Law360 Canada ( April 23, 2026, 9:38 AM EDT) -- Appeal by Pederson from a jury verdict dismissing her negligence action against the respondents, Michel and Annie Forget (collectively, Forgets). The action arose after she slipped and fell on the wooden stairs inside their home. Liability was sharply contested. Pederson testified the top stair felt like a piece of ice and claimed she heard Annie say in French, after consulting her husband, that their cleaning lady applied Pledge the day before. The Forgets denied employing a cleaning lady, denied ever using Pledge, and testified that Annie cleaned the stairs two days prior with Vim, a product intended for wooden floors. Each side called an engineering expert on slip resistance. Pederson relied on Jenish and the Forgets relied on Huntley. The judge qualified Jenish but excluded the results of his first testing. The judge permitted Jenish’s other three reports. The jury was instructed that the case was he said/she said, and either Pederson or the Forgets were truthful about the cleaning product used. The jury found no negligence. On appeal, Pederson asserted the judge erred in excluding the first testing and that the exclusion caused a miscarriage of justice because it prevented her from advancing her theory that the stair surface was tampered with during expert testing, leaving the jury with an incorrect impression. She argued this error warranted a new trial on liability. The respondents maintained the judge properly applied White Burgess and that even if the first testing ought to have been admitted, its exclusion was harmless because Jenish testified extensively about his suspicions of interference based on later tests....