A Florida mother is taking legal action against Walmart after her 9-year-old son passed away years after suffering a head injury from a metal cart in the store, claiming the retailer created a hazardous environment that contributed to his death.
Tamika Springer is pursuing over $30,000 in damages following the death of her son, Saiy-Yah Allen, as stated in the complaint.
On Tuesday, during the trial, Saiy-Yah’s sister shared details about her brother’s seizures that occurred in the years following the incident at a Fort Lauderdale location on November 25, 2020, when the 7-year-old boy collided with a metal stock cart and hit his head in a walkway.
“He would shake a lot and he would look in a different direction, and then he would shake and make noise, too,” Miharah Allen said. “Every time he ate, he would throw up, he would throw the food up or use the bathroom on himself.”
Walmart lawyers probed if his injury was the cause of his seizures and subsequent death on May 7, 2023, according to local NBC affiliate WTVJ.
A spokesperson for Walmart has yet to reply to a comment request from Law&Crime. The company stated in legal filings that the boy was not paying attention to his surroundings when he collided with the cart.
“Walmart is not liable for the incident as the stock cart was so open and obvious that S.A. should have been reasonably expected to discover it and protect himself (by simply walking around it), and a stock cart is so obvious and not inherently dangerous that it can be said, as a matter of law, not to constitute a dangerous condition that will not give rise to liability due to the failure to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition,” the defendant’s motion for summary judgment said.
“Here, unfortunately, S.A. was inattentive and failed to walk around a stock cart’s handles that were observed by his sister, who was not walking with her head turned. S.A. failed to use his senses and was walking while looking backward, therefore he did not observe the open, obvious, and innocuous stock cart.”