This Guy Broke His Hip Picking A Watermelon At Walmart

A jury in Alabama decided to award $7.5 million to an Army veteran who broke his hip while shopping for watermelons at Walmart.

• Related Story: 4 Weirdest Sex Injuries ER Doctors Have Ever Seen

According to The Huffington Post, the event happened in 2015 when Sergeant Henry Walker was shopping at a Walmart in Phoenix City, Alabama. While he reached for a watermelon, his foot got stuck on a wooden pallet under the display, making him trip, fall and shatter his hip.

Walker sued Walmart for negligence, claiming that the store was not safe and that this event had changed the course of his life. His attorney, Shaun O’Hara, expressed that Walker used to play Basketball three times a week, but now he needed a walker to move around, no pun intended.

Jurors were shown footage of several incidents where people in the store caught their feet on the wooden pallet – none broke their hip – and decided to award Walker $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, amounting to a heaping $7.5 million. Walmart plans to appeal the decision claiming that the measures were “excessive in light of the facts.”

• Related Story: What’s The Future Of Cannabis? Here Are 3 Scenarios

That wooden pallet has to be pretty impressive to be worth $7.5 million.