Sorrels v. NCL (Bahamas) Ltd., 13-21413-CIV, 2013 WL 6271522 (S.D. Fla. 2013)
On the afternoon of April 13, 2012, the Plaintiff boarded the Norwegian Sky, a cruise ship owned and operated by NCL (Bahamas) Ltd. (“Norwegian”). It had rained before and after Plaintiff boarded the ship that day. After boarding, Plaintiff walked on an outdoor pool deck made of teakwood. She knew the deck was wet from rain but had no trouble walking on it. In the early morning of April 14th Plaintiff was listening to music in a shipboard lounge. She left the lounge shortly after midnight to pick up her daughter at the teen center. On her way there, Plaintiff walked across the wooden pool deck. After walking about 100 feet, she slipped and fell. Plaintiff admitted that when she fell, at least some of the deck may have been wet.
Plaintiff brought suit against Norwegian alleging negligence. Norwegian moved to strike the Plaintiff’s expert Ronald Zollo and for summary judgment. In the motion to strike, Norwegian asked the court to exclude the proposed expert testimony of Zollo on several grounds. In its Motion for Summary Judgment, Norwegian asserted that Plaintiff’s claims failed because there was no evidence Norwegian acted negligently.
Addressing the Motion to Strike, the court held that Plaintiff has not established that “the methodology by which Zollo reached his conclusions is sufficiently reliable.” The court granted the Motion and noted that Zollo’s basic theories, techniques, and conclusions were unreliable. Accordingly, Zollo’s proposed testimony concerning the alleged dangerous condition of the Norwegian Sky’s pool deck was excluded.
In its Motion for Summary Judgment, Norwegian asserted that the record fails to establish a triable issue of fact about whether a dangerous condition existed on the Norwegian Sky’s pool deck at the time of Plaintiff’s accident. Aside from Zollo’s excluded testimony, Plaintiff relied on two pieces of evidence to show that Norwegian created a dangerous condition on the deck by failing to properly maintain it. First, Plaintiff claimed that numerous “substantially similar” accidents occurred aboard the ship. Second, Plaintiff asserted that a ship employee’s testimony proves that Norwegian recognized the alleged hazardous condition.
But the court concluded that there were many factual differences between the prior accidents and Plaintiff’s—Plaintiff failed to show that “conditions substantially similar to” her fall also “caused the prior accidents.” The court further noted that even assuming arguendo that the conditions that caused some of the earlier incidents were generally similar to Plaintiff’s fall, the limited information about those incidents greatly restricted their probative value. And presenting the generalized accident descriptions to the jury would risk prejudice and confusion “disproportionate to the value of the evidence.”
Plaintiff also relied on the testimony of a crewmember who worked at a restaurant on the Norwegian Sky. The court determined that her testimony, however, failed to show that a dangerous condition existed on the pool deck. The crewmember stated that she would post a warning sign when something was spilled on the restaurant floor. And though the crewmember further testified that the deck department would post signs warning that the decks could be slippery when wet, she admitted that she did not actually know whether those signs were posted because she worked in the restaurant.
In sum, the court held that Plaintiff failed to produce substantial evidence that Norwegian created a dangerous condition on its ship and thereby breached its duty of reasonable care and granted Norwegian’s Motion for Summary Judgment.