00:04
a memorable slip and fall case that uh
00:06
mike sawyer and i tried again a number
00:08
of years ago
00:10
we had a client who had the misfortune
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of slipping on a strawberry while he was
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shopping in a supermarket here
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in denver in one of our major
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supermarket chains
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he was in the produce aisle walking down
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the produce aisle and there was a
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strawberry on the floor that he didn’t
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see
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he slipped on it and he fell backwards
00:33
landed on his back
00:35
sustained a significant back injury
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requiring a
00:38
lumbar fusion and some complications
00:42
that arose from that surgery that
00:44
impacted the rest of his life
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we filed suit against the supermarket
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chain
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couldn’t get the case resolved out of
00:53
court and so we proceeded to trial
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what we were able to show in trial was
00:59
the
00:59
the supermarket we knew was going to
01:01
present as evidence what they call is a
01:04
sweep sheet it’s a piece of evidence you
01:06
see in almost
01:08
every supermarket slip and fall case
01:11
it’s a log that they maintain uh
01:14
through their employees that shows how
01:17
often
01:18
they patrol aisles to clean uh
01:21
spills or refuse from the aisles and
01:23
then they log the employee the time they
01:25
did it
01:26
uh and the name of the employee and that
01:28
was produced to us in discovery we knew
01:30
that was coming and
01:31
and we got produced to us at our request
01:34
time records for all the employees that
01:36
worked at that store
01:37
that day at trial we were able to show
01:41
to the jury
01:42
that at the time this aisle supposedly
01:46
was patrolled
01:47
and cleaned the employee who
01:50
signed off on the sweep sheet for that
01:53
time was in fact
01:54
on break as shown by his time records
01:58
and when we presented that to the jury
02:00
they they
02:02
obviously were outraged that the
02:03
supermarket was
02:05
falsifying records for their own benefit
02:08
we’ve received a favorable verdict in
02:10
that case during closing argument
02:13
the attorney for the supermarket brought
02:15
into the courtroom
02:16
what he called a floor exemplar
02:20
which was a three foot by three foot
02:22
square of the
02:24
tile that was in the produce area the
02:26
floor tile
02:27
and he put it down on the floor of the
02:29
courtroom in front of the judge and the
02:31
jury
02:32
and then we heard him unwrapping a pint
02:35
basket of
02:36
strawberries and he took out a big red
02:39
strawberry
02:40
and he put it in the middle of this
02:41
floor exemplar to show the jury what it
02:44
would look like
02:45
and mike sawaya and i were sitting at
02:47
council table
02:48
scratching our heads wondering what is
02:51
this showing the jury
02:53
other than what a strawberry looks like
02:55
when it’s on the floor a strawberry that
02:57
shouldn’t be there
02:58
mike and i walked out of closing
03:01
argument to the hallway
03:02
and stood there scratching our heads
03:04
laughing wondering
03:06
what was he trying to prove with the
03:08
strawberry and the exemplar it never
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made sense to us at all
03:12
other than to show the jury what a big
03:13
red strawberry looks like