The owner of the vomit has not been identified.
Of course nobody really knows who the vomit actually belonged to. You can't really dust for vomit.

If June was "pretty severely injured" by her slip and fall, she'd be suing for a whole lot more than $5K.

I'd venture a guess that WMT has several thousand penny ante suits like this one pending at any given time, so I'm not sure where the "news" story is.

And Wal*Mart will fight them all, to the bitter end, because they don't want to give the "Lucky"s of the world (go King of the Hill) their usual settlement check.

How can you not notice a big vomit puddle? Have these people never been in the city, where you always need to watch your step?

Still, that's pretty gross. I don't know if you could blame Walmart for injuries. Well, whatever. I'm not going to defend Walmart.

In other news, Walmart janitorial staff reduced by half...

@Bay State Darren: No, but you can get DNA from it... or at least that's what my Law and Order/CSI based criminology education tells me.

BTW sorry about vomiting in the Walmart.....

So, not using your eyes is an excuse to sue someone?

yeah you can also get all sorts of sicknesses from it... vomit is -last i checked- a biohazard.

Seriously though how can you not see a puddle of orange vomit on the bright white linoleum floor?

I'm on Walmart's side on this one; besides hating frivolous lawsuits, I know that going to Walmart will mean dodging at least a dozen vomit spills. Swim at your own risk should you go to Walmart, the water is a little thick and chunky; make sure your hepatitis panel is current.

@nweaver: You beat me to the Lucky line! (Though he slipped in pee-pee.)

I like that the fall was almost 2 yrs ago exactly..probably it's near the statuate of limitations on this kind of suit.

That lawyer must be a major scumbag to take the suit...or he's trying to make a name for himself.

**queue banjo music**

@Starfury: It's always fashionable to bash lawyers. Yawn.

This is the first you guys have heard about slip-and-fall cases?

Nowhere does it say what color the vomit was. Could have been the nasty, see-though green kind.

Otherwise, the fact that there was vomit on the floor at all makes them liable for something, at least.

On an unrelated note, I abuse the italics.

I think we should consider the possibility that the overall nastiness of Wal-Mart contributed to the production of the vomit.

I'd say 5k covers for embarrassment and maybe a bruised coccyx.

I woudl think you would have to demonstrate that Walmart showed vomit negligence in this case. And that just gets silly.

Nah. Somebody dropped a large bottle of some liquid cleaner onto the floor in the express checkout, which was close to the entrance. It must have taken them a good 15 minutes to find someone to clean it up. So I can see how vomit can just be sitting there for a while, especially when nobody is really motivated to rush right at it and clean clean clean.

She wasn't, by any chance, a drummer for Spinal Tap, was she?

And they waited about 2 years to file suit? Is this standard for plausible injury cases?

How can you not notice a big vomit puddle?

They were shopping at Wal-Mart. How intelligent do you expect them to be?

As much as I hate to say it, this sort of thing is usually pressed by a certain type of person. They are probably just trying to score a quick $5k thinking that Wal-Mart will just pay them and get such a small suit out of the way.

Do not walk through vomit puddles, do not hold hot liquids between your legs, these things come to me as common sense. If you fall and get hurt doing so then you either deserve such for being that stupid, or you had an idea for a get rich quick scheme. Either way, idiot.

If it was just plain water, that might not be spotable and I could understand, but I would bet nearly all vomit has some sort of color making it simple to avoid.

I think Walmart is evil and hope that the judge awards each and every plaintiff against Walmart a seven-figure judgement with no opportunity to settle.

and besides, I refuse to shop there so I couldn't care less if they go out of business.

@MercuryPDX: I'm sorry the Tap reference was inevitable, s o I just wanted to get it out ou the way. But seriously, should walmart then pull its sales records and then go door-to-door with it's customers for DNA samples? (DNA analysis, or serology, is criminalistics, BTW, not criminology.)

I know which Walmart that is! And the puddle's still there!

Walmart Vomit Puddle Watch: Week 1

Damn you Bay State! I came here hoping to post that exact line and you have to be the first poster. :(

@quagmire0: it's "Cue" not Queue, dammit.

It was James' vomit & they are scam artists. :D

@iMike: I work for lawyers.

walmart still needs a reasonable amount of time to clean it up. If i vomit in walmart right now and you slip on it in less than five minutes...has walmart had a chance to not only find out about the vomit bu to also block off the area and mop? chances are no, because i may not tell anyone that i threw up. just because you fall somewhere does not make that somewhere liable. they need to know about the hazard before they can fix the hazard.

As a commercial liabiltiy adjuster, I'll tell you one thing.....if she was "severely" injured in the fall, she'd be asking for FAR more than $5k.

What she's doing is making the thing public so that everyone thinks it's big bad wal mart trying to hurt the small guy. Her demand is small enough that they could just pay it and write it off instead of paying their in-house lawyers to defend it.

I'd like to see them defend this one though, and start a precedent.

@Melikoth:

And what about the smell? You'd think they'd notice the smell. I mean, when I'm walking down the sidewalk I can usually detect the vomitus by the smell alone way before I actually see it.

Hmm, I should have gotten rich off of Meijer, then! I fell in a puddle of water from a broken freezer case, but Earth Logic said that I wasn't hurt past a nasty bruise on my knee and therefore shouldn't sue.