In Becker v. Jefferson Parish Hospital District No. 2, 2014-1849 (La. 11/21/14), it was undisputed that the plaintiff slipped and fell on a foreign substance on the floor of the defendant hospital. The intermediate appellate court affirmed the trial court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit via summary judgment on the grounds that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate that he could meet his evidentiary burden to show that the hospital possessed actual or constructive knowledge of the foreign substance on the floor. The Louisiana Supreme Court reversed, concluding that there remained genuine issues of material fact left to be decided at trial. While not stated, the “material issue of fact” may have been created by the plaintiff’s testimony that a hospital employee informed him that he had slipped on ultrasound gel (a condition most probably created by the hospital employees).
