A salsa dancer has scooped a seven-figure payout after she slipped on a pile of fish guts left outside a gourmet grocery store.
The dancer, from New York City‘s plush Upper West Side, has had at least a dozen operations after she slipped and fell on the slimy pile outside the Citarella seafood and fresh fish market in 2014 and dislocated her knee. The woman’s injury meant her highly active lifestyle – which included running and amateur bodybuilding – was all but snuffed, leaving her life “at a standstill for 10 plus years”. A Manhattan jury has now granted her a massive multi-million cash windfall after the devastating accident she said left her knee “on the opposite side of my leg”.
The plaintiff, who asked to be known only by her surname Castillo, was 53 when she took the shocking plunge on Labor Day 2014 – which fell on September 1 that year – while on the way to the beach with her mum, husband, daughter and granddaughter. She told the New York Post she didn’t see the clear puddle of guts and her “whole body turned” as she slipped on West 75th Street and Broadway.
Last Tuesday, jurors at a Manhattan trial decided to award her a massive $6.45 million (£4.93 million) finding Citarella was at fault when she fell in 2014. She told the Post: “It literally turned my knee to the opposite side of my leg.”
Her granddaughter, who was just five at the time, cried for her get up, but she said her leg felt “rubber, like in a cartoon”, with even doctors shocked after she was taken to A&E, with one asking: “Can I take a picture?”
Over the following several years, Ms Castillo had multiple surgeries to correct what doctors diagnosed as a dramatic total knee dislocation and multiple ruptured ligaments, and was forced to spend multiple holidays in hospital. She described work to correct her injury as “surgeries from hell”, forcing her to take steps back from her vibrant life of cooking, dancing and even shopping for groceries.
As a result, she said she felt like she has “been in jail for 10 years”, adding she “wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy”. Ms Castillo had not initially wanted to pursue legal action, but alleged the shop had refused to hand over an accident report to her medical insurer unless she had a lawyer.
She claimed that representatives for Citarella had also refused to apologise for not keeping the pavement outside the shop clean, and went as far as to partially blame the grandma’s injuries on her lupus diagnosis.
The Manhattan Supreme Court jury decided, however, that the shop was completely at fault, with Ms Castillo’s representatives saying they found it was “not OK for a grocery store to take over a sidewalk for their business.
Sharon Scanlan of Jacoby & Meyers, who represented Ms Castillo, said: “This Manhattan jury listened to all the evidence, and they spoke through their verdict that it is not OK for a grocery store to take over a sidewalk for their business and profits and not protect pedestrians in doing so.”
With the experience still yet to fully end – as other operations await the grandma in the future – Ms Castillo said it was “enlightening to think how corporations treat the smaller people, or how corporations don’t have no heart, because there’s some that really care”.
She added: “I feel like people have lost heart in this country. We used to always take care of each other.”
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