When attorneys hire our firm, Restaurant Expert Witness, it is because they (as a matter of course) do not know what is ordinarily done in the day-to-day operations of restaurants throughout the restaurant industry — aka “industry standard.”
Attorneys seek our professional knowledge, experience, training, education and expertise of the restaurant industry to help them establish for the courts (the judges and juries) the ordinary (not extraordinary), reasonable and customary policies, procedures, practices, systems, standards, standards of care, operating guidelines and/or training materials that are implemented and trained throughout the restaurant industry to warn and protect the restaurant employees, customers, vendors or others against being injured, harmed, sickened, maimed or killed.
In other words, they need us to inform them of the policies, procedures, practices and systems that are normally used in restaurants to keep the restaurant and everyone in it safe, healthy and secure. Once this has been established, I help them to determine whether the restaurant at the center of the legal matter was operating within industry standards at the time of or before the incident.
If I present a standard procedure that has long been established throughout the restaurant industry that is being used by a majority of restaurants and it also happens to be required by law (such as the OSH Act), then it only increases the strength of the argument. Needless to say, restaurant operators who are determined by the courts not to be in compliance with industry standards and standards of care are also usually found to be responsible and therefore liable for the damages to the person or people who were injured, harmed, sickened, maimed or killed on the restaurant premises.
Let’s put it in terms that really mean something about the bottom line. If one or more of the restaurant employees, customers, vendors or other visitors is injured, harmed, sickened, maimed or killed on restaurant premises and they file a lawsuit or insurance claim and it is determined by the courts that the restaurant failed to follow industry standards and/or standard of care, then most likely, the restaurant will be writing a big, painfully fat check. That is the long and the short of it in the simplest terms possible.
If the subject restaurant is operating below the industry standards of care, below industry standard, outside of the laws of the land, outside of industry policies and procedures, outside of OSHA guidelines and code and/or outside of the restaurant’s own policies and procedures, then they are the one who is creating and maintaining a hazardous and dangerous condition; and it’s their actions (or lack thereof) that will eventually be judged.
This all remains the true in the case of your hot coffee or tea spill lawsuit.
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