Convention center fall yields $120K verdict

Posted: 7:00 pm Sun, June 27, 2010
By Danny Jacobs
Daily Record Legal Affairs Writer

A Baltimore jury has awarded a California woman more than $120,000 after she tripped and fell in the Baltimore Convention Center while attending a 2007 conference.

Laura Johnson suffered a torn rotator cuff and partial biceps tear in her left arm that required two surgeries, according to her lawyer. The jury deliberated for two hours before finding against the convention center and GES Exposition Services, a national company hired to set up the Association of Record Managers and Administrators International Annual Conference & Expo.

“You don’t see many premises liability cases that are successful,” said Michael J. Perticone, Johnson’s lawyer. “They are hard to prosecute.”

Adrian Mendoza, GES Exposition’s lawyer, said his client has no plans to appeal the June 10 verdict. That Johnson was not at fault for the fall made a plaintiff’s verdict likely, he said.

“It was inevitable she was going to have some recovery for her injury,” said Mendoza, who is based in Chicago.

Johnson, a city employee in Thousand Oaks, Calif., tripped over a hole in the floor that had been covered by carpet, according to the complaint. Johnson testified she “felt something loose under the spot where she stepped,” which was later determined to be a loose utility port cover, said Perticone, of Hardwick & Harris LLP in Baltimore.

Kristine R. Zenkewicz, the convention center’s lawyer, argued that her client had no notice of any utility port cover problems.

“GES covered over a defect and we were not aware,” said Zenkewicz, counsel to Franklin & Prokopic PC in Baltimore.

A GES foreman testified during the two-day trial that he saw a convention center employee place wood chips between the cover and the floor to stabilize the cap, Perticone said, something a building services supervisor denied.

“I think that was really critical to the case,” Perticone said. “The evidence corroborated the plaintiff’s version of events.”

A security guard took a photograph of the port cover after Johnson fell, which showed the attempt to stabilize the cap. That allowed Perticone to argue that GES was on notice about the problem when it laid the carpet.

“There was evidence of some patchwork around the port cover before the accident,” he said. “GES took a defective condition and made it that much more hazardous by covering it up.”

Mendoza said he was “a bit surprised” GES was found liable after Zenkewicz stipulated the convention center’s ownership and possession of the floor.

“I think the jury’s concern was who was responsible for the floor structure, but if there was a problem GES shouldn’t have covered it with a carpet,” he said.

GES has set up events at the convention center since Johnson’s fall, Mendoza said.