On Wed 3/25/09, a Customer was hit on the upper mid back/shoulder/neck area by heavy weighted falling folding chairs while looking at cushions stacked on shelves directly below. The Customer asked store Mgr to check & see if incident was caught on over head video cameras, when reply was “No, ” display & witness re-enactment photos were taken & injury report filed. Note: Customer was in the process of recovering from pre-existing cervical disc condition & at the time of the incident was 3-days post release from St. John's Maplewood Hospital ER. A claim was filled via Ramsey County small claims court in July. The August hearing was a joke due to the court being so swamped with cases & when it came to hear my case the Referee was inattentive. When the Referee called upon me to start to tell my side, he interrupted me to ask the associate court staff questions about trial cases scheduled to be heard later that day, then the Referee referred back to me to continue telling my story while he looked down to make notes about the reply he rec’d to his question from the court assistant. I was only allowed approximately 5 minutes to make my case & the entire hearing was over in no more than 10 to 15 minutes. Due to the businesses of the court & not being given ample time to fully disclose all evidence, etc., involved with my case, I asked the Referee if he would like copies to keep for final review for when he’d have more time, since with Conciliation Court does not offer or give a same day decisions, but my offer was declined. The Referee then asked me if I had a single specific individual itemized list referencing the cost of the damages I was asking for, my reply was; “No, how do you put a dollar amount on pain? ” The Referee said; “I don’t know.” A few days later, I rec’d a letter from the Referee denying my claim. I was under the understanding that filing a formal complaint, identifying a specific dollar amount & being prepared to offer all the evidence I had for review via, notarized witness statement, store end cap photo’s, Physician & Hospital statements, etc., time off work & payroll documents, tape recordings of phone calls rec’d from Target, etc., (that were never heard or reviewed), would have been enough to supply the court with, but that evidentially wasn’t the case. The end result is that I suffered an injury from a TOTALLY avoidable incident, (avoidable on Targets end, not mine). And despite one of the Target representatives that appeared in court that day admitting that there were chairs that fell on my back from the overhead racks, to date there’s been no resolve, no apology, no nothing from Target regarding this matter.
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