Judge nixes request for jury inspection of stairs in Common Pleas Courthouse personal-injury lawsuit

A Stoddard County judge has denied an attorney's motion to have a jury inspect the condition of the Cape Girardeau Common Pleas Courthouse basement stairs when the personal-injury case goes to trial.

Judge Stephen Mitchell on Tuesday denied the motion, filed by an attorney for a Cape Girardeau woman, who was injured after falling down the stairs at the courthouse in 2013.

The attorney, D. Matthew Edwards, also had requested the defendants in the case -- the city and county of Cape Girardeau and the state's 32nd Judicial Circuit -- be required to "preserve and prevent alteration" of the basement steps until the jury has had an opportunity to inspect them.

Mitchell denied that motion too after a teleconference hearing with all the attorneys involved in the case.

The judge set the start of trial for Nov. 14 in Bloomfield, Missouri, adding it would continue "day to day" until concluded.

The suit, filed in March 2016, claims Pamela Allen incurred more than $130,000 in expenses for medical care and treatment after she fell down the stairs while working for a real estate title company. According to the suit, she was heading to the basement to retrieve a court file when she fell.

The suit alleges the stairs in the historic courthouse were "dangerous and in a defective physical condition." Pamela Allen and her husband Kelly are seeking "fair and reasonable damages," according to the litigation.

The judge's written ruling, which dealt with both motions, was brief and did not explain the reasons for his decision.

But in a motion filed Monday on behalf of the city of Cape Girardeau, attorney Al Spradling III objected to allowing a jury to see the stairs.

Spradling wrote "plaintiff Pamela Allen does not know where she fell on the stairs or what stair she fell from." He said it would be "improper" to allow the jury to view the stairs. "Allowing the jury to wander up and down the basement stairs would provide the jury the opportunity to speculate as to where Ms. Allen fell," Spradling wrote.

In addition, he said transporting a jury from Bloomfield to Cape Girardeau "would disrupt the flow of the trial, take three to four hours to accomplish. To the extent Ms. Allen can testify to the facts of the case and there are no other witnesses to her fall, going to the scene would not give a clearer understanding of the area of Ms. Allen's fall."

Spradling argued allowing the jury to speculate as to "which was the alleged bad stair" could lead to a verdict based on "pure conjecture and surmise."

mbliss@semissourian.com

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