LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) - A trial judge was wrong to throw out an $850,000 verdict in favor of a man who claimed he slipped and fell on water that spilled out of a restaurant employee’s cart full of dirty dishes, an appeals court ruled, rejecting the restaurant’s explanation of what happened “made little sense.”
Jorge Perez sued Hibachi Buffett in Los Angeles after he fell coming out of the bathroom on what he described as a 10-foot trail of liquid in a hallway leading to the kitchen. His lawyers blamed the accident on an employee spilling water from a dish cart, and the restaurant admitted in written answers to pretrial questions that employees moved dishware in “the subject hallway.”
Restaurant owner Lanfang Wang testified it was “impossible” for employees to push a cart through the narrow hallway, however, and an employee also testified dirty dishes got to the kitchen via another route. There was surveillance tape of the hall but Wang said the camera angle didn’t catch his fall and the tape may have been erased. The trial court refused to penalize Wang for spoilation of evidence because there was no proof she willfully erased it.
The jury awarded Perez $850,000 in damages. Buffet moved for a new trial and judgment notwithstanding the verdict and the trial court granted both motions, saying there was no evidence the liqwuid spilled from a dish cart, or that a restaurant employee was involved. The plaintiff never provided evidence the spill pattern was consistent with a dish cart, the judge ruled.
California’s Second District Court of Appeal reversed both decisions, in an Aug. 30 opinion written by Judge John Shepard Wiley.
“Spilling liquid on the floor is an everyday event,” the court ruled. “When the facts are this simple and the contest is between a reasonable explanation and no reasonable explanation, the reasonable explanation wins.”
In closing arguments, Perez’s lawyer told jurors “if a party provided weaker evidence when it could have provided stronger evidence, you may distrust the weaker evidence.” Wang’s lawyer said it would be speculation to blame the water on a restaurant employee when it might have been “from that little girl” or “somebody who didn’t make it to the restroom.”
The appeals court said the trial court had to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the party that won the verdict, and the restaurant’s explanations didn’t make sense. There was no explanation of the “little girl” remark and the spill pattern went past the entrance to the bathroom, undercutting the idea it was a patron who couldn’t make it to the toilet.
“Perez proved he slipped on a wet floor and gave a commonplace explanation for how the floor got wet: a Buffet employee spilled the liquid taking dishes to the kitchen for washing,” the court concluded. “The probable explanation was straightforward, logical, and supported by the evidence. The jury accepted Perez’s reasonable explanation and rejected Buffet’s less plausible alternatives. We reinstate the jury’s verdict.”