A tenant slipped on an algae-slick footbridge at his complex

A Williamson County judge ordered the owner and operator of an apartment complex in Franklin to pay $2,086,842 to a tenant who slipped and fell on a pedestrian bridge on the property.

On a September 2018 morning, after heavy overnight rain, the tenant was walking back to his apartment from the complex’s clubhouse fitness center. Partway across the wooden bridge his feet went out from under him. He described the surface as slimy and “obviously not just water.” He tore his quadriceps tendon away from the kneecap, and two surgeries to repair it failed.

The owner’s corporate representative had named pressure-washing at least once a year as the standard of care, and the owner offered no evidence the bridge had been washed in the year of the fall. The tenant’s engineer testified that pressure-treated lumber left unmaintained “will always become slick.” The owner’s engineer said the bridge was simply wet.

After a two-day bench trial, the court found the owner 85% at fault and the tenant 15% at fault, and in November 2021 entered judgment for 85% of his economic and non-economic damages. The Court of Appeals affirmed in January 2023. In January 2025 the Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed 4-1, holding that the microbial growth was a general or continuing condition that put the owner on constructive notice.