the stool was designed for employees to use at a counter, the Bank knew the stool was sub-optimal for customer use, and the stool was not supposed to be left in the area used by customers.
Two claps for the power of simple stories and their effect on a whole range of audiences from little kids to superior court judges.