Fourth Circuit Reverses Summary Judgment in Lewis v. Circle K on Expert Causation Requirement
The most consequential appellate ruling of the week for plaintiff personal injury practice comes out of the Fourth Circuit. In Lewis v. Circle K Stores Inc., No. 25-1964, decided May 13, 2026, the panel reversed a District of South Carolina summary judgment that dismissed a plaintiff's slip-and-fall claim solely because she had not retained a causation expert. The opinion was published in Mealey's on May 26, 2026.
The plaintiff stepped onto a wet floor inside a Circle K convenience store and immediately fell, sustaining a leg injury that required surgery. The district court held that South Carolina law required expert testimony to establish the causal link between the wet surface and the injury. The Fourth Circuit held otherwise, where the causal sequence is self-evident from lay observation, including an immediate fall on a wet floor producing a discrete anatomical injury, expert testimony is not a legal prerequisite to survive summary judgment. Genuine disputes of material fact remain, and the case is remanded for trial.
No dollar verdict is attached to Lewis v. Circle K yet; the remand restores the plaintiff's right to try the case.
For firms in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, the holding is an immediate motion-practice tool. Defendants in wet-floor cases across the circuit routinely move for summary judgment arguing the plaintiff cannot prove causation without an expert. Lewis closes that avenue where the causal sequence is unambiguous. Cite No. 25-1964 in every pending opposition brief where that argument is raised.
Bar takeaway: Defendants in the Fourth Circuit cannot obtain summary judgment solely for want of a causation expert where the slip-and-fall causal sequence is self-evident from lay observation; No. 25-1964 is the operative citation for MD, NC, SC, VA, and WV opposition briefs filed today.
Third Circuit Affirms Walmart Daubert Ruling: Two-Year Post-Incident Inspection Gap Sinks Plaintiff Expert
A Third Circuit panel affirmed a defense jury verdict for Walmart Inc. in a separate premises liability action, upholding the trial court's exclusion of the plaintiff's expert under Daubert. The expert's fatal methodological flaw: the physical inspection of the store's floor conditions was conducted approximately two years after the incident date. The appellate panel agreed that a two-year gap is too remote to reliably reconstruct the conditions present when the plaintiff fell.
The practical exposure for plaintiff counsel in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Virgin Islands is clear. An expert who visits a premises well after the incident and opines on original conditions, without anchoring those opinions to contemporaneous documentation, faces Daubert exclusion under Third Circuit precedent, and that exclusion can be affirmed on appeal after a defense verdict is returned.
The corrective practice: retain premises liability experts who anchor every opinion to incident-date evidence. Surveillance video, incident reports timestamped at or near the event, maintenance logs covering the weeks before the fall, and inspection schedules form the documentary foundation that keeps expert opinions within the range of reliable methodology. An expert relying solely on a later site visit, with no tie to contemporaneous conditions, is on weak appellate ground in this circuit.
Bar takeaway: Third Circuit precedent now confirms that a plaintiff's premises-liability expert conducting a site inspection approximately two years post-incident, without contemporaneous documentation to anchor the opinion, is subject to Daubert exclusion affirmed on appeal; retain experts who can tie every opinion to surveillance footage, incident reports, and maintenance logs from the date of the fall.
Missouri Supreme Court Overrides Appellate Win, Reinstates Forklift Manufacturer Summary Judgment
The Missouri Supreme Court reversed an intermediate appellate court ruling in a forklift manufacturer product liability case, reinstating the trial court's original grant of summary judgment for the defendant manufacturer. The plaintiff had secured a favorable ruling on expert admissibility at the appellate level, only to have the state supreme court hold that the plaintiff's expert was properly excluded under Missouri's admissibility standards.
