Our client was a patron of an airline club lounge at a major South Florida international airport when she walked into the bathroom and immediately slipped on a dangerously wet and improperly maintained floor. There were no warning signs. During the fall she struck her head on the countertop and landed hard on her right arm. She was transported by ambulance to the emergency room. The injuries were severe -- a complex comminuted fracture of the proximal and mid-shaft humerus requiring an extensive open reduction internal fixation surgery that took two and a half hours and resulted in the placement of a metal plate and fifteen screws spanning from her shoulder to her elbow. Mausner Group pursued both the airline and the contracted facility management company. The case settled for $600,000.
The contracted cleaning and facilities management company had a duty to maintain the lounge premises in a reasonably safe condition. A wet bathroom floor with no warning signage in a high- traffic airport lounge is exactly the kind of foreseeable hazard that proper maintenance protocols are designed to prevent. Mausner Group moved quickly to preserve surveillance footage and fought a contested discovery battle to obtain photographic and video evidence. The corporate defendants and their carriers ultimately resolved the case for $600,000 after years of litigation resistance.
