Injured woman sues Ronnie Scott’s over stairs fall she blames on ‘dim lighting’
A WOMAN is suing Ronnie Scott’s for “substantial damages” after claiming poor lighting led her to fall down two flights of stairs at the club.
Eren Hussein, 53, broke her elbow and two bones in her wrist when she fell in a “very dimly lit” stairwell as she left the Soho jazz venue.
The company director from Lower Clapton says in a court claim that the club should pay her thousands in compensation. However, Ronnie Scott’s owners say lighting was perfectly adequate and that Mrs Hussein could have used a handrail.
Giving evidence at Central London county court, Mrs Hussein, who weighed 18 stone at the time of the incident in March 2012, said her injuries were “very painful” .
She had been at a birthday party at the club and was leaving with her heavily pregnant daughter-in-law when she missed a step near the top of the stairs and fell down one flight, around a corner and down another flight. “It was dark, it was dim and I didn’t see my step as I was going down,” she told Judge Heather Baucher QC. “I tumbled over and over and over and I injured myself very badly. I recall landing on my neck and the back of my head.”
The court heard that there was a handrail on one side of the flight of stairs, which lead from an upstairs lounge to the lower floor, but that Mrs Hus- sein had allowed her seven months pregnant daughter-in-law to use it and walked on the other side of the stairs.
However, lawyers for the club say that, given Mrs Hussein’s size at the time, she would have been able to reach the rail whether she was on the right or left.
They said the lighting in the stairwell, which was also an emergency exit, was adequate. They also referred the judge to medical notes after Mrs Hussein admitted to St Thomas’ Hospital, in which a medic recorded “intoxicated” as their impression of her.
However, Mrs Hussein, who had been given gas and air to help with her pain, said she had not had a drink in six months before the accident and had had only a glass and a half of champagne and a small amount of red wine before the fall. “It could be from the gas and air,” she said.
Kiril Waite, her barrister, said that lighting in the stairwell was not good enough and that an adequate risk assessment had not been carried out.
If the claim is successful, compensation will then be assessed.
The hearing continues.