The procedural sequence deserves attention from product liability practices. A court of appeals win on expert admissibility is not a final victory when a well-resourced institutional defendant elects to seek further review. The Missouri Supreme Court reviewed the same record and reached the opposite conclusion. Firms handling industrial equipment and machinery cases should build expert foundations durable enough to survive supreme-court scrutiny: credentials, methodology, a peer-reviewed basis, and a clear tie to the plaintiff's defect theory. Surviving one intermediate panel is not sufficient when a high court can revisit the same record.
The case also signals that institutional defendants with exposure at the appellate level will pursue high-court review whenever the expert admissibility question is close.
Bar takeaway: An intermediate appellate win on expert admissibility in Missouri product liability cases is not final; the state supreme court reversed and reinstated summary judgment for the manufacturer, confirming that high-court review remains available to institutional defendants in close expert-admissibility disputes.
Verdict Roundup: $644.7 Million in Florida, $71 Million in Maryland, $8 Million in New York
Three trial-court verdicts from the past reporting period establish jurisdiction-specific benchmarks.
In Orange County, Florida, a jury returned $644,751,855.08 against the owners and operators of Park Social, a bar in Winter Park, after a patron sustained catastrophic injuries in a staircase fall on the premises. The jury's allocation: $166 million for past pain and suffering; $363 million for future pain and suffering; $109.5 million for loss of consortium to the plaintiff's spouse; and $6.25 million covering medical expenses and lost earnings. The figure places among the largest single-plaintiff personal injury verdicts in Florida history. Post-trial motions and appellate review will shape the ultimate recovery, but the jury's liability and damages findings now anchor the case posture.
In Prince George's County, Maryland, a jury awarded $71 million to Godlove Djapa for catastrophic injuries sustained when Djapa jumped from a second-floor apartment window to escape a nighttime fire at the Lilly Garden apartment complex in Lanham. The defendants are the owners and operators of the complex. Premises liability theories based on fire-egress deficiencies and habitability failures generated the verdict. Firms handling building-safety cases in Maryland should track the Djapa docket for post-trial and appellate developments.
In Westchester County, New York, a February 2026 jury returned an $8 million verdict against the City of Yonkers arising from a collision between a municipal truck and a civilian driver. Municipal defendant cases in New York require prior compliance with notice-of-claim filing requirements, and the $8 million outcome reflects a fact pattern where those procedural prerequisites were satisfied and liability was established at trial.
Bar takeaway: The $644.7 million Florida verdict at Park Social and the $71 million Maryland apartment-fire award demonstrate that premises liability juries assign substantial future pain-and-suffering multiples when the plaintiff's injuries are catastrophic and permanent, independent of the medical-expense base.
For Medical Providers: Lien Priority and Perfection in Large-Verdict Premises Cases
The verdict figures above carry a direct operational implication for medical providers treating plaintiff patients on letters of protection or hospital lien agreements. When a case resolves at a substantial figure, whether by verdict or structured settlement, competing claims against the recovery fund arrive simultaneously: government payers, insurers asserting subrogation rights, and multiple treating facilities each asserting priority.
In California, Civil Code section 3045 governs the statutory priority order among competing medical liens. Providers who hold an unperfected lien, or one filed after the statutory window, may find their claim subordinated regardless of the order of treatment. The rule operates by filing sequence and compliance with statutory form requirements, not by the chronological order of care.
For directory-listed providers considering referral relationships with plaintiff firms, the practical checklist is specific: document the treatment start date, confirm the lien is filed within applicable statutory deadlines, retain the executed letter of protection, and ensure referring counsel has the lien documentation in their case file before the matter proceeds to a settlement conference or trial.
The open question for multi-state practices: where a Florida plaintiff is treated by a California-based provider, does a letter of protection executed under Florida contract law control priority against a California hospital lien asserted under Civil Code section 3045, or does the California statutory lien take precedence by operation of state law.
Bar takeaway: Medical providers must confirm lien perfection and filing-date compliance before a case reaches verdict; under California Civil Code section 3045, priority runs by filing sequence and statutory form compliance rather than treatment date, and an unperfected lien loses its position regardless of recovery size.