Fan at Boston Bruins game who slipped and fell in TD Garden loses negligence case in Massachusetts federal appeals court
A fan at a Boston Bruins game who slipped and fell in the TD Garden concourse, suffering serious injuries, has lost his negligence case in federal appeals court.
Alexander Raheb sued the owner and operator of TD Garden, Delaware North, after his major tumble on the tile concourse floor — landing on his kneecap and rupturing his left quad tendon.
He ended up bringing a negligence lawsuit against TD Garden’s owner for the fall, and a Massachusetts federal district court ruled in favor of Delaware North, which also owns the Bruins.
Now, a federal appeals court has agreed with that district court ruling for TD Garden’s owner.
“The entry of summary judgment for Delaware North is affirmed,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit wrote this week.
Back on April 13, 2019, Raheb attended a Bruins playoff game along with three friends, including Fahim Manzur.
After entering TD Garden, Raheb and Manzur made their way to their balcony level seats and stopped at a concession stand on the balcony concourse level. Raheb bought a hotdog and a beer. Raheb’s recollection is the beer was sold in a cup that did not have a lid.
Beer and hotdog in hand, Raheb and Manzur walked through the concourse to their balcony seats. About 40 or 50 feet beyond the concession stand, before passing through the entrance to his seat, Raheb slipped and fell on the white tile concourse floor. He landed on his kneecap, rupturing his left quad tendon.
Raheb had to undergo surgery and physical therapy, incurred substantial medical bills, and missed time from work.
Both Raheb and Manzur testified that they didn’t see any liquids or other hazards on the concourse floor before the fall. After the fall, Manzur saw a “fairly clear” liquid on the ground where Raheb slipped, but could not identify its source.
Raheb alleges that he slipped on this liquid, which Delaware North’s video footage shows had been spilled about five or six seconds earlier by another fan.
That patron had been carrying one cup of beer in each hand, with a sports logo “Terrible Towel” draped over the shoulder, when the towel fell on the floor. The fan handed one cup of beer to another person, but kept the other cup in hand as the patron bent down to pick up the towel.
At the time of the incident, Delaware North had a facility service cleaning contract with UG2. Eight cleaners were assigned to each of the nine floors of the arena and patrolled the concourse with mops.
UG2 reminded its employees before events to patrol the concourse to make sure that the floor was not wet. A UG2 employee testified in deposition that “a lot of” spills at TD Garden were caused by customers, and that customers had two or three cups in their hands “all the time.”
Incident reports produced during discovery showed that there had been at least 14 slip-and-fall incidents at TD Garden in the three years before Raheb’s fall, though not all were linked to spilled beverages.
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Raheb in his lawsuit argued that TD Garden has thousands of fans walking through “corridors crowded with other patrons carrying open cups of beer over a bright white tile floor that makes spilt beer difficult to observe until after a slip and fall has occurred.”
But “none of these facts distinguish TD Garden from any other ‘establishment in which patrons are permitted to carry their own drinks… from a concession stand to their seats at a sporting event,’ ” the ruling reads.
Raheb also pointed toward evidence that “customer-caused spills occurred ‘constantly’ during events hosted by Defendant.”
However, in the ruling, the court wrote, “There is no evidence that TD Garden was dimly lit or employed ‘flashing strobe’ or similar lighting or that its sports fans regularly jostled each other and caused spills. In fact, Raheb testified in his deposition that though the concourse was very busy, he was not greatly impacted in his ability to move through it.”