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The Indiana Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for a case involving a woman who fell while exiting Lake County’s Community Hospital and sued the hospital for alleged negligence.
A hearing for Caryl Rosen v. Community Healthcare System d/b/a Community Hospital, 25S-CT-00217, will be Nov. 5 at 9 a..m. in the Supreme Court Courtroom.
According to court records, on Oct. 18, 2019, Caryl Rosen arrived at the hospital to pick up her husband at Community Hospital.
As Rosen was walking through the hospital’s lobby to exit, she fell at the hospital’s main entrance and sustained injuries. Rosen’s husband was not with her at the time of the fall. No hospital employees witnessed the fall.
The hospital had three cameras located in the main entrance lobby area at the time of Rosen’s fall.
Rosen sent the hospital a letter requesting “video and/or photos which show [her] being injured.” The hospital provided video from a single camera.
After filing the lawsuit in Lake Superior Court, Rosen learned there were two other cameras in the area, but the recordings were no longer accessible. Rosen argued for for spoliation of evidence sanctions, but the court denied the motion. At trial, Rosen renewed her spoliation objections, and the trial court again rejected them.
The jury returned a verdict for the hospital, but the Indiana Court of Appeals reversed in Rosen v. Community Healthcare Sys., 257 N.E.3d 6 (Ind. Ct. App. 2025), vacated.
“Whether intentional or negligent, Hospital’s failure to preserve additional footage from the camera facing the main entrance and the video recordings from other cameras in the area of the lobby was spoliation,” Judge L. Mark Bailey wrote for the court, which ruled the trial court erred when it ruled that the hospital did not engage in spoliation of evidence based on its failure to preserve all of its video recordings of the main entrance and the hospital’s lobby at the time of Rosen’s fall.
The Indiana Supreme Court granted transfer and assumed jurisdiction over the case. The high court hearing can be viewed online.
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