Plaintiff Yireika De La Rosa went to defendant LA Gypsy restaurant with a friend. She drank half a beer and went to the restaurant’s restroom. As she approached the restroom, she noticed maintenance staff spraying a blue liquid, which smelled like ammonia, onto the floor. Plaintiff passed through the area, felt she could not breathe and began to run towards the front of the restaurant, ultimately falling to the ground and suffering injuries. The issue in De La Rosa v. LA Gypsy, 2025 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 2521 (App. Div. Dec. 5, 2025) was whether the plaintiff had met her burden to show defendant breached any duty of care to her and whether she presented any facts tending to prove a causal relationship between her inhalation of fumes from the blue liquid and her fall outside the restaurant.
According to plaintiff, when she smelled the liquid, “she thought she was going to die.” After exiting the restaurant, she passed out and fell to the ground. After she woke up, she felt pain in numerous parts of her body. There were no warnings in front of the bathroom as the staff person was cleaning the floor. Plaintiff could not recall whether there was a descriptive label or other mark identifying the substance of the spray bottle which contained the blue liquid that the employee was using to clean the floor.
After the incident, plaintiff went to the emergency room. She ultimately had neck and back surgery due to her injuries.
Plaintiff named Dr. Elkholy as an expert witness. According to his report, plaintiff suddenly became dizzy and collapsed, due to inhaling ammonia in a closed restaurant that was not anticipated. He attached an article to his report, confirming the toxic side effects of the sudden presence of ammonia wherein same is unanticipatedly inhaled. He opined that it was a foreseeable consequence that an individual will suddenly experience a medical calamity, dizziness, and collapse. He further opined that plaintiff’s cervical and lumbar injuries were all related to this incident at the restaurant.
Plaintiff had sued the defendant restaurant for negligence. After completing discovery, the defendant restaurant filed for a summary judgment dismissal, which was granted.
The trial court found that the expert’s report was not probative on the question of causation. The judge noted that there are a lot of other facts that could have helped support the fact that the blue liquid was ammonia. The trial court judge found that the plaintiff’s expert did not identify what contents were in the spray bottle or what substances were discovered in plaintiff’s body afterwards which could have caused her to faint or collapse. Even assuming that the substance was ammonia, the court held that the presence of ammonia in the hallway leading to the bathroom and the eventual collapse of plaintiff was insufficient to show that ammonia caused plaintiff’s collapse.
This summary judgment dismissal was appealed. The Appellate Division noted that there was no dispute that the defendant restaurant owed a duty of care to plaintiff as a business invitee, nor that plaintiff fell outside the restaurant and suffered injuries.
The issue was whether defendant breached any duty of care to her, as well as whether plaintiff offered any material facts to prove a causal relationship between the fume inhalation from the blue liquid and a fall outside.
Under New Jersey law, the Appellate Division noted that a business owner was required to guard against any dangerous conditions on the property that the owner either knows about or should have discovered and to conduct a reasonable inspection to discover any latent dangerous conditions.
The Court stated that plaintiff offered no competent evidence, other than her own testimony, to establish what the blue liquid substance she observed was, its composition, whether defendant’s cleaning staff sprayed the blue liquid in a proper manner and the size and ventilation of the hallway where she observed the liquid. The plaintiff failed to proffer any testimony that it was unreasonable for the defendant’s staff to use the blue liquid or how its use created a dangerous condition. The Appellate Division noted that the plaintiff failed to depose defendant or any of its employees to ask what kind of solution the cleaning staff used on the date of the accident.
Hence, even giving plaintiff all reasonable inferences, the Court determined that plaintiff had failed to meet her burden to show a genuine issue of material fact which would tend to prove that defendant breached its duty of care through its cleaning personnel improperly using an unidentified blue liquid. Plaintiff’s own testimony about the presence of ammonia in the hallway was unsupported by facts and represented self-serving testimony which would be insufficient to defeat summary judgment.
Next, the Court considered whether the plaintiff had proved proximate causation. The Court noted that to prove proximate cause, plaintiff bears “the burden to introduce evidence which affords a reasonable basis for the conclusion that it is more likely than not that the conduct of the defendant was a cause in fact of the result.” Expert testimony on the topic of proximate cause would be necessary when it is outside a juror’s common knowledge.
Plaintiff argued that her expert, Dr. Elkholy, rendered an opinion that established a nexus between plaintiff’s collapse and the blue liquid that was sprayed. The Appellate Division disagreed. Dr. Elkholy failed to conduct any testing of the restaurant, did not review any records of the composition of the blue liquid, and reviewed no toxicological reports of plaintiff after her exposure to the blue liquid.
Thus, the Court found that the plaintiff’s expert had no factual basis to reach any conclusions about what plaintiff was exposed to, for how long, or how and if it affected her in any way. Without evidence of what the blue liquid consisted of and a toxicology report to show what plaintiff had inhaled, the Appellate Division found that Dr. Elkholy’s opinion was without foundation and was a net opinion. Hence, without an expert to prove causation, plaintiff’s claim could not survive summary judgment.
Thus, the Court determined that plaintiff had failed to meet her burden to show defendant breached any duty of care to her, nor did plaintiff meet her burden to prove proximate cause. The Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s order, granting summary judgment and dismissing the lawsuit.
