Outback Steakhouse Sued For $1.5m After Customer Slips On Mashed Potatoes And Face-plants Onto Floor

A Virginia female making her measurement to nan restroom astatine an Outback Steakhouse slipped connected a heap of bad boy mashed potatoes and fell face-first onto nan floor, sustaining “serious and imperishable injuries” arsenic a result, according to a national suit reviewed by The Independent.

Tracy J. Renshaw, 56, is now seeking $1.5 cardinal from Outback, claiming nan beingness of nan potatoes “created an unreasonably vulnerable information for visitors,” and that “[n]o informing had been posted of nan beingness of nan slippery overseas constituent connected nan floor.”

Renshaw’s title contends that Outback breached its “duty of mean care” to guarantee nan edifice was safe for guests. Instead, it says, nan Loudoun County resident has “suffered…great symptom of assemblage and mind,” “diminished moving and earning capacities,” and has “incurred, and will incur successful nan future, hospital, doctors’ and related bills successful an effort to dainty her injuries.”

The Aussie-themed concatenation has faced erstwhile tribunal cases brought by customers who were injured while dining, including a Florida man who sued past December after a toilet astatine an Outback successful Ocala allegedly “shattered” while he was utilizing it, causing “significant and imperishable nonaccomplishment of an important bodily usability and/or imperishable and important scarring.”

In 2021, a South Carolina female was awarded $315,000 aft ingesting a 1-inch metallic bristle embedded successful a chickenhearted crockery astatine an Outback Steakhouse successful Florence County. Sharon Beaty needed emergency room to region nan bristle, which allegedly came from a ligament brushwood utilized to cleanable nan grill, from her esophagus, according to reports.

Three years earlier, different Outback patron successful South Carolina sued aft swallowing a shard of surgery solid hidden wrong a saccharine potato, which nan head explained apt came from 1 of nan jars nan room utilized to shop brownish sugar. In 2018, an Oregon man sued Outback aft cracking 2 molars connected pieces of a surgery plate that had inadvertently gotten mixed successful pinch his food.

A spokesperson for Outback, which boasts much than 1,000 locations successful 23 countries worldwide, on pinch nan lawyer defending nan institution against Renshaw’s lawsuit, did not respond Monday to requests for comment.

On May 14, 2023, Renshaw and her family were eating astatine an Outback Steakhouse successful Sterling, Virginia erstwhile she stood up from nan array to spell to nan bathroom, according to her complaint, which was initially revenge successful Loudoun County Circuit Court earlier being removed to national tribunal past week.

“On her measurement to nan restroom, she stepped connected a slippery overseas substance, which appeared to beryllium mashed potatoes, that were connected nan level successful nan restaurant,” nan title states. “The slippery overseas constituent connected nan level caused Ms. Renshaw to autumn look guardant onto nan difficult edifice floor.”

Outback had a work to support nan premises free of hazards, and to pass guests “attempting to traverse” nan area adjacent nan bathrooms of “any unsafe conditions known to them aliases that should person been known to them,” according to nan complaint.

Outback, nan title alleges, was negligent by allowing nan mashed potatoes that felled Renshaw to “remain connected nan floor,” while failing to region them “within a reasonable magnitude of time.”

The title does not picture Renshaw’s injuries successful detail, and her lawyer did not instantly respond to a petition for much information.

Outback is liable for Renshaw’s injuries via nan doctrine of respondeat superior, according to nan complaint. (Respondeat superior is simply a ineligible doctrine that places work onto an employer for nan wrongful acts of an employee.)

In a May 19 reply to Renshaw’s complaint, Outback denied nan allegations, pending much information. The concatenation besides based on that it had “no work to station immoderate warning” astir nan imaginable autumn consequence posed by nan mashed potatoes, that it had “no announcement of immoderate allegedly defective condition” astatine nan restaurant, and that Renshaw was “was not injured aliases damaged to nan grade alleged.”

Outback’s Sterling location is now permanently closed.

Renshaw is demanding a assemblage trial.