Ohio Woman Falls Off Bar Stool: Sues Syracuse Hotel For $1 Million!
An Ohio woman is in the news for her $1 million lawsuit against a Syracuse hotel after she fell off a bar stool. Antoinette Allison, a resident of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, has sought up to $ 1 million in damages for injuries caused to her at a Syracuse hotel where she was staying in April 2011, reports Syracuse.com. Allison claims that she fell off a “defective” bar stool at one of the bars in the Crowne Plaza Hotel on East Genesee Street in Syracuse.
The bar stool according to her was made of wood and was a high back model that caused her to land on her wrist, leading to multiple fractures. The lawsuit alleges that the bar stool on which she sat was way too high off the ground. It alleges that its design was built to co-ordinate with the height of the bar top and that the hotel management was at fault here because they were allegedly in know about the “problems” these high back stool models pose. The woman was waiting for the food she had ordered from the hotel’s “Library Lounge bar on the fateful day, her lawsuit says. Antoinette’s lawyer Mark Ventrone in his July 2012 complaint adds, “Said bar stools were more dangerous than patrons would expect and safer designs are on the marketplace.”
This rather old news is now back in the spotlight because a preliminary hearing for the case is scheduled for May 1 before state Supreme Court Justice Deborah Karalunas.
As per US law, $ 1 million is the maximum that Allison could receive in an event she wins the case. However, it has become a norm for lawyers to ask for ridiculously high amounts at the outset so that they can settle for a far lesser amount and to use it as a starting point for settlement discussions.
At this stage it is unclear if the management of the Crowne Plaza Hotel has any plans of fighting the bar stools case against Ms. Allison or whether they would settle for a monetary compensation.
Do you think cases like this one that blames the hotel for possessing high back tools are frivolous in nature and should be dismissed by the courts? Nevertheless, in a country where illegal immigrants have sued firefighters who have saved their lives, anything is possible!
[Image via Facebook, Bing]
