Real Estate Broker Wins $1.6 Million For Slip and Fall Spinal Injury

By Peggy Wright. The Daily Record

A real estate instructor who suffered debilitating spine injuries when she slipped on a wet bathroom floor in a building in Morris Plains has settled her lawsuit for $1.5 million dollars. Real estate broker and instructor Madeline Lipkin, then 62, was at a Weichert-owned building teaching a class on Nov. 14, 2006, and fell in a public rest room located in a portion of the building leased to a Weichert entity called Weichert Relocation Resources Co.

According to a statement from Lipkin's attorney, Donald A. Ottaunick, Lipkin was not aware that the bathroom had just been cleaned and wet-mopped by a maintenance person employed by American Building Cleaners, also known as Americorp, because the worker allegedly failed to post a wet floor sign or provide any other warning.

The $1.5 million settlement, reached recently by the parties after mediation on Lipkin's lawsuit with a retired judge, calls for Americorp to pay virtually the entire amount and for Weichert Relocation Resources to pay a nominal amount, Ottaunick said. The sum will be offset by workmen's compensation funds provided to Lipkin. Attorney John Badagliacca, who represented Americorp, declined comment. Lipkin now walks with a cane and doesn't work, Ottaunick said. She underwent multiple surgeries involving spinal fusions, he said.

According to Ottaunick, Americorp initially argued that the cleaning person left a yellow bucket and mop at or near the ladies room door and suggested that Lipkin pushed it away to enter the room. Independent witnesses, however, confirmed Lipkin's account that there was no signage, no bucket or mop near the door, and a custodian's cart was positioned in another hallway.