A special education teacher is filing a lawsuit a year after she and two other women were injured when bricks crashed through the roof of a popular Center City store.
Allison Friedman, 28, announced the filing of a lawsuit Tuesday against the owners of a six-story building that hovered over the Lululemon Athletica store in Center City. The lawsuit accuses Walnut Street Associates, L.P. and Pearl Properties Commercial Management, LLC of negligence during the incident.
On January 27, 2015, Friedman and two of her friends were shopping inside Lululemon on the 1500 block of Walnut Street when a parapet wall on the east side of a building on 1529 Walnut Street dislodged and fell onto the store’s roof, according to officials. Friedman and her friends were hurt as the roof of the store partially collapsed.
After the incident, officials with Licenses and Inspections told NBC10 they believed water infiltration as well as freezing and thawing could have caused the brick to become dislodged in the wall of the 1529 building.
“Properly maintained buildings don’t collapse on their neighbors,” said attorney Robert Mongeluzzi, who is representing Friedman. “We will show at trial that the defendants knew or should have known there was a serious accident waiting to occur as that masonry wall would predictably, repeatedly freeze then thaw, losing structural integrity until it became totally unstable.”
Lululemon Athletica was not named in the lawsuit. Their Center City store was later demolished after the accident, according to Mongeluzzi.
Friedman says she already had shoulder surgery and will undergo major spinal surgery Wednesday on the one-year anniversary of the collapse.
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“Ali has been in rehab four days a week for the last year,” Mongeluzzi said. “She is probably going to be out of work. She’s a special ed teacher for probably another six months. With her spine fused this is going to have life-long implications for her.”
NBC10 reached out to Pearl Properties for comment. We will update this article as soon as we receive a response.
