On Friday, February 15, 2019 a snowstorm hit Jackson County, leaving 3-5″ of snow in its wake. There were numerous accidents, including a massive pileup on I-70 near Oak Grove that resulted in numerous injury accidents and a fatality. Charlet Snider was living at The Oaks Apartments in Lee’s Summit. Employees of The Oaks treated the walkways with ice melt on February 15, 16 and 17, but they didn’t do a very good job, because Dale Johnson and Marcia Roberts (husband and wife) both slipped and fell on a sidewalk on the evening of the 17th. Mr. Johnson reported the incident to the apartment manager around 9 a.m. the next morning. Nobody treated the walkways on February 18.
Charlet didn’t leave her apartment on February 15, 16 or 17, and Monday the 18th was President’s day, so she had the day off work. Around 2 p.m. on the 18th, Charlet and her sister walked to the building to the northeast of her building to do laundry. The sidewalks and parking lots were mostly clear, however, there was a significant amount of ice where the sidewalk met the parking lot (between two cars). The surface of the ice appeared as if it had partially melted and turned into slush, people walked through it when it was slushy, after which it refroze with large bumps or ridges. Charlet and her sister successfully made the first trek across the ice, but on the way back Charlet slipped and fell on her left side. She fractured the tip of her radius at her left wrist, and fractured and dislocated the tips of her radius and ulna at her left elbow. You can see bone fragments from the tips of her radius and ulna are floating in the tissue near her elbow in the imaging.
Because of the wrist fracture, Charlet’s doctors were unable to keep her elbow in place, making surgery necessary. Her surgeon installed a plate with two screws and seven pins in her wrist, installed two self-tapping rods in the radius below her elbow, and two self-tapping rods in the humerus above her elbow. These rods stuck out of the side of her arm around 5-6″, and were held in place with two external rods. The external rods held her elbow at a 90 degree angle for the next approximately three weeks, after which they were removed to allow her to work on bending and flexing her elbow. A couple weeks later the rods were removed.
Charlet’s sister and her husband testified about the pain and suffering that Charlet went through, and about how these injuries affected her life. Charlet told the jury this was by far the most painful thing she ever went through, that she still has daily fear and anxiety when using her left arm, that she can’t do normal things like going to a bank drive-thru, that she has trouble sleeping, and that she still experiences pain on a daily basis. Charlet incurred $84,432.10 in medical expenses billed, $21,139.18 in medical expenses paid, and $8,175.20 in lost income.
Trial began on July 15, 2024, but ended in a mistrial midway through the second day when a witness blurted out that “five people” slipped and fell around the same time as my client, which violated one of the Court’s pretrial rulings. The second trial commenced on Monday, October 28, 2024, and the jury returned a verdict for $300,000 assessing 90% fault to The Oaks a little before noon on Thursday, for a net award of $270,000 to Charlet Snider. The defense offered $50,000 prior to the first trial, which was increased to $100,000 on the first day of trial. The offer was withdrawn a few days after the mistrial. A week or so before the second trial, the defense offered $150,000, but Charlet chose to reject the offer and proceed to trial.
Click to read the report from the Greater Kansas City Jury Verdict Service.
