SLIP AND FALL

 

Jurisdiction: Middlesex County Superior Court, Cambridge, MA
    
     This matter involved the slip and fall of a plaintiff who was exiting a taxicab adjacent to a construction site in Somerville, Massachusetts. 
     The allegations were that a sewer trench was not properly covered.  The plaintiff claimed that he exited a taxicab and tripped and fell into the trench striking his head. This resulted in a “closed head” injury.  The plaintiff alleged that as a result of his fall he also sustained orthopedic injuries to his cervical and lumbar spine.  There was extensive medical testimony offered by both sides as to the merits of the plaintiff’s alleged closed-head injury.
     During the course of the trial, there were numerous convictions offered to impeach the plaintiff regarding his criminal history.  Also, the criminal convictions of the plaintiff’s companion witness were offered to impeach his otherwise corroborating testimony.
     Numerous photographs had been offered standing for the proposition that the contractor had left the site in a state of disarray over the several weeks during a stretch of bad weather during the winter season.  We were able to demonstrate that photographs allegedly taken the next morning by the plaintiff’s companion, were in fact taken another time of day. We showed this by way of work logs and of traffic patterns, which appeared in the photographs. This case was tried on a bifurcated basis.
     This matter was appealed, in part, on the use of the convictions, as to not only the plaintiff, but the plaintiff’s corroborating witness.  It was further appealed on the issue that we had raised strenuously in our closing argument that the veracity of the plaintiff and his witness was tied very closely to the convictions.  We argued that the convictions stood for the proposition that the plaintiff and his witness were not truthful people and their testimony could not be relied upon or accepted as the truth.  The jury returned a defense verdict.
     The Massachusetts Appeals Court upheld the defense verdict in 2002.