Lowe’s Slip and Fall Injury Lawsuit Results in $13M Verdict

After highlighting a long track record for slip and fall injuries at Lowe’s Home Improvement stores, a Las Vegas jury awarded $13.14 million in damages earlier this week to a woman who suffered a traumatic head injury after slipping on a substance coming from the bottom of several planters.

The verdict came in an injury lawsuit filed by Kelly Hendrickson, who is a 38-year old mother of three who suffered a fractured skull, hemorrhage at the front of her brain and has been left with on-going neck pain, headaches, balance issues and damage to her senses of taste and smell after falling at a Las Vegas-area Lowes store in July 2013.

Hendrickson was walking through the garden center of the store looking at palm trees, when she slipped on what was described as a “slimy, wet substance” draining from the bottom of several planters.

According to a report by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, evidence was presented at trial that at least 28 similar slip and fall incidents have occurred at 13 Lowes Home Improvement Stores in Nevada since 2008, and attorneys argued that these problems should have prompted the company to install drains or change their watering procedures to prevent slippery plant residue from accumulating in walkways.

Hendrickson’s attorneys also argued that Lowes was negligent for failing to place a yellow caution cone in plain sight. However, attorneys for Lowes argued that the odds of slipping and falling at one of the stores are one in a million within any given year, and that Hendrickson should have seen a cone in the area, because when she fell she hit the cone on her way down.

Video footage of the fall was apparently erased after the incident.

The jury found that Lowes was 80% at fault for Hendrickson’s injury, resulting in a verdict of $13.14 million in compenstaory damages on April 15.