Maria Torres was a regular customer at the Fred Meyer in Southeast Portland’s Hawthorne district when she picked up a bunch of bananas, walked across the store and suddenly slipped on water dripping from a leaky roof.
The 71-year-old hit her head hard on the floor, suffering a concussion and leaving her with persistent headaches, ringing in her ears and balance problems that sometimes require her to make use of a walker or a wheelchair, she said.
So-called slip-and-fall cases are common in Oregon. But what followed — Torres filed a $36 million lawsuit against the chain — stood out. One of her attorneys, Jason Kafoury, said it’s the largest amount he’s ever seen sought in a slip-and-fall case. But he contended it’s also warranted given what he argued has been a decades-old problem of roof leaks from the parking deck that comprises the ceiling of the store.
And that, Kafoury said, has put 34,000 Fred Meyer shoppers per week in danger during the wettest months of the year.
“They know every rainy season it’s going to leak to the floor in multiple locations,” Kafoury said. “The buckets are out there all the time.”
The case went to trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court last week. On its sixth day, Monday, Torres and Fred Meyer settled for an undisclosed amount, with attorneys on both sides prohibited from talking about the terms.
A Fred Meyer spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment Tuesday.
Torres’ slip was caught on surveillance video, which showed a bustling store early in the afternoon of Oct. 9, 2023. An unidentified woman walked under the drip and turned around, looking puzzled toward the ceiling, then walked on.
Less than 30 seconds later, Torres entered the frame. As she stepped onto the puddle, she slid quickly onto her back and her head. She quickly put her hand to her forehead, and a small crowd of customers came to her aid.
As Torres waited for medical assistance to arrive and remained sprawled on the floor, employees put paper towels on her to dry the water that kept dropping onto her from the ceiling, Kafoury said. Later, employees held umbrellas over her.
First responders eventually put Torres on a stretcher and rolled her to an ambulance. She was in the hospital for three days.
Kafoury said Torres suffered post-concussion syndrome, which three years later still causes her headaches, makes it difficult to walk and has forced her to stop working in her latest job cleaning TriMet buses and MAX trains at night.
Kafoury said that capped a lifetime of hard work for Torres, who was born in Mexico, worked the fields there when she was a child and in her 30s immigrated to the United States. In Oregon, she has held various jobs: picking strawberries and blueberries, washing linens at Kaiser Permanente and working as a nanny for a family during the pandemic, Kafoury said.
She also became a U.S. citizen, raised three children and now is a grandmother. She is now 74.
“She is the hardest-working person I know,” said Kafoury, who represented Torres along with attorneys Greg Kafoury and Alex Cambier.
During the trial, Torres’ attorneys called half a dozen former employees to the witness stand to talk about ongoing leaks over the years, including an employee of 16 years who said she remembers water intrusion “from the time I started to the time I left.”
Before the case was settled, Torres’ attorneys also had been prepared to call on a man who gave the store one out of five stars in a Google Review, as he complained about a leak still dripping four months after he first ran across it. He posted photos of buckets on the sales floor as part of his review.
Attorneys for Fred Meyer — Aukjen Ingraham, Mario Delegato and Sydney Padgett — contended that no employees were aware of the leak that caused Torres to fall and that the leak had only started minutes before she chanced across it. They didn’t immediately comment Tuesday for this story.
Since Torres’ fall, the store has installed about two dozen pans to its ceiling to catch leaking water, Kafoury said.
The suit sought about $75,000 for Torres’ past medical expenses, $2.7 million for future medical costs and care, $6 million for her pain and suffering and $27.5 million for punitive damages.
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