Gerlach v. Cove Apartments, LLC

*817¶1 Kimberly Gerlach sued The Cove Apartments LLC and Weidner Property Management LLC (collectively Cove) after she fell from a second story apartment balcony with a rotted railing and suffered life threatening injuries. Gerlach was extremely intoxicated at the time of the fall. At trial, Cove sought to limit its liability by proving that Gerlach's intoxication was the proximate cause of her damages and that she was more than 50 percent at fault, in accordance with the affirmative defense of voluntary intoxication *628under RCW 5.40.060(1). Because the trial court abused its discretion by…