A Virginia woman making her way to the restroom at an Outback Steakhouse slipped on a pile of wayward mashed potatoes and fell face-first onto the floor, sustaining “serious and permanent injuries” as a result, according to a federal lawsuit reviewed by The Independent.
Tracy J. Renshaw, 56, is now seeking $1.5 million from Outback, claiming the presence of the potatoes “created an unreasonably dangerous condition for visitors,” and that “[n]o warning had been posted of the presence of the slippery foreign substance on the floor.”
Renshaw’s complaint contends that Outback breached its “duty of ordinary care” to ensure the restaurant was safe for guests. Instead, it says, the Loudoun County resident has “suffered…great pain of body and mind,” “diminished working and earning capacities,” and has “incurred, and will incur in the future, hospital, doctors’ and related bills in an effort to treat her injuries.”
The Aussie-themed chain has faced previous court cases brought by customers who were injured while dining, including a Florida man who sued last December after a toilet at an Outback in Ocala allegedly “shattered” while he was using it, causing “significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function and/or permanent and significant scarring.”
In 2021, a South Carolina woman was awarded $315,000 after ingesting a 1-inch metal bristle embedded in a chicken dish at an Outback Steakhouse in Florence County. Sharon Beaty needed emergency surgery to remove the bristle, which allegedly came from a wire brush used to clean the grill, from her esophagus, according to reports.
Three years earlier, another Outback patron in South Carolina sued after swallowing a shard of broken glass hidden inside a sweet potato, which the manager explained likely came from one of the jars the kitchen used to store brown sugar. In 2018, an Oregon man sued Outback after cracking two molars on pieces of a broken plate that had inadvertently gotten mixed in with his food.
A spokesperson for Outback, which boasts more than 1,000 locations in 23 countries worldwide, along with the attorney defending the company against Renshaw’s lawsuit, did not respond Monday to requests for comment.
On May 14, 2023, Renshaw and her family were eating at an Outback Steakhouse in Sterling, Virginia when she stood up from the table to go to the bathroom, according to her complaint, which was initially filed in Loudoun County Circuit Court before being removed to federal court last week.
“On her way to the restroom, she stepped on a slippery foreign substance, which appeared to be mashed potatoes, that were on the floor in the restaurant,” the complaint states. “The slippery foreign substance on the floor caused Ms. Renshaw to fall face forward onto the hard restaurant floor.”
Outback had a responsibility to keep the premises free of hazards, and to warn guests “attempting to traverse” the area near the bathrooms of “any unsafe conditions known to them or that should have been known to them,” according to the complaint.
Outback, the complaint alleges, was negligent by allowing the mashed potatoes that felled Renshaw to “remain on the floor,” while failing to remove them “within a reasonable amount of time.”
The complaint does not describe Renshaw’s injuries in detail, and her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
Outback is liable for Renshaw’s injuries via the doctrine of respondeat superior, according to the complaint. (Respondeat superior is a legal doctrine that places responsibility onto an employer for the wrongful acts of an employee.)
In a May 19 answer to Renshaw’s complaint, Outback denied the allegations, pending more information. The chain also argued that it had “no duty to post any warning” about the potential fall risk posed by the mashed potatoes, that it had “no notice of any allegedly defective condition” at the restaurant, and that Renshaw was “was not injured or damaged to the extent alleged.”
Outback’s Sterling location is now permanently closed.
Renshaw is demanding a jury trial.
