Plaintiff suffers TBI after falling down stairs in office building. $12.2M. Los Angeles County.

Facts and Background

• Facts and Background:

  Plaintiff, 38-year-old Jessica Vu, worked as a counselor for children with autism in an office building in Hermosa Beach. On August 29, 2016, plaintiff was working late studying for her licensing credential exam at the office. That evening, the defendants, a carpet-cleaning crew working for DFS Flooring Inc., hired by the defendant building owners, 2447 PCH LLC, and property managers, Mar Ventures Inc., arrived and cleaned the common area hallways, as previously scheduled. Earlier that day, plaintiff and two of her coworkers had been given written notice regarding the carpet cleaning.

  While exiting the building shortly after 8:00 p.m., plaintiff walked across the alleged wet carpet, which had been cleaned almost two hours earlier, opened the door to the stairwell, and walked across an epoxy landing. The epoxy landing had been recently installed and plaintiff alleged that it did not have adequate grip-and-slip resistance. Plaintiff claimed that she slipped on the epoxy and and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting her head on the concrete steps.

  Plaintiff drove herself home after the fall and went to urgent care the next day, where doctors diagnosed her with a head injury. Within 48 hours, she began to suffer headaches and cognitive issues. Plaintiff claimed that within several weeks, her mental and cognitive abilities declined, forcing her to resign from a career she loved and move back to her hometown in Florida. Six years after her slip and fall, plaintiff claimed she continues to suffer from memory problems, issues with executive function, difficulty multitasking, fatigue, headaches, dizziness, and nausea. She also has emotional problems and anxiety arising from her brain injury.

• Plaintiff's Contentions:

  That defendants improperly cleaned the carpet and failed to warn plaintiff about the wet carpet. That defendants also improperly installed a new epoxy flooring that had inconsistent grit/anti-slip additive.

  That plaintiff hit her head when she slipped and fell, which caused a traumatic brain injury that led to cognitive problems that impacted her ability to work and has impacted every aspect of her life. Within a month she was unable to do a job she loved and excelled at for years and had to go on leave. That plaintiff’s cognitive injuries developed over time as established by the science, the testing, the diagnosis of doctors, a comparison of pre- and post-injury performance, and were also supported by findings on advanced imaging studies/functional MRI. Damage to executive function, memory, multi-tasking, and emotions are things that are not easily spotted on the surface, but once you got into the details of plaintiff’s life, those damages, that would last for 50 years are significant and required significant compensation.

• Defendant's Contentions:

  The carpet on which plaintiff walked before entering the stairwell had properly been cleaned and had dried before plaintiff walked on it, as the cleaning crew testified.  Also defendants’ expert testified the he conducted two tests to determine the drying time of an exemplar of the same carpet, which was cleaned with the same low-moisture cleaning method, and he showed a video of his testing which established that the carpet dried within 30 minutes after cleaning. Further, that plaintiff had received warnings about the wet carpet, as evidenced by the testimony of the carpet cleaning crew and that plaintiff's co-workers did not slip on the epoxy. Also, the epoxy was properly gritted and sufficiently slip resistant, as the coefficient of friction testing by both defendant’s and plaintiff’s expert established.  Moreover, plaintiff did not slip on the epoxy landing; instead, she mis-stepped on the top of the concrete steps of the landing, as plaintiff’s two co-workers who witnessed the fall testified.

  If plaintiff suffered a traumatic brain injury, it was mild and had resolved within several months. That plaintiff's problems are the result of poorly treated depression/anxiety, of which she had prior history, since childhood.

  That plaintiff could not be seriously injured since she was able to travel with friends/family outside of the country, go to restaurants, work as a receptionist, and get married. Finally, that the evidence and testimony were inadequate to support damages and the imaging studies relied upon by plaintiff  did not show evidence of a TBI.