PHILADELPHIA - Neiman Marcus now faces penalties for a picture that fell on a model while she was working at its King of Prussia store.
Philadelphia federal judge Mitchell Goldberg on Nov. 13 granted summary judgment on the issue of liability in favor of plaintiff Paris Inman-Clark, who sued Neiman Marcus five years ago.
She was working as a part-time model for the Reinhard Model & Talent Agency in Philadelphia, which had been hired by Marchesa - a Neiman Marcus brand. In 2017, she was to model gowns at the store and was waiting in a personal shopper dressing room for an employee to photograph her in one of them.
Two large, wooden-framed paintings were hung in the dressing room. When the door was shut, the top picture fell and struck Inman-Clark in the head, causing a concussion.
She sued for negligence. The years that went by revealed the painting had been hung earlier that year, and Goldberg found Neiman Marcus breached its duty of care to business invitees by hanging a heavy object on a wall in an area customers and others would frequent.
"Common sense dictates that heavy objects must be securely hung, especially in an environment such as a department store with many customers," Goldberg wrote.
"I first note that paintings do not typically fall from walls on their own volition when they have been safely affixed. Put another way, this incident is certainly the type that does not ordinarily occur absent negligence."
Given it only took three months after it was hung to fall, Goldberg said that circumstantial evidence points toward negligence.
Neiman never pointed to facts that the painting was hung properly and could only argue other factors, like an earthquake, could have caused it to fall. A Neiman Marcus employee said safety inspectors checked mirrors but not wall hangings.
"This undisputed evidence unequivocally establishes that Neiman recognized that it had a duty to exercise reasonable care to discover conditions on its premises which posed an unreasonable risk of harm to its invitees which they were unlikely to discover or protect themselves against," Goldberg wrote.
Left to decide is the extent of Inman-Clark's injuries that can be attributed to the incident.