CVN screenshot of plaintiff attorney Nick Rowley delivering his opening statement
Fort Walton Beach, FL - A Florida state court jury heard opening statements Tuesday in a premises liability lawsuit filed by a young women who broke her ankle after falling outside a vacation resort’s parking garage, and the full trial is being webcast gavel-to-gavel by Courtroom View Network.
Plaintiff Emily Webre sued Destin West Beach and Bay Resort following a fall in 2021 that her attorney Nick Rowley told an Okaloosa County jury left her with a “permanent lifelong injury” to her ankle. He argued an unmarked one-inch raised step near the parking garage’s entrance violated the local building code and asked for between $13.75 million and $17.87 million in damages, but the resort maintains the supposedly intoxicated college student tripped on her own flip-flops, and that the raised step was not unreasonably dangerous.
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Rowley explained to jurors how Webre, at the time a student at LSU, made her way with a group of friends towards the parking garage after celebrating their fall break at the resort. He said a walkway leading into the garage had a concealed step of nearly one inch in height, and he insisted the local building code required any surface elevations in excess of a quarter inch to be smoothed over.
“This was a code violation, and someone got hurt,” he told jurors.
Rowley said Webre tripped on the step and broke her ankle. Despite successful surgery, he argued Webre faces a lifetime of pain and limited mobility, noting that she is already developing arthritis at an uncommonly young age, and that the injury could impact her career ambitions of working on unsteady boats as a marine biologist.
He gave jurors three options for resolving the case, suggesting they could either find the resort wasn’t negligent, find entirely for Webre, or split liability between the two. If they chose the third option, he said Webre could be assigned between five and ten percent responsibility for her fall.
Rowley pushed back on anticipated defense arguments that Webre tripped on her flip-flops, holding up the actual shoes and telling jurors she’d worn them for years without any problems.
“These shoes are made for walking, and that’s what they did,” he stated.
Rowley also rejected allegations Webre was intoxicated at the time, arguing she planned to drive her group home and that any amount of alcohol she did recently consume could not have put her over the legal limit. He said the concealed step posed a risk to sober and intoxicated guests alike, and that drinking isn’t unexpected at a vacation resort.
“The evidence will show this was not something that was obvious to someone who didn’t know it was there,” Rowley insisted.
Representing the resort, defense attorney Grayson Miller also gave jurors three options to resolve the case, but unlike Rowley’s choices all three of his options resulted in a full defense verdict.
Miller told jurors they could either find Webre’s alleged drinking caused her fall, that she slipped on her own shoes, or that the step did not pose an unreasonable dangerous condition. He explained that either choice would prevent Webre from collecting any damages for what he characterized as a routine ankle break.
He argued that at the end of the trial jurors would be asked whether or not the resort was negligent, not whether they violated a building code, and that evidence of a building code violation alone is not automatically evidence of negligence.
Miller suggested the totality of evidence would show the step was “reasonably safe” - arguing the 279-unit resort didn’t receive a single complaint about it from being built in 2007 to the time of the accident.
“The documentary evidence in this case will show that Ms. Webre fell because her feet got tangled up in her flip-flops,” he stated.
Miller acknowledged that Webre had surgery to repair her ankle, but he argued it was entirely successful, noting that she later went on lengthy hiking and scuba vacations and suggesting the decision to file a lawsuit could have resulted from the influence of Webre’s father, who is a personal injury attorney.
The trial is taking place before 1st Circuit Judge William Stone, and CVN’s live and on-demand coverage will continue for the duration of the proceedings.
The case is captioned Emily Webre v. Westin Beach and Day Resort Community Association Inc., case number 2023CA00053.
E-mail David Siegel at dsiegel@cvn.com
