A Florida widow and freelance author and illustrator has sued the Red Roof Inn in Clinton for up to $400,000 over a leg laceration she says she received while staying at the hotel in August.
Lauretta J. Evans, 76, said she was on her way home to Florida on Aug. 7 when she stopped at the Red Roof Inn on Buffalo Road, according to a lawsuit filed in Anderson County Circuit Court on Feb. 8.
As she prepared to go to sleep, Evans said, she sat on a bed in the room and “immediately felt a sharp and intense pain in her lower left leg. Plaintiff looked down to see that she had sustained a severe laceration to her lower left leg, and perceived that she was bleeding profusely,” the lawsuit said.
It said emergency medical personnel were called to the scene, and Evans was taken to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville.
The lawsuit alleged that a cap on the horizontal support bar of the bed frame extended out several inches from the box spring, and the cap, made of a stone-like material, was chipped, creating a sharp edge. The sharp edge was hidden by a bed skirt draped over the box spring, “concealing the sharp edge from plaintiff’s view,” the lawsuit said.
“This concealed sharp edge constituted a dangerous condition that represented a latent defect undiscoverable by the plaintiff,” the lawsuit said.
The Red Roof Inn, also referred to in the lawsuit as Sant Partnership, had a duty to keep its place of business, including rooms assigned to patrons such as Evans, free of “latent defects and dangerous conditions,” the suit said.
It said Evans continues to be treated for infection and other complications from the laceration, and it said the widow has had medical expenses, pain and suffering, lost wages, and scarring and disfigurement.
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