A man tried to sue his wife for $100k because he tripped over her shoes

A Cleveland, Ohio man, who is still married to his wife, tried to sue her for $100,000 because of the medical expenses he incurred after tripping over her heels in February, 2018. The couple were engaged at the time of the accident, and got married in May, 2019.

The details of the fall

According to Cleveland.com incident occurred on February 18, 2018 when Judy Khoury asked her fiancé John Walworth to carry a box full of vinegar bottles to her basement from her car. She says she usually leaves shoes at her back door, so it didn’t occur to her to warn John about them.

Still, he didn’t know they were there while carrying a very heavy box and, according to him, he tripped over them. Judy didn’t see him fall, so she can’t be sure it was the shoes that tripped him up.

No matter the cause, the fall was pretty bad for John. He broke bones in his leg, arm and hand and required multiple expensive surgeries and physical therapy appointments that racked up $80,000 in medical bills. He also says he lost more than $18,000 in income when he was forced to not work in order to recuperate. He calls the fall “tragic and violent.”

John filed a lawsuit against his wife in October 2019, just five months after their wedding. The couple have been together since 2015, and got engaged in 2017.

Judy’s attorney’s argued that while Judy feels responsible for leaving the shoes out, she doesn’t deserve to take legal responsibility for John’s fall. “Had Mr. Walworth used ordinary care and simply looked where he was going, especially given he was about to go down a set of stairs, he would have easily seen the shoes on the floor,” her attorneys argued.

On September 30, 2021, an appeals court judge upheld that he cannot sue his wife over this matter because he did not show evidence that proved there were factors out of his control that prevented him from seeing the shoes.

Photo by Castorly Stock from Pexels