The Law

Camera Detects Misstep by Ron Davis A comprehensive routine of safety inspections has paid off big for the owners of a California shopping center. The shopping center is Westfield Mall in Culver City, and the safety issue arose after a customer of the center fell and suffered an injury while descending a center staircase. The customer blamed the center management for failure to properly maintain the staircase where she fell. She claimed the fall resulted from her stepping on “a round object” just as she was completing her descent. And she sued the owners of Westfield Mall. That shopping center, however, retains not only a contracting company that specializes in “housekeeping” services, but also a security firm. And it was members of the security firm who arrived quickly at the scene after the woman’s fall. They then summoned paramedics to attend to the woman’s injury. When asked the cause of her fall, she reportedly said she simply missed the last step. Photographs taken of the scene of her fall failed to show any foreign substance on the staircase. Nevertheless, the woman would later claim that the cause of her fall was “debris” that created a “dangerous and defective” condition. Later, she added that she never saw any debris, but did feel something round and cylindrical beneath her shoe. At Westfield Mall, surveillance cameras are used to record incidents that occur in the facility’s problem areas. A camera near the scene of the women’s fall therefore recorded the incident, though it failed to show if debris actually was on the staircase. But according to camera-shot viewers, it did depict a “misstep, in which [the woman] stepped too far forward on the last stair tread with her left foot, causing it to slip off and downward.” In the resulting trial, a safety expert testified on the mechanics of the woman’s fall as depicted in the camera recording. He said the recording is “consistent with her overstepping the last step with her left foot as she looks to her left away from the staircase without using reasonable care.” He added that the mechanics of her fall “are inconsistent with her slipping on a cylindrical object.” Then there was the admission by the injured woman that immediately after her fall she “missed a step and fell.” But at trial, she said that because she was in such pain, she did not feel like explaining what actually happened. Moreover, she argued that the surveillance video was of poor quality and thus was not good verification of what occurred at the scene of her fall. The California court ruled in favor of the center’s owners. And on appeal of that ruling, a California appellate court agreed, explaining, “Because there was no evidence in this case that the alleged hazardous condition was created by the activities of [the center’s owners] or their employees or contractors…the judgment [of the lower court] is affirmed.” (Norman v. Westfield Group, 2013 WL 5861531 [Cal.App. 2 Dist.]) Decision: October 2013 Published: November 2013