The Aisle 7 Slip-and-Fall With a Kayak Photo
On a Tuesday afternoon in March, a 47-year-old claimant alleges she slipped on a clear liquid in aisle 7 of a grocery store and struck her right shoulder on a display rack. The incident report, written by an assistant manager, states the floor was dry and that a 'wet floor' cone was placed near the aisle about 20 minutes after the fall. The claimant declined an ambulance and left in a friend's car. She saw an orthopedist three days later, who diagnosed a rotator cuff tear and imposed a 10-pound lifting restriction. She is a self-employed house cleaner and has filed a $96,000 claim for medical costs and lost wages. An ISO claim search returns three prior claims in five years: two auto injury claims and a 2021 premises claim at a different retailer. Three weeks after the loss, a public post on her social media account shows her paddling a kayak. Claim counsel has demanded an examination under oath within 21 days. The store's CCTV system overwrites footage after 14 days, and the incident is now 11 days old.
1. List the investigative steps you would complete in the next 10 business days, in priority order, and explain the sequencing.
Read the worked answer
Sequence by evidence half-life and by what each step unlocks.
CCTV preservation today. The system overwrites in 14 days and the loss is 11 days old. Send a written preservation demand to the store and to its third-party security vendor, request a native export of aisle 7 and the entrance for a window from two hours before to two hours after the incident, and record a hash and custodian for the file. If this step fails, no later step recovers it.
Employee interviews while memory is fresh: the assistant manager who wrote the report, the employee who placed the cone, and any cashier with a sightline. The cone timing is the liability question, so pin down who placed it, when, and why, and whether a camera covers that spot.
Prior claim files for the two auto claims and the 2021 premises claim, obtained under the claimant's signed authorizations in this file, looking for the same body part, the same mechanism, and the same provider network.
Medical records under authorization: the MRI report and any pre-loss shoulder imaging or treatment, because the acute-versus-degenerative question drives both causation and damages.
A recorded statement or targeted interview of the claimant before the EUO, on the lifting restriction, her work schedule, and the day of the loss.
Surveillance only after the kayak post and the work description are documented, and only with a written cost-benefit justification, since she is self-employed and the spend must be proportionate.
Send counsel a written acknowledgment of the EUO demand within two business days so the record shows cooperation.
2. Evaluate the kayak photograph: what can it prove, what can it not prove, and how should it be collected and documented?
Read the worked answer
What it can do is create a documented inconsistency between a claimed 10-pound lifting restriction and a demonstrated activity of similar or greater shoulder demand, which is a legitimate basis for follow-up questions and for surveillance. What it cannot do is prove fraud on its own. A single image has no reliable date, no context, no indication of duration or effort, and no showing that paddling is equivalent to the repetitive overhead and lifting work of a house cleaner. It also cannot show whether the post was taken before or after the loss without corroboration.
Collection matters as much as content. Preserve the public post by capturing the URL, the account identifier, the visible timestamp, and a full-page screenshot with metadata intact, then hash the files and log who captured them and when. Do not send a friend request, create a false profile, or use any pretext to reach non-public content, because that conduct can taint the evidence and create regulatory and platform-terms problems. Do not alter or rename the original file.
In the report, describe the image factually, attribute it to the public source, state the capture date, and note expressly that the date of the activity is not established by the image alone. Use it to frame EUO questions rather than as a conclusion.
3. Claim counsel demands an EUO within 21 days. Do you agree to the date, and what must happen first?
Read the worked answer
Twenty-one days is workable but premature if it locks in before the records and footage are reviewed, because an EUO conducted on an empty file becomes a fishing expedition and gives the claimant's attorney a clean record to attack.
First, confirm the policy's cooperation and examination conditions and the state's rules on notice and the claimant's right to counsel at the EUO. Second, respond in writing within two business days, agreeing to an EUO in principle and proposing a date inside the 21-day window only if the CCTV export and the medical records will be in hand by then; otherwise request a specific, reasoned extension in writing, tied to the pending records rather than to convenience. A documented good-faith request is far better than a silent delay.
Prepare an outline built only on documented discrepancies: the mechanism of the fall versus the injury claimed, the cone timing, the prior claims, the lifting restriction versus the kayak activity, and the self-employment income asserted. Keep questions tied to the claim and the policy conditions. Do not ask about matters outside the claim's scope, and do not confront the claimant with the photograph in a way that converts a statement into an ambush, which is exactly what plaintiff counsel wants on the record. Log the EUO, retain the transcript, and update the claim file the same day.