CHARLESTON – A Hall of Fame football coach is suing Kroger, saying he injured himself when he slipped on water in the company’s Dunbar store.
Oree Banks filed his complaint in Kanawha Circuit Court against The Kroger Company, Kroger Limited Partnership I doing business as KO29 Kroger East/Mid-Atlantic and store manager Rodney Jones.
According to the complaint, Banks was shopping at the Dunbar Kroger on February 14, 2022. As he approached the men’s restroom, he slipped on water. He broke his fall with his hand but landed hard, fracturing his hip and sustaining other injuries.
Banks
| Courtesy photo
Four days later, Banks’ attorney sent a letter to Jones, the store manager, via certified mail informing the company of pending litigation and its duty to preserve all evidence related to the fall, including surveillance camera footage.
Upon receiving the letter, Jones allegedly reviewed the surveillance footage that showed Banks’ fall and destroyed it.
“Kroger Co. and its subsidiaries have destroyed evidence such as the surveillance footage in issue on numerous occasions throughout the country when litigation was anticipated,” the complaint states.
Banks accuses the defendants of negligence and intentional spoliation of evidence. He seeks compensatory damages for past and future medical expenses, pain, suffering, emotional distress, fright, humiliation, fear, scarring, embarrassment, permanent injury, loss of enjoyment of life and other injuries.
If Kroger is found guilty of intentional spoliation, he seeks punitive damages. He also seeks pre- and post-judgment interests and other relief.
A Mississippi native, Banks played college football for Kansas State from 1956 to 1958. His coaching career included assistant coaching stops at Grambling, South Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin and Marshall. He was head coach at South Carolina State from 1965 to 1973 and at West Virginia State from 1977 to 1983. He was the first Black man to be hired as a full-time assistant coach at South Carolina, and he was awarded the Trailblazer Award from the American Football Coaches Association honoring early coaching leaders at historically black colleges.
He is a member of both the WVSU and the SCSU Halls of Fame as well as the Coahoma (Miss.) Community College Hall of Fame, the Mississippi Community College Foundation Sports Hall of Fame and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Hall of Fame.
Banks is being represented by Edmund L. Wagon of Wagoner & Dessi in Morgantown. The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Carrie Webster.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number 23-C-77